Update: "Hippo Eats Dwarf" - The Book!
Via Museum of Hoaxes, news that a dwarf named Od was swallowed by a hippopotamus in a freak circus accident in northern Thailand. Ouch! Supposedly, an off-kilter bounce hurled the trampoline performer smack dab into the animal's open jaws. "Vets on the scene said Hilda the Hippo had a gag reflex that automatically caused her to swallow," explains a story taken from the Pattaya Mail.
We know it couldn't have happened very recently — if it happened at all — given that the tale is listed as a "1999 urban legend" by the Darwin Awards folks. In point of fact, the story is at least five years older than that, as evidenced by a December 15, 1994 Usenet posting purportedly quoting the Las Vegas Sun:
An Austrian circus dwarf died recently when he bounced sideways from a trampoline and was swallowed by a hippopotamus. Seven thousand people watched as little Franz Dasch popped into the mouth of Hilda the Hippo and the animal's gag reflex forced it to swallow. The crowd applauded wildly before other circus people realized what has happened.
Note that in the 1994 version the dwarf is Austrian and his name is Franz Dasch. Nor is there any mention of the incident occurring in Thailand.
If this isn't an urban legend I will swallow a dwarf myself.
Comments
So all we neeed is 2 suicidal dwarves, a hippo, a trampoline and maybe some ketchup for you….
I beg to differ. Please see the following link I found.
http://www.pattayamail.com/
http://www.pattayamail.com/309/columns.htm#hd7
Copyright 1998 Pattaya Mail Publishing Co.Ltd.
370/7-8 Pattaya Second Road, Pattaya City, Chonburi 20260, Thailand
Tel.66-38 411 240-1, 413 240-1, Fax:66-38 427 596; e-mail: ptymail@loxinfo.co.th
Updated by Chinnaporn Sungwanlek.
Umm…what do those links have to do with anything?
Funny, Lewis Black reads this and commented on it in his act Thursday evening August 24th, at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, NJ.
Lewis? Urban Legend??? RESEARCH!
This terrible news has made my day. how do you get eaten by a hippo. LOL. I don’t care who you are this is FUNNY. sorry
I don’t care if this is a silly hoax, it still is very funny, conjuring crazy images in my feeble mind.
He was delicious!!!
omg i love you haha this comment made my day xxx
its a funny story
I am glad this isn’t true! That would be the saddest thing I ever heard!
The dwarf was my uncle, Eugene Horowitz, the kindest man I ever knew. For you to sully the memory of his passing with your reprehensible doubt is unspeakable. You owe him an apology.
Aha jah biztos!!!!!!!!!!!Ha ti mondjátok!!!!!!!!!
There’s no such thing as a gag reflex that makes you swallow you ass clowns. If any of you wankers had girlfriends, you would know that.
Mark_O, your girlfriend is a hippo?
hey you guys – your commenets are as funny as the story!
Hello my name is Eugene Horowitz and I have to say it is very roomy inside Hilda the Hippo. I will send you a postcard, Ivan, you always were my favourite nephew.
You guys are about as funny as cancer. i take it yis are americans yis dumb pack of schmoes
hey eugene, how did you get out and buy that pc? i think i have to set up a password for my wifi now..
Om Yom Yom, slurrrp, wretch… gulp, swallow
That link you posted, Cindy, was from a column titled grapevine. If ur so smart you would’ve known that “grapevine” is a term for a rumor. That article is in that column because it was a rumor meaning it has never been proven. Don’t be so gullable.
Dear Ivan, ive had no food or water for three days now. I got a new roomate witch was a dog named Casandra. I will not die alone now and if the hippo …… that hippo just craped me out in the las vagas zoo and i will see you soon. You have allways been my favorete nephew. I just killed that hippo. Ivan, meet me and Cass at 4:00 PM tomorow at the las vegas zoo in front of the okapis.
Crap — I was on my way to meet my nephew Ivan for lunch, but I figured I’d just show up at the zoo for a few minutes first to show the flag and not stand up Cassandra the hound, when along comes a six-foot-2 British goddess who promises me she can swallow like a hippo I used to know, and she invites me up to her hotel room and one thing leads to another and she offers me something from the mini-bar and next thing I know I’m riding in a hippo cage on a freighter bound for a circus in Thailand, but we pass the Somali coast and now this pirate leader’s got me sitting on his shoulder like a parrot. But it’s a living.
hahahahahahahahahahhahahaha That’s just awesome!
The show Urban Legends on SyFy did a segment on this legend with the clown Franz, and deemed it to be NOT true.
I love looking at the comments on this hoax. So far I’ve seen nothing related to how it would be impossible for an animal the size of a hippo to swallow someone unless they were like a foot tall. Not even dwarves are that short
I bet that dwarf wasn’t Happy ….Maybe it was Sneezey or Dopey or Bashful …!!
Hip ho Hip po ..its off to work we go …
Sadly missed by SnowWhite.
I remember hearing a similar to the Austrian version on the mid day news. In New Zealand we have a very serious National radio station so the news reader had a very posh Bristish accent. The differences were they said it was a dress rehearsal but a large crowd were watching, they didn’t humanise the hippo by calling it Lucy.. bit of a give away, they did mention that hippos are vegetarian and that his wife, also a dwarf, had warned him about the risk of slipping when he only wore socks during the dress rehearsals. I totally believed it . The BBC midday news doesn’t lie. The same week I read in the paper about the priest who came in to bless a Intensive Care Unit as patients kept dying. Then he noticed the cleaner pull out the power chord for the life support and plug in her vacumn