A man was gored to death yesterday at Pamplona’s running of the bulls — the first such fatality in nearly 15 years. Nine others were injured in a particularly messy and dangerous chapter of the tradition.
The San Fermin festival Web site said the unidentified man was gored in the neck and lung during a run in which a rogue bull separated from the pack. That is among the worst things that can happen at San Fermin.
Three other people were also gored, and six suffered bumps, bruises and other lesser injuries, said Fernando Boneta, director of Virgen del Camino Hospital.
PHOTO: AP
The last fatal goring at the running of the bulls claimed the life of 22-year-old American Matthew Tassio in 1995.
Yesterday’s death raises to 15 the toll since record-keeping began in 1924.
This run, the fourth of eight held at San Fermin, was by far the most perilous of this year’s festival.
The bulls covering the 850m course with six accompanying steers tend to mind their own business and keep running so long as they stay in a pack. A bull that gets separated is more likely to get spooked and aggressive and that is exactly what happened yesterday.
A brown, 515kg bull named Cappuccino fell early in the run and ended up on its own.
When it reached a stretch right outside the bullring that marks the end of the course, it started charging right and left, and even ran back the wrong way several times.
Runners scurried for safety to wooden barriers along the route as the bull attacked.
This went on for a minute and a half, which is a long time at San Fermin.
At one point the bull picked one man up with its horns and flipped him into the air as if he were a toy, then kept going after him as he lay curled up on the ground, covering his face. The man got up and ran away, apparently not seriously hurt.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS