Italian man crushed to death by thousands of falling cheese wheels

Philo@lemm.ee to World News@beehaw.org – 268 points –
Italian man crushed to death by thousands of falling cheese wheels
ground.news
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My condolences to his family, that must have been a horrifying experience and I'm sorry for their loss. Human moment out of the way, I almost thought this was an Onion article. That headline is hysterical.

If we don't truly die until we're forgotten by the living, he's gonna live a long time as the ancestor that passed away at the hands of cheese wheels.

That's a very philosophically positive way of thinking about it!

He's going to haunt those hallowed cheese halls. Some one bust out the Luigi board.

He'll be reposted for all of eternity

Yeah, I sort of feel like something like this would be a horrifying death process followed by an afterlife of "yeah, ok, that was a pretty funny way to go out."

You can only hope that the end arrives quickly with something like this.

Best wishes to his family. At home, drawers and other furniture tragically crushes babies once every two weeks in the U.S. If you have small children, as part of your baby/childproofing, buy and use anti-tip or furniture straps to prevent this kind of thing happening.

As for occupational hazards, this is a stark reminder of the risk behind storing large amounts of anything, including grain silo entrapment, flammable material storage, and even the Beirut explosion. I can legitimately say that manufacturing flour is perhaps the most dangerous food to produce at mass scale. As for weight, ss soon as over 100lbs/50kg goes over your head, make sure you have sufficient structural stability in your shelf.

I imagine this is to Italians as dying gloriously in battle is for vikings. He went to the great kitchen in the sky.

This is how I want to go out. A burial fit for a king indeed.

Considering the size of those wheels, I feel like it'd only take two or three. They are massive and that is terrifying.

Italian equivalent of failed Russian window

???

Living in Russia, sincerely don't get the joke.

Asphyxiating because of the poisonous gasses from a pickled cabbage tank, or drowning in vodka, or something like that I can understand. But what's with the windows?

Russia has a reputation for suspicious deaths by defenestration.

Example: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/russian-tycoon-pavel-antov-dies-putin-ukraine/672601/

Ah. No such meme inside Russia.

I mean, there are from time to time suspicious deaths of such people, and the timing is sometimes interesting, but these are all kinds of deaths, - heart attacks, car crashes, aneurisms , whatever.

If it were American "cheese" he'd be preserved for a millenia!

That definitely ranks higher than being killed by 30,000 lbs of bananas. I wonder if we'll get a song from this tragedy as well.

There's a song about being crushed by bananas? 😳

There's a true story behind the song:
https://news.wgcu.org/2022-03-17/song-of-the-day-for-march-18-30-000-pounds-of-bananas-by-harry-chapin

Then the song itself:
Harry Chapin - Thirty Thousand Pounds of Bananas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGldNpngDws

The tally man had a lot of bananas to tally that day.

The tallying of the banana tallyman takes quite the toll! He just wants to go home, really 🍌

Fun Fact: You can drop that link above into the search bar on this (https://inv.citw.lgbt/feed/popular), or any INVIDIOUS instance, and get to hear that song without being tracked.

Lyrics for the Literate

"It was just after dark when the truck started down
the hill that leads into Scranton Pennsylvania.
Carrying thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Carrying thirty thousand pounds (hit it Big John) of bananas.

He was a young driver,
just out on his second job.
And he was carrying the next day's pasty fruits
for everyone in that coal-scarred city
where children play without despair
in backyard slag-piles and folks manage to eat each day
about thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, just about thirty thousand pounds (scream it again, John) .

He passed a sign that he should have seen,
saying "shift to low gear, a fifty dollar fine my friend."
He was thinking perhaps about the warm-breathed woman
who was waiting at the journey's end.
He started down the two mile drop,
the curving road that wound from the top of the hill.
He was pushing on through the shortening miles that ran down to the depot.
Just a few more miles to go,
then he'd go home and have her ease his long, cramped day away.
and the smell of thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes the smell of thirty thousand pounds of bananas.

He was picking speed as the city spread its twinkling lights below him.
But he paid no heed as the shivering thoughts of the nights
delights went through him.
His foot nudged the brakes to slow him down.
But the pedal floored easy without a sound.
He said "Christ!"
It was funny how he had named the only man who could save him now.
He was trapped inside a dead-end hellslide,
riding on his fear-hunched back
was every one of those yellow green
I'm telling you thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of bananas.

He barely made the sweeping curve that led into the steepest grade.
And he missed the thankful passing bus at ninety miles an hour.
And he said "God, make it a dream!"
as he rode his last ride down.
And he said "God, make it a dream!"
as he rode his last ride down.
And he sideswiped nineteen neat parked cars,
clipped off thirteen telephone poles,
hit two houses, bruised eight trees,
and Blue-Crossed seven people.
it was then he lost his head,
not to mention an arm or two before he stopped.
And he slid for four hundred yards
along the hill that leads into Scranton, Pennsylvania.
All those thirty thousand pounds of bananas.

You know the man who told me about it on the bus,
as it went up the hill out of Scranton, Pennsylvania,
he shrugged his shoulders, he shook his head,
and he said (and this is exactly what he said)
"Boy that sure must've been something.
Just imagine thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of mashed bananas.
Of bananas. Just bananas. Thirty thousand pounds.
of Bananas. not no driver now. Just bananas!" "

/Lyrics from The Harry Chapin Archive at Harrychapin.com\