Holy Crap… I heard of heavy crosses to bear, but…

“(AGI) – Oristano, Italy, Aug 10 – A woman died crushed by an iron crucifix at the entrance of the church of San Lorenzo while she was attending mass in the city’s patron saint’s celebrations. Paoletta Orru’, 38, had returned to Mogorella, near Oristano, with her husband and two children especially for the celebration of San Lorenzo. Tomorrow was her birthday. This morning the woman was outside of the busy church, together with other devotees who did not manage to enter. Suddenly, around 12, the heavy crucifix about one metre wide fell from the entrance of the church where it was placed, crushing the woman. The emergency services immediately dispatched a helicopter, but when they arrived from the nearby Ales they warned that it was not necessary any more: the victim, hit on the head, died due to a strong concussion. Fire-fighters and police arrived and will inspect the scene. The accident is currently unexplained….”

agi.it

Killer Crucifixes and the man who attacked Oregon too?

GULP!

“Attack on Oregon: The pilot who bombed Brookings returns to call for peace
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
LORI TOBIAS

On Sept. 9, 1942, Brookings became the first, and ultimately only, town on the U.S. mainland to sustain a bombing attack by the Japanese during World War II.

The attack was supposed to spark an inferno in the coastal woods that would consume U.S. attention and undermine the nation’s defense.

But the bombing didn’t play out as expected. And in one of many twists in the strange saga, the Japanese pilot who carried out the raid returned to the forest site decades later aboard a Beechcraft Bonanza flown by a former World War II U.S. Air Force pilot.

During the war, Nobuo Fujita and comrades had sneaked into U.S. waters on a Japanese I-25 submarine loaded with six bombs. There, at the bottom of the sea off Port Orford they waited for the weather to clear.

When it did, Fujita’s small pontoon plane was catapulted into the air at daybreak. He set his sights on Brookings, then released two 170-pound bombs over the forested hillside of Mount Emily, 16 miles east of Brookings on the Oregon-California border.

But it had been a wet summer. The bombs touched off only small fires that were easily extinguished, recalled Reg Pullen, curator at the Bandon Historical Society.

Yet the attack triggered fear of a full-fledged enemy attack on the Oregon coast, Pullen said. “My family lived in Bandon, and my grandmother said she expected to open the door any time and see a Japanese solider there,” he said. “She was that afraid.”…”

“…Fujita accepted the invitation and arrived bearing the gift of a Samurai sword that had been in his family for 400 years. It was the first of four visits. While the controversy over him never completely died, people who once bitterly opposed Fujita began to warm up to him.

“He had turned into a pacifist,” Jacques said, noting that he gave several thousand dollars toward a new library and children’s book promoting cultural awareness. “He really hoped there would be no more wars.”

oregonlive.com

So… blab already.