How To: Smash A Penny With A Train

An in-depth how-to video of flattening pennies or other coins on a train track, and debunking the derailment urban legend at the same time.

requirements:

• 1+ Penny
• 1 Train
• 0 Life

Just don’t be one of these assholes:

* In 1992, Rolyn J. St. Louis (45), a homeless man in Columbus, Ohio, died while pennying the tracks. He’d placed a penny on one set of tracks, then stood on another, unaware that the oncoming train he’d heard was coming down the set he was standing on.

* In 1997, Shelly Lynn Wice (14) and Jessica Ann Hart (14), two teens from Oil City, Pennsylvania, died in similar fashion. They were standing on one set of tracks watching for a train to flatten the pennies they’d left on another set of rails, when a train took both of them. One girl died at the scene; the other died a few hours later in hospital.

* In 1986, Laura Ann Foote (18) of Chico, California, didn’t get out of the way of an oncoming train quickly enough — the train flattened her and her penny.

* In 1996, Bruce Darling (25), a father of two, was hit full on by an InterCity train traveling at 110 mph at the Cramlington station in Northumberland, England. He’d been trying to flatten pennies after getting the idea while drinking with friends.

* In 2007, retired police officer David Buffa (55) of Ripley, New York, decided to jump in front of a train on to show how a penny would be flattened by it. While trying to climb back onto the platform, he was struck by the train.
[via snopes]

$

Permalink Posted in: video February 27, 2008