While shark attacks, sinkholes, plane crashes, and other “Act of God” insurance nightmares get all the glory of media coverage, there are plenty of other events that account for at least as much—if not more—a share of injuries and deaths. They may not be glamorous or worthy of silver screen treatment, but as causes of hospitalization (and sometimes mortality), the numbers these health threats put up annually certainly qualify them for at least a second thought. So read on and learn about the top ways people wind up in the ER or the morgue, that somehow never get their moment in the spotlight.

10. Biting

Sadly, zombie enthusiasts watching the news for advanced signs of an impending apocalypse are mistaken if they think human-on-human biting attacks are prime suspects. Even without the involvement of undead hordes, American hospitals record more than 40,000 ER admissions for victims of human bites every year.

A UK study of the phenomenon estimated that one person goes to the emergency department every three days to treat bite wounds inflicted by another person; other studies estimate that a person bites another person once every twelve minutes.

While it may be easy to write off this statistic as a subset of assault victims requiring hospitalization, keep in mind that most—but far from all—bites result from a fight. The rest (of those that are actually reported and recorded) occur from other such zesty activities as athletics or intercourse. Not all such incidents get reported, but when the bounty of bacteria and general nastiness of the human mouth results in infection, it is harder to hide the fact that someone got a little too toothy during any activity.

9. Cute Animals

Some strange combination of Saturday morning cartoons and Beanie Babies has given people a false sense of security when dealing with seemingly cute animals. Man’s Best Friend alone manages to send up to 13,000 puppy-lovers to the hospital annually.

Of course, humans have a tragically long track record of mistaking “adorable” with “harmless” when it comes to the animal kingdom. Hippos, bison, and other such lovable lugs are so darned endearing, that thousands of human idiots manage to push them to the point of violence every year, with hippos killing more people than sharks, spiders, snakes, wolves, and jellyfish combined.

National Parks like Yellowstone are particularly prone to incidents involving visitors who think all they need to know about wild animals is the difference between herbivores and carnivores, and then proceed to get maimed while trying to take selfies with the resident bison. And it wouldn’t be a true American Thanksgiving without a parade of Elmer Fudd wannabes becoming prey to wild turkeys.

Fact is, people are no better at living with other species than they are at getting along with other humans.

8. Vacuums

People have come up with a variety of novel uses for vacuums, with the natural result that they’ve found a host of ways to hurt or kill themselves using the appliance. There is, of course, the regrettable trend of curious young men who, absent any prominent social messaging warning them of the perils of amorous relations with cleaning appliances, “were driven to new lengths by the novelty of the experience and came to grief”, to quote a foundational study on the subject.

But the travails of vacuums are not limited to or even dominated by hapless males; in both traditional deliveries and C-sections, vacuums have replaced forceps as the tool of choice in assisting in the delivery of infants, which has been shown to frequently cause serious damage to the newborn’s intracranial tissue. That officially makes vacuums a bigger threat than zombies where brains are concerned.

Making it out of the maternity ward still doesn’t provide safe harbor, as children are prone to friction burns and related injury resulting from close encounters with their household vacuums.

7. Toilets

Human bodies were designed to squat during defecation, yet the pretense of dumping out in a “civilized” manner led to the development of toilets requiring an upright posture. This increased dignity is accompanied by straining, increased rates of fissures, incomplete evacuation (resulting in buildup of residual waste and bacteria), elevated risks of chronic inflammation and internal bleeding, and possibly even colon cancer.

Take that, third-world residents who have no alternative to squatting!

Nations of the world who invested in a more regal platform for bowel movements got a lot more than a porcelain throne as a result: hemorrhoids afflict fully half of all Americans by the time they hit 50, and the added time and labor involved in forcing the dookie out when your posture is holding it in increases the amount of pressure and time required (hence the popularity of reading on the toilet), further compounding the health hazards all over again.

It is common knowledge that sitting at a desk all day is bad for your health. But while the hazards of prolonged sitting have attracted all manner of attention and helpful tips, people somehow remain much more receptive to doing office calisthenics and investing in standing desks than in renovating their bathrooms to incorporate squat toilets.

6. Work

It isn’t just our desks that are wrecking our bodies. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), unintentional overexertion, otherwise known as working too damn hard, is the third leading cause of injury in the United States. Among those aged 24-65, i.e., the standard working age, it is the second most common cause for non-fatal hospitalization.

Far from being a problem associated with highly physical jobs like construction or Jimmy John’s delivery, traumatic overexertion can be brought on by repetitive motions common to desk jobs, as well as the odd incident of trying to lift too much, or simply failing to drink enough water.

And before we applaud ourselves for simply being martyred workaholics, bear in mind that hobbyists like gardeners and marathon runners are also incapable of recognizing their own limits. So while hospitals overflow with patients who don’t get enough exercise, the sedentary can plan on sharing a room with fitness freaks who just don’t know when to quit. That ought to be a fun stay for everyone.

5. The Million-Dollar Fart

People routinely turn up at the hospital convinced that an alien is about to burst from their chests, only to discover that the foreign body they are hosting is actually just a cloud of hydrogen tinged with sulfur making its way down and out.

Abdominal pain (the detested tummy ache) accounts for eight million ER admissions per year—the leading cause of hospitalization in America. That is due in part to the huge variety of things that can go wrong in the human abdomen, but it also includes less-than-deadly complaints like gas. Of the eight million admissions, only about 17% turn out to be serious—a conclusion only reached after ordering anything from an ultrasound or CT scan to exploratory surgery, all elements of the standard regimen that could quickly turn one person’s *poot* into a seriously expensive punchline, not to mention how all the diagnostic imaging typically increases cumulative exposure to radiation, potentially leading to further health issues down the line.

But that isn’t the only way people have found to emit million-dollar farts.

Pyroflatulence, better known as the elusive-but-spectacular “blue dart”, has delighted and destroyed in equal measure. While it is impossible to burn inside-out from igniting one’s own gaseous emissions, doing so in proximity to other flammable substances is, predictably, explosive, and can compound the cost (financial and personal) of a single fart by orders of magnitude.

4. July

This documented phenomenon is known as the July Effect: when all the baby-docs get to swap their med school scrubs for white coats and stethoscopes, hospitals are temporarily at higher risk of the sort of silly slip-ups and hijinks that made Scrubs such a beloved sitcom—as well as making hospitals the third leading killer of Americans each year.

The coincidence of med school graduations in the month has been directly linked to a 10% spike in hospital errors, involving everything from mixing up medications to not knowing how to work a defibrillator. Experts agree that if at all possible, it is best to avoid hospitals throughout the summer and try to aim for a time when the ER is more likely to be staffed with more experienced doctors.

Of course, if you are planning on celebrating Independence Day at all, you stand a pretty high chance of failing to follow that advice…

3. Holidays

Major holidays are a bit of a triple threat for hospitals. Firstly, surveys have shown that nearly 1 in 5 holiday travelers hit the road to avoid family, rather than to visit them; meanwhile, impatient travelers will exaggerate or even fabricate symptoms in order to get select (elderly) family members hospitalized for non-critical conditions, if only to ensure travel and other holiday plans have one less obstacle to going smoothly.

On the other hand, lonely seniors without company during the most wonderful time of the year will check themselves into hospitals just to have company.

And finally, of course, there are the perils of drinking. Responsible revelers who drink at home, thoughtfully staying off the roads, often end up trading a traffic accident for a domestic one. So while DUIs are to Christmas what candy is to Halloween, celebratory day-drinking still manages to net more than 15,000 holiday decorators, along with over a thousand burn victims, and 1,500 cases of back strain (or lifting injuries)—all without so much as a car leaving the driveway. Even on July 4th, America’s pyrotechnics are no match for its thirst for alcohol as a root cause of ER admissions and injury.

2. Removing Hair… Down There

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to stop grooming your naughty bits.

From lasers to razors, eliminating all the hair of the swimsuit places has gone from being a fad to fully in the mainstream. The shave-and-wax trend over the period from 2002 – 2010 produced just over 11,000 ER visits, but by the end of 2010 the annual rate had climbed over 2,500. Disturbingly, the overwhelming cause of serious injury involves the use of razors, but other hair removal techniques including waxing have also been implicated.

And while injuries during the baldening process are alarming, experts point out that removing pubic hair also eliminates an important biological defense to disease and infection, leaving bare nether-regions prone to staph infections, STIs, and even run of the mill blunt force trauma. Though this trend is exponentially on the rise, it is only one of the ways we truly suffer for beauty…

1. Fashion

It is time to admit that our clothes are killing us. From high-heeled shoes to too-tight… well, everything, modern wardrobes are little more than glorified murder chambers we carry with and on us. The desperate squeezing-in ritual that accompanies so many daily clothing routines the world over has been responsible for blood clots, chronic pain, nerve damage, and disfigurement.

And that laundry list of physical health problems doesn’t even consider the countless psychological side-effects of having a culture that celebrates sartorial masochism, making it effectively impossible for anyone to meet the standards of beauty and shape without compromising health and comfort. So even those who forego “fitting in” through skin-tight apparel often adorn an underlying depression with looser, more forgiving outfits.

The compounding effect of the one size fits none standardization as the most horrible fixture of contemporary fashion is hard to track, but experts attribute much of the staggering rate of suicides and cases of self-harm requiring hospitalization, in part, to a void of self-esteem. And while many high-performing ancient cultures (and pragmatic modern ones) manage to embrace functional, practical, gender-neutral garb, the pinnacles of high fashion insist on preserving monstrous mutations of gendered apparel. Almost daily accusations of misogyny, hyper-sexualization, perpetuation of rape culture, and a generally regressive view of identity all point back to the fashion and beauty industry.

Directly and indirectly, health and beauty have become opposing forces.

It’s been said that America is a litigious society, and Judge Judy might agree. But there has long been a pervasive myth that courts are bogged down with frivolous lawsuits even though, statistically speaking, relatively few lawsuits actually meet the criteria of frivolous. That may be because, in between the conception and execution, some people realize their lawsuits are terrible ideas. Like these 10 cases of high-profile lawsuit threats that range from almost reasonable to utterly preposterous. 

10. George Lucas’ Lawyers Threatened to Sue Mad Magazine

When it comes to copyright infringement, the lawyers of the world have crept out of the woodwork in the internet age to destroy any and all potential violators. But pre-internet things were a little different. For starters, it was harder to even violate a copyright. What were you going to do, write your own Star Wars parody? Well, if you were working at Mad Magazine in 1980, then yeah. 

Lawyers for George Lucas contacted Mad, artist Mort Drucker, and writer Dick DeBartolo, for their parody of The Empire Strikes Back called The Empire Strikes Out. They sent a cease and desist letter demanding the magazine recall all the published issues. Today, such a letter would be potentially terrifying with the power of Disney behind it, but even back then, it would have been at least a little intimidating if not for another letter that DeBartolo had received earlier.

The earlier letter was from George Lucas himself, who had seen the parody in the magazine and liked it so much he wrote the team to praise them and request some of the original art. They wrote back to his lawyers, pointing out that their employer really enjoyed it and attached a copy of Lucas’ letter.  Unsurprisingly, no further legal action was pursued.

9. Disney Threatened to Sue Day Cares

Speaking of Disney, the House of Mouse has a bad habit of showing up on the wrong side of legal issues and one of their most egregious Goliath vs. David cases was when they decided to pursue legal action against some Florida day cares. You know, the places where people take care of children all day? 

Back in 1989, the company learned that three separate child care facilities had brazenly painted Disney copyrighted characters on their walls. Apparently working from a position that no child shall receive joy from their intellectual property without paying each and every day, though the official position was that they feared people would think Disney had somehow sponsored the schools. The day cares were given time to remove the images before any legal action was taken, which they did. This also gave Universal the opportunity to swoop in and replace the lost artwork with images of their characters like Woody Woodpecker, the Flintstones, and other Hanna-Barbera characters owned by the company, making them look like heroes. And yes, Disney was legally right in their claims, but the PR hit couldn’t have done them any favors. 

8. Producers of Witches of Eastwick Threatened to Sue Susan Sarandon if She Didn’t Learn the Cello

Witches of Eastwick came out in 1987 and has become something of a cult classic. In the film, Susan Sarandon plays one of three women that Jack Nicholson’s character, who is just a little bit demonic in nature, takes a shine to. Years after its release, in 2020, Sarandon was speaking before an Eastwick-themed event when she let loose a little dirt from the film’s production.

Aside from claiming her role had been stolen by Cher just before production began, she also learned she’d need to learn how to play the cello for her new role. She had no idea how to play the cello. And you’d think maybe she could fake it for the film but instead the producers threatened to sue her if she didn’t learn. Since her character does have a very memorable cello scene in the film, it’s safe to say she got the job done. 

7. Microsoft Threatened a Teenager Named Mike Rowe 

For the quarter that ended on March 31, 2022, Microsoft earned $49.36 billion. The company is doing pretty well, financially speaking. And maybe they make all that money because they’re almost bafflingly cheap when it comes to conducting business, as witnessed by their threatened lawsuit against a Canadian teenager.

Seventeen-year-old Mike Rowe registered a website called MikeRoweSoft.com, clearly a fun little joke based on his own name. Microsoft does not like jokes. In early 2004, they threatened the teen with legal action. They requested he transfer the domain to them and, in exchange, they would pay him $10. That’s one zero, or the price he paid to register the domain name at the time. 

Rowe countered with an offer for $10,000, saying he was just starting his own graphic design business and he’d spent a lot of time working on the website he was using. Microsoft’s lawyers replied with a 25-page letter accusing him of cyber squatting and requesting an admission of guilt, among other things. 

The story got huge media attention and made Microsoft look ridiculous. Microsoft doubled down, accusing him of drawing things out for a bigger payday. They ended up backtracking later, saying they “took it too seriously.” As for Mike, he ended up giving up the domain, but not for $10 or $10,000. He got an Xbox. 

6. Uri Geller Threatened to Sue Nintendo Over Pokemon 

Uri Geller was famously exposed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for being unable to live up to his claimed psychic abilities. Since then he’s been notoriously prickly about attacks on his person, so much so that he threatened to sue Nintendo over a Pokemon character in the year 2000.

The character, Kadabra, can bend spoons. Uri Geller famously claimed to bend spoons with his mind, though he couldn’t in front of Johnny Carson with spoons he hadn’t had access to ahead of time. Called Yungerer in Japan, Geller believed this was a clear reference to him. 

Nintendo axed the character, and the lawsuit was later dismissed. It wouldn’t be until 2020 when Geller finally decided maybe he’d overreacted and, based on letters he received from fans, allowed Nintendo to go ahead and use the character again. 

5. ASCAP Threatened to Sue the Girl Scouts 

When Girl Scouts aren’t busy selling you addictive cookies, they’re doing things like making crafts, hiking, camping, and good deeds for the community. But let’s backtrack a second to the camping part. What goes along with camping? Marshmallows, tents and camp songs. And that right there is a lawsuit, or it almost was.

Back in the mid-’90s, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, or ASCAP, had a beef with camp songs in the most embarrassing way. The organization is supposed to be a non-profit that works to protect the rights of singers and musicians by licensing the rights to members’ music for public performances. This means a singer gets paid when the radio plays one of their songs. They handle billions of dollars this way.

Despite what sounds like good work that they do, the organization has been accused of obnoxiously chasing every copyright dollar it can find. In 1995, they told the American Camping Association they planned to charge for music performed at their camps because they are public performances. This arguably included campfire songs. The association told its members, including about potential fines if a $250 fee wasn’t paid. Their members included Girl Scouts. 

The PR nightmare was swift and brutal. ASCAP was quick to say they never threatened the Girl Scouts, which was sort of true but sort of not. In the end, they relented and camp songs were free once more. 

4. Fyre Festival Threatened to Sue Critics

In 2017, the Fyre Festival was quite the debacle. Advertised as a massive music festival, it turned out to mostly be a fraud. Attendees paid thousands of dollars a piece for luxury accommodations and gourmet food on a tropical island. What they got were repurposed tents, no festival, poor quality food and many were stranded with no power and little food and water.

The organizer ended up getting six years in prison plus an order to pay back millions, though he’s already out of prison now. Remarkably, while the legal cases were ongoing, McFarland and his co-organizer, rapper Ja Rule, were threatening critics with their own lawsuits. They claimed the people using social media to trash the festival were inciting civil unrest. Despite the threat, it didn’t seem to work. 

3. Harrods Department Store Threatened a New Zealand Restaurant

Most of us haven’t heard of the New Zealand town called Otorohanga, but you know who has? Lawyers for Harrods Department Store in the UK. All thanks to their would-be lawsuit from 1986.

The town, which has a current population of just over 3,000, was also home to Harrods Restaurant, owned by resident Henry Harrod, who named the place after himself. Despite being a tiny business in a tiny town, the owner of one of the world’s most famous department stores threatened to sue if the name wasn’t changed. 

The problem with a lawsuit like this is that you can’t really try to strong arm a small New Zealand town. Rather than acquiesce, the entire town briefly changed its name to Harrodsville and almost every single business in town changed its name to Harrods as well. This gathered enough international media attention that it shamed the owners of the department store into dropping the suit. 

You can actually visit the town’s Facebook page and read conversations between locals reminiscing over the time it happened

2. FOX News Threatened to Sue The Simpsons (on Fox) 

The Simpsons has been on TV since 1989. That’s over thirty years, and in that entire time it has aired on FOX, which is very important to remember when you get deeper into this story. Back in 2003, Simpsons creator Matt Groening spoke about how the show was threatened with a lawsuit for including a joke news ticker in an episode. The would-be victim? FOX News Channel.

On the cartoon, the news ticker on FOX News was scrolling a number of silly headlines meant to mock the notoriously anti-Democrat channel, including lines like “Do Democrats cause cancer?” It’s not 100% clear what violation FOX News felt was happening or what crime they had fallen victim to, but, as Groening pointed out, the cartoon had the upper hand. In order for FOX News to sue FOX Entertainment, it would basically require the head of the company, Rupert Murdoch, to pay to sue himself. So, yeah. There was no lawsuit.

1. Parents of Kids Who Trashed A House Threatened to Sue the Victim

No one likes people who demonstrate a sense of entitlement, but this story goes to a new level. NFL player Brian Holloway used to have a vacation home. Over the Labor Day weekend of 2013, about 300 local teens broke into the empty house to throw a party. They caused about $20,000 worth of damages. 

Teens being teens, they organized and celebrated a lot of the party on social media. That included posting pictures of themselves in the home. So Holloway did what anyone trying to figure out who trashed his house would do: he tracked down the kids based on the pictures they took to identify them for the police. He posted them on his own website, asking for help to identify the culprits.

He ended up collecting 170 tweets and photos. This rubbed the parents of some of the children involved the wrong way and they actually threatened to sue Holloway for posting their kids’ photos; the ones the kids posted depicting themselves committing crimes to social media for the whole world to see. 

Several teens ended up being charged and there is no evidence the lawsuits from the offended parents ever went anywhere.