You may recall last year's Darwin Award winner: The man who found
out
moments before making a 300 MPH dent in an Arizona cliff that the
JATO(jet assist take off) unit he'd strapped to his car could not be
turned off once it was turned on.
Darwin Awards are (by definition) granted posthumously. This
citation is bestowed upon (the remains of) that individual, who
through single-mined self-sacrifice, has done the most to remove
undesirable elements from the human gene pool.
The 1996 nominees are:
1. *=San Jose Mercury News* An unidentified man, using a shotgun
like a club to break a former girlfriends windshield, accidentally
shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his
gut.
2. *=Hickory Daily Record 12/21/92* Ken Charles Barger, 47
accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, N.C., when,
awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed,, he
reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson .38
Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.
3. *=Unknown, 25 March* A terrible diet and room with no ventilation
are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by his own
gas. There was no mark on his body but autopsy showed large
amounts
of methane gas in his system. His diet had consisted primarily of
beans and cabbage (and a couple of other things). It was just the
right combination of foods. It appears that the man died in his
sleep from breathing from the poisonous cloud that was hanging over
his bed. Had the been outside or had his windows been opened, it
wouldn't have been fatal. But the man was shut up in his near
airtight bedroom. He was a big man with a huge capacity for creating
(this deadly gas). Three of the rescuers got sick and one was
hospitalized.
4. *=Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario* Man slips, falls 23 stories to
his death. A man cleaning a bird feeder on his balcony of his
condominium apartment in this Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23
stories to his death, police said Monday. Stefan Macko, 55, was
standing on a wheelchair Sunday when the accident occurred, said
Inspector D'Arcy Honer of the Peel regional police. "It appears the
chair moved and he went over the balcony, " Honer said. "It's one of
those freak accidents. No foul play is suspected."
5. *=UPI, Toronto* Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of
windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane
with
his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman
said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion
Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of
the building's windows to visiting law students. Hoy previously had
conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police
reports Peter Lauwers, managing partner of the firm Holden Day
Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was "one of the best
and brightest" members of the 200-man association. (editors note - I
thing this guy should win, not only because he removed some
incredibly stupid genes from the pool, but he also eliminated a
lawyer in the process....)
(BEST AND BRIGHTEST? WHATEVER DOES THAT SAY ABOUT
THE REST OF THEM?)
6. *=AP, Cairo, Egypt, 31 Aug 1995 CAIRO, Egypt (AP)* Six people
drowned Monday while trying to rescue a chicken that had fallen into
a well in southern Egypt. An 18 year old farmer was the first to
descend into the 60-foot well. He drowned, apparently after an
undercurrent the water pulled him down, police said his sister and
two brothers, none of whom could swim well, went in one by one to
help him, but also drowned. Two elderly farmers then came to help.
But they apparently were pulled by the same undercurrent. The bodies
of the six were later pulled out of the well in the village of Nazlat
Imara, 240 miles south of Cairo. The chicken was also pulled out.
It survived.
7. *=Times of London* A thief who sneaked into a hospital was
scarred for life when he tried to a suntan. After evading security
staff at Odstock Hospital in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and helping
himself to doctor's paging devices, the thief spotted a vertical sun
bed. He walked into the unit and removed his clothes for a 45-minute
tan. However, the high-voltage UV machine at the hospital, which is
reknowned for its treatment of burn victims, has a maximum dosage of
10 seconds. After lying on the bed for almost 300 times the
recommended maximum time, the man was covered in blisters. Hours
later, when the pain of the burns became unbearable, he went to
Southampton General Hospital, 20 miles away, in Hampshire. Staff
became suspicious because he was wearing a doctor's coat. After
tending his wounds they called the police. Southampton police said:
"This man broke into Odstock and decided he fancied a quick suntan.
Doctors say he is going to be scarred for life."
"MORE INTELLIGENCE CHALLENGED PEOPLE"
8. 45 year old Amy Brasher was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, after
a mechanic reported to police that 18 packages of marijuana were
packed in the engine compartment of the car which she had brought to
the mechanic for an oil change. According to police, Brasher later
said that she didn't realize that the mechanic would have to raise
the hood to change the oil.
9. Portsmouth, RI police charged Gregory Rosa, 25, with a string of
vending machine robberies in January when he: 1. fled from police
inexplicably when they spotted him loitering around a vending machine
and 2. later tried to post his $400 bail in coins.
10. Karen Lee Joachimi, 20, was arrested in Lake City, Florida, for
robbery of a Howard Johnson's motel. She was armed with only an
electric chain saw, which was not plugged in.
11. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into
Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan at 7:50 am, flashed a gun and
demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he
couldn't
open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered
onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for
breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.
IN CASE YOU'VE FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE 1995 AWARDEES,
SOME OF THEM ARE LISTED
BELOW:
James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Michigan, was killed in March as he was
trying to repair what police described as a "farm-type truck." Burns
got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung
underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise.
Burns' clothes caught on something, however, and the other man
found
Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft."
*=Kalamazoo Gazette, April 1, 1995* Same thing up here in Michigan.
Seems some poor fella thought it would be a good idea to "move" a
downed wire from his car. Newspaper reports it took a FULL MINUTE
of
neighbors whacking away at him with a 2x4 to free their freshly fried
former friend from the fatal flashing.
Bowling Green, Ohio student Robert Ricketts, 19, had his head
bloodied when he was struck by a Conrail train. He told police he
was trying to see how close to the moving train he could place his
head without getting hit.
In Wesley Chapel, Florida, Joseph Aaron, 20, was hit in the leg with
pieces of the bullet he fired at the exhaust pipe of his car. When
repairing the car, he needed to bore a hole in the pipe. When he
couldn't find a drill, he tried to shoot a hole in it.
AND THE WINNER IS:
This story was clipped from the recent Darwin awards, which people
get for doing something incredibly stupid. True stories. Here's the
winner: Larry Walters is among the relatively few who have actually
turned their dreams into reality. His story is true, as hard as you
may find it to believe . . .
Larry was a truck driver, but his lifelong dream was to fly. When he
graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of
becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. So
when he finally left the service, he had to satisfy himself with
watching others fly the fighter jets that crisscrossed the skies over
his backyard.
As he sat there in his lawn chair, he dreamed about the magic of
flying. Then one day, Larry had an idea. He went down to the local
Army-Navy surplus store and bought forty-five weather balloons, and
several tanks of helium. These were not your brightly colored party
balloons, these were heavy-duty spheres measuring more than four feet
across when fully inflated. Back in his yard, Larry used straps to
attach the balloons to his lawn chair, the kind you might have in
your back yard. He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep, and
inflated the balloons with helium. Then he packed a few sandwiches
and drinks, and a loaded BB gun, figuring he could pop a few balloons
when it was time to return to earth. His preparations complete,
Larry sat in his chair and cut the anchoring cord. His plan was to
lazily float into the sky, and eventually back to terra firma. But
things didn't quite work out that way.
When Larry cut the cord, he didn't float lazily up; he shot up as if
fired from a cannon! Nor did he go up a couple hundred feet. He
climbed and climbed until he finally leveled off at eleven thousand
feet! At that height, he could hardly risk deflating any of the
balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really experience flying.
So he stayed up there, sailing around for fourteen hours, totally at
a loss about how to get down.
Eventually, Larry drifted into the approach corridor for Los Angeles
International Airport. A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about
passing a guy in a lawn chair at eleven thousand feet, with a gun in
his lap... now there's a conversation I would have given anything to
have heard! LAX is right on the ocean, and you may know that at
nightfall, the winds on the coast begin to change. So, as dusk fell,
Larry began drifting out to sea. At that point, the Navy dispatched
a helicopter to rescue him, but the rescue team had a hard time
getting to him because the draft from their propeller kept pushing
his home-made contraption farther and farther away.
Eventually, they were able to hover above him and drop a rescue line,
with which they gradually hauled him back to safety. As soon as
Larry hit the ground, he was arrested. But as he was led away in
handcuffs, a television reporter called out, "Sir, why'd you do it?"
Larry stopped, eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly, "A man can't
just sit around!"
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