People are killed every year by seemingly harmless and innocuous things. Alongside this, those things that are supposed to be massively dangerous, such as sharks, turn out to be less of a problem than we imagine. Sharks cause five deaths a year. Soda Machines cause 13 deaths a year. This means getting a can of coke is more dangerous than nature's most feared killing machine. According to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), just 1,909 confirmed shark attacks have occurred around the world between 1580 and 2003! Of these, 737 happened in the United States, and 38 people died as a result. That said, what are your real odds of being attacked by a shark? One in 11.5 million, says the ISAF. Being killed by a shark? Zero in 264.1 million. Some innocuous things that can kill you are really just a matter of luck. Probably no one reading this is going to die in the same way as Henry Hall, who in 1755 was looking up at a burning lighthouse and got killed by molten lead falling into his throat. Neither will we all suffer the same fate as Aeschylus, the ancient Greek author who was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. These things are better described as unusual rather than examples of the seemingly harmless killing us. Mind you, I've always maintained that writing can be such a hazardous game. 'Innocuous' or 'harmless' comes in various guises. It could be accidents, the things you have on your person every day of your life, seemingly inert vegetables, or it might be statistics themselves. All of them kill in surprising ways.
Hello, I'm Paul Hammans, terminal 'Who' obsessive, F1 fan, reader of arcane literature about ideas and generalist scribbler. To paraphrase someone much better at aphorisms than I: I strive to write something worth reading and when I cannot do that I try to do something worth writing. I have my own Dr Who oriented blog at http://www.exanima.co.uk
