Ms. Falco was a gym teacher and coach at my junior high. She jumped down from a platform at a volleyball game she was officiating and her ring got caught in the net. It pulled her finger clean off. They stitched her up pretty well, but if you stared too long at the hand it started looking like it belonged to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

John Finkbeiner was a theater techie at my college who now freelances in New York. About a month ago, while loading boxes into the elevator of an upscale Park Avenue hotel, a side panel collapsed and sliced off about a half-inch of his middle finger, bone and all. They couldn't find it in time to put it back, so he had some kind of surgery.

missing the top halves of his right middle and ring fingers. The rumor was that they were chopped off by a lawnmower, but no one had the courage to ask him how his hand got under it.

The Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest day of the Civil War, leaving 23,000 dead and wounded. At least three soldiers were beheaded by cannonballs. Men who crawled under haystacks for shelter burned to death when the stacks caught fire from artillery shells. Makeshift hospitals stacked amputated limbs in great piles. The battlefield gave off such a stench that those nearby kept their windows shut for two months.Birds did not return to the area for over a year.

My middle-school art teacher Mr. John cleanly sliced off his thumb with a paper cutter circa 1990. He was a very popular teacher, and dealt with the whole incident with his characteristic humor. Two years later, he died of a heart attack.

Jason and Justin Loveland were fraternal twins who transferred to my high school junior year. Word got around quickly that Jason was