The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez 
    oil spill in Alaska was $80,000.  At a special ceremony, two of
    the most expensively saved animals were released back into the wild 
    amid cheers and applause from onlookers.  A minute later they 
    were both eaten by a killer whale. 

    A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to 
    a carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his
    reactions. After weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her repeatedly with 
    an ax leaving her mentally retarded. 

  
    In 1992, Frank Perkins of Los Angeles made an attempt on the 
    world flagpole-sitting record.  Suffering from the flu he came
    down eight hours short of the 400 day record, his sponsor had gone
    bust, his girlfriend had left him and his phone and electricity had
    been cut off. 

 
    A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking 
    frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist 
    towards the electric kettle.  Intending to jolt him away from
    the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by 
    the back door, breaking his arm in two places.  Till that moment 
    he had been happily listening to his Walkman. 

 
    Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of
    sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn.  Suddenly the pigs, all two
    thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling 
    the two hapless protesters to death. 

 
    Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn't pay enough postage on a
    letter bomb.  It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it. 
    Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.