Pinhead Party Trick

An academic paper entitled “A Case of Fatal Suffocation During An Attempt To Swallow A Pool Ball” tells the story of a 23-year-old Edinburgh man whose party trick in the pub was to appear to swallow balls from the pool table to impress his mates.
The trick to this is to hold the pool ball in the back of your throat, nestled neatly against your pharynx. A standard pool ball – 503 mm in diameter – was just the right size for our man to do that.
On this particular night, his hand alighted on the cue-ball – which being slightly smaller at 475mm across was just the right size to slot neatly into the back of his throat and lodge there snugly, cutting off his air supply.
He turned blue, collapsed and died outside the pub. The man was described by police as “of low intelligence”.