One of the stranger things about studying legal philosophy is coming across all the lunatic implausible scenarios invented by the philosophers to illustrate their point (an actual example from a class I took many years ago: a madman has commandeered a tank and is blowing up a neighbourhood, killing dozens - your task is to attempt to stop him; complication: the madman has also kidnapped a bunch of babies and strapped them to the outside of the tank, with the result that any attempt to stop him will also kill the babies; discuss the moral implications of either trying or not trying to stop the madman in the tank).
It is useful, then, to be reminded every once in a while that life as it is actually lived is so much stranger than any fiction we could come up with:
During his glory days as a pro wrestler, Verne Gagne shared the spotlight with other burly men in trunks, guys with names like Killer Kowalski, Mad Dog Vachon, The Crusher and Baron Von Raschke.
But all of that seemed well in the past until just weeks ago, when authorities say Gagne, 82 and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, apparently body-slammed a 97-year-old fellow patient at the suburban nursing home where they both lived, causing the man's death.