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Man dies trying to set world record
[Dawn]  A Sri Lankan man has died while trying to set a record for the longest time spent buried alive, police said Monday.Yeah. People are lining up to try and beat that one. Police said Janaka Basnayake, 24, buried himself over the weekend with the help of family and friends in a trench sealed with wood and soil in the town of Kantale, about 137 miles (220 kilometers) north of Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo. A local newspaper reported that the trench was 10 feet (3 meters) deep. What's a cubic meter of earth weigh? Times about two, if it was six feet long... Basnayake was buried at around 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Police said that when he was brought to the surface at 4 p.m., he was unconscious and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He's dead, Jim! on arrival. Kinda makes you wonder what was going through his mind about the time he realized he wasn't gonna break the record... Dr. D.G. Costa of the Kantale hospital said a post-mortem could not determine the cause of death and further medical investigations are being conducted. "How about suffocation, Dr. Quincy?" "Oh, c'mon, Sam! Don't be ridiculous... Oh. Well. Maybe." Basnayake's mother, L.D. Leelawathi, said her son had enjoyed performing unusual acts since his childhood --a liking that grew after watching movies, the Lankadeepa newspaper reported. "Yes. He once drove a nail through his arm, right between the ulna and the radius." "Really? What happened?" "It hurt." It quoted her as saying that her son had been buried alive on two previous occasions --for two and a half hours and six hours respectively. "He was a veteran suffocator." "Good Gawd! The depravity! It was unclear whether there is an official world record for the longest time buried alive. I think that record kinda just naturally runs into the record for the longest time buried dead. He's gonna have a hard time catching up to Lucy for that one. Posted by: Fred 2012-03-06 |
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