TRUCK SPILLED WHAT?
On page 280, we told you about some messy truck spills of the edible kind. What the following accounts lack in grossness… they make up for in weirdness.
MONEY
Imagine you’re driving down the highway and suddenly it starts raining $20 bills. That actually happened in May 2018 on I-70 in Indianapolis when the back door of a Brinks armored truck came open. “I was in shock at first,” one motorist, Jazmyne Cooper, told Inside Edition. Although she was “very tempted,” she didn’t help herself to any of the cash. But several other people did, including a school bus driver who slammed on the brakes, jumped out, grabbed a pile of cash, and drove away. It’s uncertain how much money left the scene, but the Brinks truck was carrying around $600,000. As one police officer said, “Some people should have enough to buy a car.”
Eight million dimes—total: $800,000—ended up on I-15 in Nevada after a semi left the road, hit the guardrail, and overturned. Because the crash occurred at 3:30 a.m., there wasn’t a mad scramble to steal the loose coins. Even if there had been, the Nevada Highway Patrol quickly cordoned off the area as if it were a crime scene, and stood guard while workers picked up eight…million…dimes.
In 2010, on a busy freeway in Foggia, Italy, an armored truck burst a tire, sideswiped a car, and then crashed into a barrier. The trailer burst open, and 2 million euros’ worth of 1- and 2-euro coins poured out. “It was a real free-for-all,” said one eyewitness. “People were running across the lanes to reach the coins. I am amazed no one was killed.” By the time it was all cleaned up, at least 50,000 euros ($70,000) had been stolen. The worst part, according to a police officer: “Two drivers in the truck and two in a car were hurt, but no one was bothered about them.”
WEAPONS
Here’s something you don’t see every day: a Tomahawk cruise missile in the middle of the highway…in the Bronx. In 2006 a flatbed truck hauling the 20-foot long, 3,000-pound missile was on its way from Rhode Island to Virginia when it broke down on I-95 in New York City and was rear-ended by another truck, knocking the missile onto the highway. (Fortunately, there was no warhead on the missile.)
In July 2008, a semi left Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota carrying a booster rocket for a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. Not long into the trip, the truck left the road, and tipped over in a ditch. When military crews arrived to clean up the wreck, they were faced with a huge problem: Together, the truck and the rocket weighed 37 tons. Result: armed guards patrolled the crash site for an entire week until a crane arrived to remove the rocket. The mishap reportedly cost the military $5.6 million. Good thing the rocket wasn’t armed—the accident occurred within the capital city of Bismarck (pop. 60,000). The cause of the crash? According to the U.S. Air Force, the driver became distracted by a large insect that flew in a window and landed on his back.
Communism pays: The London cemetery that is home to Karl Marx’s grave charges an admission fee to visit his grave.
A flatbed truck was hauling a large piece of “industrial construction equipment” in September 2017 on New York’s Major Deegan Expressway when the equipment tumbled off its trailer. In the next lane was a charter bus carrying 20 people…and there was no time for the driver to swerve out of the way. The bus hit the equipment head-on, smashing the front window and mangling the front end. People, purses, and phones went flying as the bus came to an abrupt stop. None of the passengers were seriously injured, but they were all stranded on the side of the highway for half an hour until another bus arrived to rescue them.
In 2012 CTV News reported that a pickup truck lost “several industrial-sized buckets of white paint” on Canada’s Halifax Harbour Bridge. The paint ended up splattered over 100 yards of the roadway. Cleanup crews arrived quickly, but not fast enough to prevent hundreds of vehicles from driving through the spill. Perhaps the worst affected by the white paint was the driver of a black convertible BMW. “I expect he’ll be calling somebody,” said Steve Snider of the Harbour Bridge Commission, who advised anyone with paint on their cars—or themselves—to call. (The driver’s insurance company paid to clean up the mess.)
Truck driver Robert Herman picked up a load of 2-pound steel “grinding balls” (total weight: 44,000 pounds) in Seattle in 2018, and was supposed to haul them 800 miles to Salt Lake City. However, only two miles into the journey, as Herman was driving up a steep hill in a neighborhood, the trailer door came open. The result looked like something out of a screwball comedy. “I’m looking back and I see all these balls rolling down the street,” he said. No one was hurt, but several cars and probably one or two garden gnomes were damaged. Herman was issued a ticket. He promised to “check the load better” next time.
Testarossa means “redhead” in Italian, and a Ferrari Testarossa is named for its engine’s cylinder heads, which are painted red.
It was a Texas-sized game of “pick-up sticks” on a Houston freeway after a lumber truck lost its load of two-by-fours in October 2018. Thousands of them went flying all over the place—one even pierced the windshield of a passing pickup truck. Bad news: six vehicles were involved in the crash. Good news: no one was seriously injured. Bad news: the wreck occurred at the beginning of the evening rush hour. Traffic stayed at a standstill well into the night as crews feverishly worked to pick up all those sticks.
In 2017, on a rainy day on California’s Highway 101, a driver lost control of a garbage truck hauling yard waste on a curve, and took out about 100 feet of the center divider before the truck landed on its side on the left shoulder. And then, only five minutes later, on the same stretch of road, “The same kind of truck, same company, loses control and overturns onto the right shoulder,” said CHP Officer Jon Sloat. That’s two trucks from one company, only five minutes apart, together covering the road with tons of leaves, grass, and branches onto both sides of the highway. The cause of the accident, according to the California Highway Patrol: they were driving too fast.
BLUES MUSICIANS HAVE THE BEST NICKNAMES
•Baby Tate
•Backwards Sam Firk
•Barbecue Bob
•Barrelhouse Chuck
•Johnny “Big Moose” Walker
•Otis “Big Smokey” Smothers
•Blind Lemon Jefferson
•Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne
•Bumble Bee Slim
•Catfish Keith
•Cow Cow Davenport
•Furry Lewis
•Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown
•H-Bomb Ferguson
•Hip Linkchain
•Hollywood Fats
•Ironing Board Sam
•Johnny Drummer
•Laughing Charley
•Lazy Lester
•Mr. Blues
•Peg Leg Sam
•Piano Red
•Huey “Piano” Smith
•Pinetop Perkins
•Popa Chubby
•Rabbit Brown
•Seasick Steve
•Smoky Babe
•T-Model Ford
•Washboard Willie
•Paul “Wine” Jones
How to tell the Olsen twins apart: Ashley is shorter than Mary-Kate, and has a freckle above her lip.