Darwin awards

[Éanna]

The latest Darwin Awards update....
The Darwin Awards, for those not familiar, are for those individuals who
contribute to the survival of
the fittest by eliminating themselves from the gene pool before they have a
chance to breed.

1. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply,
because he had no money with
which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this
concoction made him ill, and he
vomited into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire
burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.


2. A 34-year-old white male found dead in the basement of his home died
of suffocation, according to police. He was approximately 6'2" tall and
weighed 225 pounds. He was wearing a pleated skirt, white bra, black and
white saddle shoes, and a woman's wig. It appeared that he was trying to
create a schoolgirl's uniform look. He was also wearing a military gas mask
that had the filter canister removed and a rubber hose attached in its
place. The other end of the hose was connected to a one end of a hollow
wooden tube approx. 12" long and 3" in diameter. The tube's other end was
inserted into his rear end for reasons unknown, and was the cause of his
suffocation. Police found the task of explaining the circumstances of his
death to his family very awkward.


3. Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude
when another plane approached. It
appears that they decided to moon the occupants of the other plane, but
lost control of their own aircraft
and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants
around their ankles.


4. A police officer in Ohio responded to a 911 call. She had no details
before arriving, except that
someone had reported that his father was not breathing. Upon arrival, the
officer found the man
face down on the couch, naked. When she rolled him over to check for a
pulse and to start CPR, she
noticed burn marks around his genitals. After the ambulance arrived and
removed the man - who was
Declared dead on arrival at the hospital - the police made a closer
inspection of the couch, and noticed
that the man had made a hole between the cushions. Upon flipping the couch
over, they discovered what
caused his death. Apparently the man had a habit of putting his penis
between the cushions, down into the
hole and between two electrical sanders (with the sandpaper removed, for
obvious reasons). According to
the story, after his orgasm the discharge shorted out one of the sanders,
electrocuting him.


5. A 27-year-old French woman lost control of her car on a highway near
Marseilles and crashed into a tree, seriously injuring her passenger and
killing herself. As a commonplace road accident, this would not have
qualified for a Darwin nomination, were it not for the fact that the
driver's attention had been distracted by her Tamagotchi key ring, which
had started urgently beeping for food as she drove along. In an attempt to
press the correct buttons to save the Tamagotchi's life, the woman lost her
own.


6. A 22-year-old Reston, VA man was found dead after he tried to use
octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle. Fairfax
County police said Eric Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these
straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to
the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement. Warren
Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone
because his car was found nearby. "The length of the cord that he had
assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the
ground", Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was "Major
trauma".


7. A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a
friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The
friend - no doubt, a future Darwin Awards candidate - was hospitalised.


8. Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell
of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building, extinguishing
all potential sources of ignition lights, power, etc. After the building
had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched.
Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in
the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked (you can see
what's coming, can't you?). Witnesses later described the sight of one of
the
technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object, that
resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon
operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded,
sending pieces of it up to three
miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was
virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing
the blast had never been thought of as 'bright' by his peers.

[Schumi]

DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES

1. In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.

2. In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran," accidentally jogged off a 100-foot-high cliff on his daily run.

3. Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beach goers said Daniel Jones, 21 dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach, on the outer banks, used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, VA., but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him while about 200 people looked on. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.

4. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell face-first through the ceiling of bicycle shop he was burgling. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.

5. According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20, was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flak vest Berrena was wearing.

6. Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, Del, as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.

7. In February, according to police in Windsor, Ontario, Daniel Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in the game of "Chicken" they were playing with their snowmobiles.

DARWIN AWARD HONOURABLE MENTIONS

1. In Guthrie, Okla., in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede with a shot from his 22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off a rock near the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in the head, fracturing his skull.

2. In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out
cobwebs in his basement declined to use a broom in favor of a propane torch and caused a fire that burned the first and second floors of his house.

3. Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, when a quarter-stick of dynamite blew up in their car. While driving around at 2 AM, the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but apparently failed to notice the window was closed.

RUNNER UP: TACOMA, WA -

Kerry Bingham, had been drinking with several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more heated and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 am. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby. One end of the cable was secured around Bingham's leg and the other end was tied to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy river water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. "All I can say," said Bingham, "is that God was watching out for me on that night. There's just no other explanation for it." Bingham's foot was never located.

AND THE WINNER:

PADERBORN, GERMANY - Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt fed his
constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a
bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let fly and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground, where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him," said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern. "With no one there to help him, he lay under all that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came along, and during that time he suffocated." It seems to be just one of those freak accidents that happen."