Train derailments are nothing new, and neither are deaths resulting from them, but this one is just weird.
Two 19-year-old girls, Rose Mayr and Elizabeth Nass, snuck onto the train's bridge in Ellicott City, Maryland after midnight and were tweeting photos from there.
First Rose tweeted "Levitating", showing a picture with their feet dangling off the bridge, making it appear they were rising in the air on their own:
Then came another picture, looking down Main Street. Apparently the last tweet was boasting of drinking on top of the train bridge.
The girls had their backs to the train, and it derailed just as it was passing them. One of the cars spilled tons of coal, and both girls got buried and killed.
Aside from being a tragic story, it's also highly improbable. When a train derails after midnight, it's almost certain that nobody is going to be in the path of derailment, provided that the train doesn't travel further and hit houses, cars, etc that are off the tracks. These were probably the only two people near the tracks anywhere in the train's entire path at that time, and the train happened to derail right where they were sitting.
It would be like sitting on the side of a 1000-mile road with only one car traveling on it, and that one car skidding out of control and hitting you.
Also interesting is what occurred afterwards on Twitter.
Someone went on Rose's account and protected her tweets: http://twitter.com/r0se_petals
Someone simply deleted Elizabeth's twitter, perhaps because the name "@LizNassty", which is a play on her name Elizabeth Nass, might give people the wrong impression of her: http://twitter.com/LizNassty
Here are the two girls: