In 1989, when I was a freshman at Baylor University in Texas, I was driving one evening to meet friends for dinner. I came over a hill and noticed a car on its last of several flips in a ditch on the side of the road. I quickly pulled over. The driver jumped out screaming–his buddy in the passenger seat had been thrown from the car. Another person stopped and noticed a body pinned under the front bumper in the ditch. I grabbed the driver’s side of the car and lifted it up four-or-so feet, long enough to realize the guy was unfortunately dead. –howardcrut, via the Straight Dope Message Board
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
About 15 years ago I had a friend named Jerry who was about six-six and one of the strongest people I ever knew. He picked up cars regularly. I don’t mean completely off the ground, but I do mean two wheels. He lifted the right half of my 1988 Toyota Corolla GT-S about 12 inches off the ground. –Cheeop, via the Straight Dope Message Board
I found out more about Sinjin Eberle, the guy who pushed the 500-pound rock off himself, having obtained the original report in Accidents in North American Mountaineering from editor Jed Williamson. On May 9, 1999, Eberle and Marc Beverly were climbing Hail Peak in New Mexico’s Sandia Mountain Wilderness when Eberle inadvertently pulled loose a large boulder, which fell on top of him as Beverly watched helplessly from above. “All I could see of Sinjin was from the middle of his shins down and the top of his head,” Beverly wrote. “The rock covered the rest of his body and was dragging him down the slope I had just crossed. . . . Somehow, with the inertia of the rock . . . and all of his strength, Sinjin was able to get the rock off himself” but sustained serious injuries and was eventually flown to a hospital by helicopter. Eberle himself minimizes his contribution: “The rock fell onto me, but I was on about a 45 degree slope,” he tells me via e-mail. “The rock slid over me to the nearby cliff, where it went over and I did not.”
