More Darwin Awards

[Uncle Kram]

You all know about the Darwin Awards. It's an annual honour given to the person

who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in

the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year's winner was the

fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of

him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.

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.

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 one end of a hollow 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

the family very awkward.

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.

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 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.

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.

A 22-year-old, Glade Drive, 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 one 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."

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.

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

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 upped

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.

NB: This one wouldn't normally count, because the idiot didn't

die. But because he cannot reproduce as a result of his qualifying

act of stupidity, we have allowed it.

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 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 a 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.