Things I have learned in today’s research binge:
All those old school Looney Tunes gags about randomly falling safes and pianos and such are actually based on something.
Back when freight elevators weren’t a thing and hallways and staircases didn’t have legally mandated minimum widths (and therefore tended to be as narrow as the builders could get away with making them), the only way to deliver bulky furniture to the upper levels of tall buildings was to knock a hole in an exterior wall and raise the item up to it with a crane.
Predictably, this led to the stupid things getting dropped from a height with fair frequency.
In spite of this, there are no records of any case in which a random bystander has been crushed by a falling safe or piano.
There is, however, at least one recorded case of a random bystander dying after walking straight into a hole left in the sidewalk by a safe that had fallen earlier that day.
I’m not sure why, but awful as it is, that last point may be one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.