Jimmy "the Beard" Ferrozzo, the 40-year-old assistant manager of the Condor Club, a topless bar in the North Beach section of San Francisco, was found crushed to death between a trick piano and the club's 12-foot-high ceiling. Beneath him, naked and hysterical, was exotic dancer Teresa Hill, 23. The gutted Steinway baby grand that sandwiched them was routinely used by the club's star dancer to descend from her dressing room onto the stage. Apparently, after closing time the night before, the couple had decided to make love on the piano, and in the process they somehow tripped the power switch that raised it to the ceiling. Ferrozzo died of asphyxiation due to crushing; his companion was only saved by the cushioning effect of his body.

Sachi Hidaka and his wife, Tomio, of Chiba, Japan, were overwhelmed in the act. The shy couple, both 34 years old, had waited 14 years before making love for the first time, in 1992. It proved too much, and both died of heart attacks, although neither had a history of heart trouble.

Marian Paler, 36, in Resita, Romania, caught her trapeze-artist husband in a compromising position with another woman. A few hours later, Marian guffawed loudly during a critical moment in their performance when her husband required total concentration. He fell to his death from the flying trapeze.

Government officials in Istanbul, Turkey, were forced to issue a health warning in 1990 about people making love on roofs during sultry summer evenings. At least a dozen people were said to die each year when, after a night on the roof tiles, they fell asleep and rolled off the edge.

Psychiatrist Oscar Dominguez, 45, shot a woman patient in his Sao Paolo, Brazil, office, as she told him about her sex life. At his trial he explained: "I couldn't take those nutcases anymore..."

Walter Jeurgens, a German 19-year-old, was served eggs at every meal by his new wife, Elfreide, 18. He got so fed up with it that he left home, but when he decided to return, in September 1990, Elfreide fried up some eggs for him. He shot her dead, and remarked after his arrest: "I used to like eggs."

In January 1978, two friends in Thonburi, Thailand argued over that old chestnut: which came first, the chicken or the egg? A fight broke out between them, and the man arguing for the chicken accidentally killed the man arguing for the egg.

And still they fall. Gerard Hommel, a veteran of six Mount Everest climbing expeditions, was changing a lightbulb in the kitchen of his home in Nantes, France, in October 1993. He fell off the ladder, cracked his head on the sink, and died.

For reclusive Joseph Heer, 89, the fatal obsession was money. Compulsively frugal, he cut off power to his Washington, Pennsylvania, home in January 1986. He was found in bed, fully clothed, having died of hypothermia. In an open safe and two steel boxes nearby, police found $200,000 in cash.

In March 1992, Russian chess Grand Master Gudkov outwitted and checkmated a computer three times in a row at a public tournament in Moscow. The next time he touched the machine, it electrocuted him and, though rushed to a hospital, he died.

A young employee of the Bennett Food Factory in the Bronx, New York, died instantly when he fell headfirst into an industrial dough mixer making macaroni and was impaled by the mixing blades.

Eighty-year-old Adelaide Magnasco went on vacation to Aosta, Italy, in August 1993. Retiring for the night, she pulled down the Murphy bed from the wall of her chalet, got in it, and died when it suddenly snapped closed. She was found by her son, Paulo, crushed between the mattress and the wall.

In July 1989, Michael Doucette, 16, from Concord, New Hampshire, was honored as America's safest teenage driver in a contest called "Operation Driver Excellence," held in Detroit. He won a $5,000 scholarship, a trophy and the use of a 1989 Dodge for a year. He was driving the Dodge February 23, 1990 when he crashed head-on with a car driven by Sharon Ann Link, 19. Both were killed. Police said that Doucette appeared to have fallen asleep at the wheel.

Ioannis Philippou, 50, accidentally set himself on fire while huddled over a heater in his home in Kato Deftera, Cyprus, in January 1990. To douse the flames, he ran out of the house and jumped into a reservoir, where he drowned.

Robert Puelo, 32, entered a 7-Eleven store in St. Louis on October 10, 1994, and started shouting and cursing. When an employee threatened to call the police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, stuffed it down his throat and left the store without paying. The police discovered him unconscious and turning purple outside the store. He choked to death before he could be saved.

Abner Kriller, of Albany, Australia, was blowing a chewing gum bubble while driving when it burst and stuck to his glasses. Blinded, he drove off the road and plunged down a hill to his death.

A September 1985 dispute broke out between two brothers-in-law in Vallefiorita, Italy, concerning who was entitled to the last free space in the family tomb. Things soon became so heated that one man stabbed the other to death, thus losing the vacancy to his victim.