| The Darwin Awards |
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The Darwin Awards - 1
For
those of you not familiar with the Darwin Awards, they are granted
(posthumously) to persons who have done the human gene pool the greatest
possible service - by removing themselves from it - usually in a bizare
manner.
The
older Darwin Awards entries are at the bottom of the page
And the nominees from last to first are :
9: 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.
8. 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 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 one end of a hollow wooden tube approx. 12" long and 3" in diameter. The tube's other end was inserted into his rectum 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.
7. 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.
6. 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 covered what had 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.
4. 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 Eccotink 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 a "Major trauma."
3. 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 hospitalized.
2. 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. 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.
And the winner . .. .
The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smouldering metal embedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The lab finally figured out what it was and what had happened. It seems that a guy had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off) - actually a solid fuel rocket - that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra "push" for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long and straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO! The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that location. The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds. The driver, and soon to be pilot, most likely would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to become insignificant for the remainder of the event. However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable; however, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.
Epilogue:
It has been calculated that this moron nearly reached Mach I, attaining a ground speed of approximately 420 mph.
And just I....a late nominee for this years Darwin Award....
From the Orlando Sentinel Based on a bet by the other members of his threesome, Everitt Sanchez tried to wash his own "balls" in a ball washer at the local golf course. Proving once again that beer and testosterone are a bad mix, Sanchez managed to straddle the ball washer and dangle his scrotum in the machine. Much to his dismay, one of his buddies up'd the ante by spinning the crank on the machine with Sanchez's scrotum in place, thus wedging them solidly in the mechanism. Sanchez, who immediately passed his threshold of pain, collapsed and tumbled from his perch. Unfortunately for Sanchez,the height of the ball washer was more than a foot higher off the ground than his testicles are in a normal stance, and the scrotum was the weakest link. Sanchez's scrotum was ripped open during the fall, and one testicle was plucked from him forever and remained in the ball washer, while the other testicle was compressed and flattened as it was pulled between the housing of the washer, and the rotating machinery inside. To add insult to injury, Sanchez broke a new $300.00 driver that he had just purchased from the pro shop, and was using to balance himself. Sanchez was rushed to the hospital for surgery, and the remaining threesome were asked to leave the course.
The Darwin Awards - 2
(February 1998) Matthew and his friends were sliding down a Mammoth
Mountain ski run on a foam pad at 3am, when he crashed into a lift tower
and died. His makeshift sledge of yellow foam had been stolen from the legs
of a lift tower on Stump Alley. The cushion is meant to protect skiers who
hit the tower, and the tower Matthew ran into was the one from which he had
created his sledge. There's a moral in there somewhere.
---------------
(4 July, 1998, Texas) If you fly over Houston, you will see
the sky blue
rectangles of countless backyard swimming pools. A Houston man joined the
club, and purchased his own above ground pool on June 21, 1998. He selected
the location, and the pool was installed by an independent contractor a few
days later. He rated all aspects of the installation as "excellent."
A few weeks later, the pool owner was swimming with his friends and
enjoying an alcoholic Fourth of July haze in the humid Houston heat. In an
unprecedented show of bravado, the man decided to climb onto his patio roof
and dive into his pool.
The man was six feet tall. His pool, typical for an above ground pool, was
four feet deep. So when his head hit the bottom, his legs were still
sticking two feet out of the water. The dive broke his neck.
He and his family sued on the grounds of faulty installation and
inappropriate location. The same installation the man had rated as
"excellent" in the location he himself had selected.
The lawsuit was changed to a wrongful death claim when the pool owner
passed away in December. Next time you fly over Houston and see those miles
of swimming pools, remember the story of this man's last miscalculated dive.
-------------------
We turn to Davao City in the
Philippines this year. Augusto was a man with
a mission. He boarded a Philippine Air flight to Manila, and donned a ski
mask and swim goggles. Then he pulled out a gun and a grenade and announced
that he was hijacking the plane. Apparently security is a bit lax at the
Davao City airport.
He demanded that the plane return to Davao City, but the pilots convinced
him that the aircraft was low on fuel, and they continued on toward Manila.
Augusto, undaunted, robbed the passengers of about $25,000 and ordered the
pilots to lower the plane to 6,500 feet.
When a lunatic with a gun orders you to descend, you descend. Meanwhile,
Augusto strapped a homemade parachute onto his back, and forced the flight
attendants to open the door and depressurize the plane.
He probably intended to jump, but the wind was so strong that he had
trouble getting out of the plane. Finally one of the flight attendants
helpfully pushed him out the door, just as he pulled the pin from the
grenade. He threw the pin (oops!) into the cabin, and fell toward the earth
carrying the business end of the grenade in his hand.
The impact of Augusto hitting the earth at terminal velocity had little
effect on the earth's orbit. All that remained aboveground were Augusto's
two hands.
So history repeats itself with a new twist.
1. Don't throw yourself out of a perfectly good airplane.
2. If you feel compelled to violate Lesson 1, at least don't roll your
own... parachute, that is.
------------------
(March 1998, Tennessee) A teenage Knoxville boy read in an adult magazine
that you could hook a cow heart up to a battery and create an organic sex
toy. Thinking to improve on the original model, he hooked it up to the
household current, electrocuting himself and setting fire to his house.
#############
So
there you go !!!
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