For an example, here's a link to an article over at Snopes Urban Legend Pages.

It's a gruesome story, so I'll summarize. A guy jumped into a boiling hot spring to save his friend's dog. He received third degree burns over 100% of his body since he dive into the hot spring and swam out to try and get the dog. He died shortly afterwards (as did the dog). His friend waded out into foot-deep water to pull this guy the rest of the way out of the hot spring. He received second degree burns on his feet.

A.) The coffee was quite hot.

B.) It quickly soaked into the polyester sort of pantsuit thing she was wearing, and was held close to the flesh.

C.) She was 78 (or 79), and couldn't get away from it.

I think the last might be most important. A younger person would leap away from boiling water applied to the gentitals. A normal one, anyway.

Evil McDonalds franchises have been in the news over here too:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4226793,00.html

RSPCA hits out over cat killer's pet ban
Staff and agencies
Guardian

Tuesday July 24, 2001

A mother-of-two who cooked the family cat in a microwave after one of the animal's fleas bit her on the leg yesterday escaped jail.

Nadine Trewin, 31, had admitted cruelly ill-treating female tabby cat Sasha at her home in Crawley, West Sussex, last March.

She was sentenced to a two year community rehabilitation order, and banned from keeping animals for five years, by Crawley magistrates.

The RSPCA, which brought the case hit out at the ban as "far too lenient". A spokeswoman said: "We feel she should have received a lifetime ban because the act was deliberate."

Trewin had changed her plea to admit cruelty during a trial at Horsham magistrates court last month.

The court heard that Trewin, who had drunk seven cans of lager and almost two bottles of wine, became angry with the cat when she was bitten by the flea.

Trewin had claimed the cat jumped into the microwave before the door accidentally slammed shut, activating the oven.

She said the cat had cooked for less than a minute, but then the animal failed to move so she tipped it out of the oven from the kitchen window. She later buried it in the back garden.

Two days later Trewin told her friend, Stacey Passmore, that she had killed the six-year-old cat. Miss Passmore was so upset she decided to contact the RSPCA.

Sentencing Trewin deputy district judge Kevin Gladwell said: "This was a quite a horrific incident. This cat clearly suffered at your hands."