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2008 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Pining Away
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
Three hale and hearty young men had finished their basic training. Before heading out to their respective assignments, they decided to spend their few days of leave with one's grandmother, who lived in the town where they had completed basic training. The privates descended upon Grandmother, who filled them with home cooking and gave them soft beds to sleep in. Grandmother had a swing job to make ends meet, so the privates were left alone late into the night.
How could they repay her for her kindness?
Grandmother had three children. To commemorate the birth of each child, a pine tree had been planted in the front yard. In the fifty years since the last tree was planted, the pines had grown considerably, and the middle tree now blocked the view from the living room window. The privates decided that they would cut down that tree, letting the sun and the view into the room.
A case of beer went into the planning.
To keep the 50-foot tree from crushing the house, the privates reasoned that they would tie a rope to the top of the tree and pull the rope away from the house as the tree was cut.
The middle pine tree, the doomed one, was slightly closer to the house than the other two. The privates climbed an end tree, wound a rope through its upper branches, and threw the rope to a private in the middle tree. He tied the rope around the trunk. By this device, they could pull the rope from the ground. The middle pine tree would fall away from the house, and the privates were also clear of the path of the falling tree.
Climbing a pine tree is very sappy work, and scrapes and gouges are inflicted by the natural roughness of its bark. But the hale and hearty privates completed the preliminaries without complaint. The middle tree was lassoed and levered by the rope running through the end tree.
So far, so good.
Two privates were situated on the ground, each straining to pull the tree away from Grandmother's house. The third private revved his 20 HP chainsaw and started to cut. Lo and behold, the tree actually fell away from Grandmother's house! However...
The rope-pulling privates had wrapped the rope around their waists, not considering that the falling pine weighed several tons. As the middle pine tree fell, both privates were ripped off their feet and smashed through the branches of the end pine tree. At the height of their acceleration, they broke through the top branches of the tree, and were briefly airborne before being jerked toward the earth when the middle tree hit the ground. The privates entered into Darwin history, either on the way up through the branches or on the way down to the cold, hard ground.
The event spoke for itself.
Into the Abyss
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
An enterprising lumberman had felled a large tree, and needed to haul it up a steep embankment. So he jacked up the rear end of his pickup and swapped one of the rear tires for a bare rim. He attached one end of a rope to the rim, and the other end of the rope to the felled tree. He put the pickup into gear, expecting the rim to act as a makeshift rope crank that would pull the tree up the embankment, saving him lots of sweat.
A great idea? Not if you're reading it here! You see, the tree vastly outweighed the truck. The man was standing with one foot on the ground and the other foot on the accelerator. When he gunned the engine, the tree acted like an anchor, and the truck yanked itself backwards. The open door rammed into him, and he was swept over the embankment along with the pickup.
When the dust settled, our lumberman had entered the great beyond. But his escapade served as a warning to others. The next lumberman cut up the tree where it lay, and carried it off.
Pierced!
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(January 2008, Pennsylvania) A 23-year-old man with various body piercings decided to have some fun at work. He wondered, "What it would feel like to connect the electronic control tester to my chest piercings?" Several coworkers tried to convince him that it was a bad idea to wire himself up to the electronic device, but he ignored their pleas.
He proceeded to connect two alligator clips to his metal nipple piercings, one on each side, and hit the test button... His coworkers were still trying to revive him with CPR and rescue breathing when police and rescue personnel arrived. They were not successful.
Wascally Wabbit
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
Snowmobiles and alcohol are a dangerous mix. Then came the rabbit.
After a day spent partying and racing snowmobiles in the wilderness, a group of snowmobilers were headed back to their cabin, when up popped a jackrabbit! They gave chase. Several collisions were narrowly averted, and so all the snowmobiles backed off... except one.
This snowmobiler kept his eye on the quarry and rapidly closed in. The rabbit darted aside to save itself. The snowmobiler closed in again. The rabbit ran toward the road, where there was less snow. Trying to ram his rabbit before it crossed the road, the man accelerated to Mach 1.
But the rabbit had other ideas. It darted into the culvert beneath the road. Witnesses stated that the snowmobiler never even braked. There was a metallic crunch as the accelerating vehicle rammed into the culvert, followed by a blast that shattered the snowmobile into a thousand bits.
This brand of snowmobile had a fuel tank mounted in front. The culvert admitted the tip of the snowmobile, then cut into the cowling, spilling fuel over the hot engine. The body of the snowmobiler was blown twenty feet back into the field.
The rabbit's whereabouts was unknown.
Boner!
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(2 February 2008, New York) A 50-year-old man was bird hunting in Upstate New York with his buddies and his faithful canine companion. They stopped for a smoke, and his dog found a deer leg bone!
The man tried to take the bone away, but like any right thinking dog, the animal would not relinquish its treasure. He stayed just out of reach. Frustrated with this blatant show of disobedience, the man grabbed his loaded shotgun by the muzzle and began wielding it like a club. Each time he swung it, the dog dodged.
Suddenly the "club" struck the ground and fired, shooting the man in the abdomen. He was airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he died from his injuries. He did remain conscious long enough to confirm this account to police; otherwise, his poor friends might now be under suspicion!
At least he didn't hit the dog.
Chemistry Went To Her Head
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(2 February 2008, Bulgaria) It was a cold but sunny February afternoon. Lidia, a biology teacher from Sofia, was driving two friends home from a memorial service. Suddenly the vehicle stopped. Bystanders saw all three occupants dash from the car to a nearby manhole and start pouring down liquids and powders from various bottles and jars.
Apparently the biology teacher had been performing chemistry experiments in her free time, and had some leftover noxious chemicals. It is still not entirely clear what the chemicals were, but two of the bottles were labeled diethyl ether and methanol, both highly flammable liquids. The former is also used as a sedative, so one explanation for their actions is that they felt dizzy from the ether vapors and thought it was a good idea to pour them in the sewer.
As it turns out, a good idea it definitely was not. The cocktail of flammable substances in the enclosed space of the sewer caused an explosion so powerful that it launched the manhole cover into the air, decapitating the (briefly) surprised Lidia. Left without a head on her shoulders, she decided it was time to kick the bucket.
The other two people were not unharmed, but were alive. They were taken to the hospital with burns on their faces. They may not regain their eyesight, but hopefully will be able to speak clearly enough to tell their children that tossing random chemicals down the drain is not as wise as it might at first appear.
On the Piste
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(2 February 2008, Italy) David, 46, was sliding down an Italian ski slope one night, riding on padding that he had removed from the safety barriers at the bottom of the run. It did not occur to him that it might be dangerous to sled down the same slope from which he had stolen protective padding.
Sauze d'Oulx is one of five villages that make up the "Milky Way" ski area in northern Italy. Popular with British skiers, the resort is known for its party atmosphere. A ski resort spokesperson said, "The men had all been drinking when they tore off the padding, and ironically..."
...they careened straight into the bare barriers at the bottom of the piste (groomed slope). David died from head and chest injuries inflicted by the unpadded metal. Two of his friends survived with medical attention. Another Darwin Award candidate is still missing after he wandered away "bloodied and distressed."
Thou Shalt Not Steel
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(8 March 2008, Czech Republic) Steel is valuable, especially the high-grade alloy used in steel cable. Scrap metal dealers do not ask questions. They pay in cash. And a good supply of steel cable can be found in elevator shafts.
This particular gold mine was a towering shaft inside an empty granary near Zatec, forty miles northwest of Prague. The cable was tightly fastened, and the far end of it disappeared into the shadowy distance above.
After substantial wear and tear on a hacksaw, our man finally cut through the strong steel cable. At that instant the counterbalance, no longer held in check, started to move silently downward, accelerating until it reached the bottom of the shaft.
Not a Shred of Sense
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
The ambulance responded to a frantic call concerning a neighbor's trip through an industrial tree shredder. It seems the individual had decided to prune his own trees, rather than hire a professional. Why not? After all, the local shop rented shredders that could make quick work of yard debris, including tree limbs up to 8 inches in diameter.
To save time (those fateful words) the neighbor had placed the shredder at the base of a great oak tree, where he could drop branches directly into the hopper. He intended to cut off the top third of the oak, since it had been killed by lightning.
With the shredder running wide open, the neighbor climbed his ladder to the first tree branch, stepped off the ladder, slipped, and fell. The paramedics found him very dead, half in and half out of the shredder's hopper, one leg shredded to the hip.
Not married, no kids, removed self from the gene pool.
Merry Pranksters
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
The telephone company was replacing above-ground telephone lines with buried lines. In one sparsely populated farming area, if lines crossed a country road they would dig a trench halfway across, so rural traffic could continue through. Then they would fill in the trench, and dig a trench on the other side.
One morning, local farmers called the sheriff to report a smashed-up pickup. Inside were two ranch hands who were last seen the previous night, heading home after last call. You see...
On their way to the bars, the men had decided to play a prank. They stopped their pickup, and moved the flashing warning signs from the trenched side to the good side of the country road. Crime scene analysis later confirmed that they were the culprits who moved the flashing stands. Investigations also revealed that at the time of the accident, they were driving at an excessive speed with an impressive amount of alcohol in their systems.
No crime scene analysis is capable of determining whether the ranch hands forgot their prank, or chose to see what would happen if they hit that trench at a high rate of speed in the middle of the night.
No good prank goes unpunished.
Shopping Cart Crash
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(8 March 2008, Florida) Just because you see it online does not mean it's a good idea. Cameron, 18, was joyriding in a shopping cart as he held onto a moving SUV. An eyewitness said, "It's irresponsible behavior, but what do you expect from kids?" The car and the cart went over a speed bump and the cart overturned, ejecting its occupant, who was not wearing the little seat belt. Cameron was pronounced dead at the scene.
Slippery When Wet
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(15 January 2008, Sweden) The Darwin Awards have celebrated many bone-headed things burglars do in the commission of their crimes. For instance, taking a shortcut down a 55-foot sheer rock face.
Early one morning, two men broke into a gymnasium (high school) east of Stockholm. After a profitable stroll through the building, they were startled by a janitor. They raced out of the building into the pre-dawn darkness. Fearing imminent detection, they took a shortcut to safety--down the face of a steep 55-foot rock escarpment. But in selecting this convenient shortcut, they failed to consider three crucial facts:
First, it was pitch black. Due to the northern latitude, the sun rises late in Sweden. Second, it had rained during the night. And third, the rock in eastern Sweden is granite, the type of rock that is polished into posh floors and fancy countertops. The danger of slippery granite is a well-known fact for residents of the area.
Escaping down a granite cliff, in the rain, in the dark? Try tilting a slab of polished granite, pouring water over it, and making a controlled descent while carrying a load of loot. This is the province of mountain goats, not humans hoping to pass on their genes. In short, one of the burglars slipped and fell head-over-heels to his death, bringing a new meaning to "the crack of dawn."
His worldly riches were scattered around him.
Clotheslined!
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(13 January 2008, Florida) Wearing only swim trunks and sneakers, a 37-year-old man raced his motorcycle toward the Manasota Key drawbridge. As the bridge began to open, it was clear that he intended to "shoot the gap." Bridge designers had anticipated such lunacy and invented the crossing guard. The closing gates swept him off his Suzuki, over the side of the bridge, into the water, and out of the gene pool. By a twist of fate the motorcycle continued up the ramp and made it across to the other side.
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
Three hale and hearty young men had finished their basic training. Before heading out to their respective assignments, they decided to spend their few days of leave with one's grandmother, who lived in the town where they had completed basic training. The privates descended upon Grandmother, who filled them with home cooking and gave them soft beds to sleep in. Grandmother had a swing job to make ends meet, so the privates were left alone late into the night.
How could they repay her for her kindness?
Grandmother had three children. To commemorate the birth of each child, a pine tree had been planted in the front yard. In the fifty years since the last tree was planted, the pines had grown considerably, and the middle tree now blocked the view from the living room window. The privates decided that they would cut down that tree, letting the sun and the view into the room.
A case of beer went into the planning.
To keep the 50-foot tree from crushing the house, the privates reasoned that they would tie a rope to the top of the tree and pull the rope away from the house as the tree was cut.
The middle pine tree, the doomed one, was slightly closer to the house than the other two. The privates climbed an end tree, wound a rope through its upper branches, and threw the rope to a private in the middle tree. He tied the rope around the trunk. By this device, they could pull the rope from the ground. The middle pine tree would fall away from the house, and the privates were also clear of the path of the falling tree.
Climbing a pine tree is very sappy work, and scrapes and gouges are inflicted by the natural roughness of its bark. But the hale and hearty privates completed the preliminaries without complaint. The middle tree was lassoed and levered by the rope running through the end tree.
So far, so good.
Two privates were situated on the ground, each straining to pull the tree away from Grandmother's house. The third private revved his 20 HP chainsaw and started to cut. Lo and behold, the tree actually fell away from Grandmother's house! However...
The rope-pulling privates had wrapped the rope around their waists, not considering that the falling pine weighed several tons. As the middle pine tree fell, both privates were ripped off their feet and smashed through the branches of the end pine tree. At the height of their acceleration, they broke through the top branches of the tree, and were briefly airborne before being jerked toward the earth when the middle tree hit the ground. The privates entered into Darwin history, either on the way up through the branches or on the way down to the cold, hard ground.
The event spoke for itself.
Into the Abyss
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
An enterprising lumberman had felled a large tree, and needed to haul it up a steep embankment. So he jacked up the rear end of his pickup and swapped one of the rear tires for a bare rim. He attached one end of a rope to the rim, and the other end of the rope to the felled tree. He put the pickup into gear, expecting the rim to act as a makeshift rope crank that would pull the tree up the embankment, saving him lots of sweat.
A great idea? Not if you're reading it here! You see, the tree vastly outweighed the truck. The man was standing with one foot on the ground and the other foot on the accelerator. When he gunned the engine, the tree acted like an anchor, and the truck yanked itself backwards. The open door rammed into him, and he was swept over the embankment along with the pickup.
When the dust settled, our lumberman had entered the great beyond. But his escapade served as a warning to others. The next lumberman cut up the tree where it lay, and carried it off.
Pierced!
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(January 2008, Pennsylvania) A 23-year-old man with various body piercings decided to have some fun at work. He wondered, "What it would feel like to connect the electronic control tester to my chest piercings?" Several coworkers tried to convince him that it was a bad idea to wire himself up to the electronic device, but he ignored their pleas.
He proceeded to connect two alligator clips to his metal nipple piercings, one on each side, and hit the test button... His coworkers were still trying to revive him with CPR and rescue breathing when police and rescue personnel arrived. They were not successful.
Wascally Wabbit
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
Snowmobiles and alcohol are a dangerous mix. Then came the rabbit.
After a day spent partying and racing snowmobiles in the wilderness, a group of snowmobilers were headed back to their cabin, when up popped a jackrabbit! They gave chase. Several collisions were narrowly averted, and so all the snowmobiles backed off... except one.
This snowmobiler kept his eye on the quarry and rapidly closed in. The rabbit darted aside to save itself. The snowmobiler closed in again. The rabbit ran toward the road, where there was less snow. Trying to ram his rabbit before it crossed the road, the man accelerated to Mach 1.
But the rabbit had other ideas. It darted into the culvert beneath the road. Witnesses stated that the snowmobiler never even braked. There was a metallic crunch as the accelerating vehicle rammed into the culvert, followed by a blast that shattered the snowmobile into a thousand bits.
This brand of snowmobile had a fuel tank mounted in front. The culvert admitted the tip of the snowmobile, then cut into the cowling, spilling fuel over the hot engine. The body of the snowmobiler was blown twenty feet back into the field.
The rabbit's whereabouts was unknown.
Boner!
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(2 February 2008, New York) A 50-year-old man was bird hunting in Upstate New York with his buddies and his faithful canine companion. They stopped for a smoke, and his dog found a deer leg bone!
The man tried to take the bone away, but like any right thinking dog, the animal would not relinquish its treasure. He stayed just out of reach. Frustrated with this blatant show of disobedience, the man grabbed his loaded shotgun by the muzzle and began wielding it like a club. Each time he swung it, the dog dodged.
Suddenly the "club" struck the ground and fired, shooting the man in the abdomen. He was airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he died from his injuries. He did remain conscious long enough to confirm this account to police; otherwise, his poor friends might now be under suspicion!
At least he didn't hit the dog.
Chemistry Went To Her Head
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(2 February 2008, Bulgaria) It was a cold but sunny February afternoon. Lidia, a biology teacher from Sofia, was driving two friends home from a memorial service. Suddenly the vehicle stopped. Bystanders saw all three occupants dash from the car to a nearby manhole and start pouring down liquids and powders from various bottles and jars.
Apparently the biology teacher had been performing chemistry experiments in her free time, and had some leftover noxious chemicals. It is still not entirely clear what the chemicals were, but two of the bottles were labeled diethyl ether and methanol, both highly flammable liquids. The former is also used as a sedative, so one explanation for their actions is that they felt dizzy from the ether vapors and thought it was a good idea to pour them in the sewer.
As it turns out, a good idea it definitely was not. The cocktail of flammable substances in the enclosed space of the sewer caused an explosion so powerful that it launched the manhole cover into the air, decapitating the (briefly) surprised Lidia. Left without a head on her shoulders, she decided it was time to kick the bucket.
The other two people were not unharmed, but were alive. They were taken to the hospital with burns on their faces. They may not regain their eyesight, but hopefully will be able to speak clearly enough to tell their children that tossing random chemicals down the drain is not as wise as it might at first appear.
On the Piste
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(2 February 2008, Italy) David, 46, was sliding down an Italian ski slope one night, riding on padding that he had removed from the safety barriers at the bottom of the run. It did not occur to him that it might be dangerous to sled down the same slope from which he had stolen protective padding.
Sauze d'Oulx is one of five villages that make up the "Milky Way" ski area in northern Italy. Popular with British skiers, the resort is known for its party atmosphere. A ski resort spokesperson said, "The men had all been drinking when they tore off the padding, and ironically..."
...they careened straight into the bare barriers at the bottom of the piste (groomed slope). David died from head and chest injuries inflicted by the unpadded metal. Two of his friends survived with medical attention. Another Darwin Award candidate is still missing after he wandered away "bloodied and distressed."
Thou Shalt Not Steel
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(8 March 2008, Czech Republic) Steel is valuable, especially the high-grade alloy used in steel cable. Scrap metal dealers do not ask questions. They pay in cash. And a good supply of steel cable can be found in elevator shafts.
This particular gold mine was a towering shaft inside an empty granary near Zatec, forty miles northwest of Prague. The cable was tightly fastened, and the far end of it disappeared into the shadowy distance above.
After substantial wear and tear on a hacksaw, our man finally cut through the strong steel cable. At that instant the counterbalance, no longer held in check, started to move silently downward, accelerating until it reached the bottom of the shaft.
Not a Shred of Sense
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
The ambulance responded to a frantic call concerning a neighbor's trip through an industrial tree shredder. It seems the individual had decided to prune his own trees, rather than hire a professional. Why not? After all, the local shop rented shredders that could make quick work of yard debris, including tree limbs up to 8 inches in diameter.
To save time (those fateful words) the neighbor had placed the shredder at the base of a great oak tree, where he could drop branches directly into the hopper. He intended to cut off the top third of the oak, since it had been killed by lightning.
With the shredder running wide open, the neighbor climbed his ladder to the first tree branch, stepped off the ladder, slipped, and fell. The paramedics found him very dead, half in and half out of the shredder's hopper, one leg shredded to the hip.
Not married, no kids, removed self from the gene pool.
Merry Pranksters
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
The telephone company was replacing above-ground telephone lines with buried lines. In one sparsely populated farming area, if lines crossed a country road they would dig a trench halfway across, so rural traffic could continue through. Then they would fill in the trench, and dig a trench on the other side.
One morning, local farmers called the sheriff to report a smashed-up pickup. Inside were two ranch hands who were last seen the previous night, heading home after last call. You see...
On their way to the bars, the men had decided to play a prank. They stopped their pickup, and moved the flashing warning signs from the trenched side to the good side of the country road. Crime scene analysis later confirmed that they were the culprits who moved the flashing stands. Investigations also revealed that at the time of the accident, they were driving at an excessive speed with an impressive amount of alcohol in their systems.
No crime scene analysis is capable of determining whether the ranch hands forgot their prank, or chose to see what would happen if they hit that trench at a high rate of speed in the middle of the night.
No good prank goes unpunished.
Shopping Cart Crash
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(8 March 2008, Florida) Just because you see it online does not mean it's a good idea. Cameron, 18, was joyriding in a shopping cart as he held onto a moving SUV. An eyewitness said, "It's irresponsible behavior, but what do you expect from kids?" The car and the cart went over a speed bump and the cart overturned, ejecting its occupant, who was not wearing the little seat belt. Cameron was pronounced dead at the scene.
Slippery When Wet
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(15 January 2008, Sweden) The Darwin Awards have celebrated many bone-headed things burglars do in the commission of their crimes. For instance, taking a shortcut down a 55-foot sheer rock face.
Early one morning, two men broke into a gymnasium (high school) east of Stockholm. After a profitable stroll through the building, they were startled by a janitor. They raced out of the building into the pre-dawn darkness. Fearing imminent detection, they took a shortcut to safety--down the face of a steep 55-foot rock escarpment. But in selecting this convenient shortcut, they failed to consider three crucial facts:
First, it was pitch black. Due to the northern latitude, the sun rises late in Sweden. Second, it had rained during the night. And third, the rock in eastern Sweden is granite, the type of rock that is polished into posh floors and fancy countertops. The danger of slippery granite is a well-known fact for residents of the area.
Escaping down a granite cliff, in the rain, in the dark? Try tilting a slab of polished granite, pouring water over it, and making a controlled descent while carrying a load of loot. This is the province of mountain goats, not humans hoping to pass on their genes. In short, one of the burglars slipped and fell head-over-heels to his death, bringing a new meaning to "the crack of dawn."
His worldly riches were scattered around him.
Clotheslined!
2008 Darwin Award Nominee
(13 January 2008, Florida) Wearing only swim trunks and sneakers, a 37-year-old man raced his motorcycle toward the Manasota Key drawbridge. As the bridge began to open, it was clear that he intended to "shoot the gap." Bridge designers had anticipated such lunacy and invented the crossing guard. The closing gates swept him off his Suzuki, over the side of the bridge, into the water, and out of the gene pool. By a twist of fate the motorcycle continued up the ramp and made it across to the other side.
2007 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
The Enema Within
2007 Darwin Award Winner
(21 May 2004, Texas) Michael was an alcoholic. And not an ordinary alcoholic, but an alcoholic who liked to take his liquor, well, rectally. His wife said he was "addicted to enemas" and often used alcohol in this manner. The result was the same: inebriation.
The machine shop owner couldn't imbibe alcohol by mouth due to a painful throat ailment, so he elected to receive his favourite beverage via enema. And tonight, Michael was in for one hell of a party. Two 1.5 litre bottles of sherry, more than 100 fluid ounces, right up the old address!
When the rest of us have had enough, we either stop drinking or pass out. When Michael had had enough (and subsequently passed out) the alcohol remaining in his rectal cavity continued to be absorbed. The next morning, Michael was dead.
The 58-year-old did a pretty good job of embalming himself. According to toxicology reports, his blood alcohol level was 0.47%.
The Laptop Still Works!
2007 Darwin Award Runner-Up
(26 February 2007, California) "Driving is not a time to be practicing your multitasking skills," remarked CHP spokesman Tom Marshall. Oscar, 29, had been driving on Highway 99 near Yuba City when his Honda Accord crossed into oncoming traffic and collided with a Hummer. California Highway Patrol officers found Oscar's laptop still running, and plugged into the car's cigarette lighter.
Oscar is not alone. Last year, 510 California drivers were charged with reckless driving while using a TV, video, or computer monitor. A 2001 CHP study cites cellphone use as the top cause of crashes involving distracted drivers, followed by fiddling with music. "Anything that distracts you can kill you, whether it's eating lunch or working on a computer," an AAA spokesman said.
Oscar was a computer tutor. Hopefully his fatal lesson will teach others to surf on the information superhighway, not the asphalt superhighway.
Whac-A-Mole
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(10 January 2007, Germany) A 63-year-old man's extraordinary effort to eradicate moles from his property resulted in a victory for the moles. The man pounded several metal rods into the ground and connected them--not to household current, which would have been bad enough--but to a high-voltage power line, intending to render the subterranean realm uninhabitable.
Incidentally, the maneuver electrified the very ground on which he stood. He was found dead some time later, at his holiday property on the Baltic Sea. Police had to trip the main circuit breaker before venturing onto the property.
The precise date of the sexagenarian's demise could not be ascertained, but the electric bill may provide a clue.
Barn Razing
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(14 January 2007, West Virginia) Raising a new barn is an endeavor that brings a community together. Demolishing a barn is another question. A trio of friends set out to dismantle a dilapidated structure one bracing winter afternoon. Speaking of bracing...
It was all fun and games until one industrious fellow fired up his chainsaw and ripped through a crucial support post. Carrying the weight of a full barn roof, those wooden beams were all that stood between the demolition worker and structural collapse.
The roof succumbed to the pull of gravity, and the ill-fated lumberjack had a few brief moments to contemplate the approach of his deadly problem. As a consolation prize, the deceased was indeed successful at demolishing the barn.
A Prop-er Sendoff
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(Broome, Australia) When you work as a diver on a pearl farm, there are many ways to "buy the farm." Our head diver Mitchell, known as Sharky, was not afraid to take risks to get the job done. He was a loose gun in a company of cowboys. Sharky seeme destined to make an original exit.
A near miss happened in Roebuck Bay. He miscalculated the amount of fuel needed for the air compressor that pumps air to the divers below. Instead of following standard procedure--bringing everyone up and refuelling during a surface interval--he surfaced alone to top up the fuel tank while the compressor was still running.
The deck was unsteady, and naturally he spilled some petrol. The compressor had been running for hours. Its red-hot exhaust ignited the spilled fuel, and the flames followed the fuel into the tank.
The $200,000 dive boat was brand-new and fully kitted out for the pearl farm, including oxygen for resuscitations. The resulting mushroom cloud explosion from the oxy bottle startled observers all the way back in town, five kilometers away.
Luckily Sharky jumped back in the water before the big explosion. He and his crew were picked up by another dive boat.
Despite this incident, Sharky was promoted to skipper of a larger vessel. However, the skipper still found excuses to don the old dive gear. One such excuse was a mooring rope tangled around the propeller. Instead of asking an outfitted diver for assistance, Sharky chucked on his dive gear, started the compressor, clipped on a dive hose, and jumped off the back of the boat. But he neglected to take the boat out of gear...
The spinning prop entangled his hose and started reeling him in. His "lifeline" pulled him through the prop, and he died on the way to hospital.
Sharky didn't have any children (that he knew of) but he did have a wicked sense of humour. I hope he forgives me for submitting him for a Darwin Award! He died doing what he always did... having a go.
Electronic Fireworks
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(1 January 2007, Netherlands) The first Darwin Award of 2007 goes to Serge, 36, who thought it reasonable to hover over an illegal professional firework and light the electronic ignition with an open flame. This was not a traditional fuse--it was a device designed for precision timing, and a flame should not have been used at all. Regardless of the fuse type, a person's head should never be placed in the way of a firework.
The heat triggered an immediate launch and the fireworks catapulted upwards, killing our amateur pyrotechnician enroute to a spectacular burst across the night sky.
A witness told reporters, "His face disappeared. If someone has no face left, you know it's serious." Serge had purchased the firework legally in Belgium but then illegally transported it into the Netherlands. His father disputed the notion that Serge was careless, characterizing his son as a man who gave due consideration to his acts.
Falling in Love
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(20 June 2007, South Carolina) A passing cabbie found a 21 year-old couple naked and injured in the road an hour before sunrise. The two people died at the nearest hospital without regaining consciousness. Authorities were at a loss to explain what had happened. There were no witnesses, no trace of clothing, and no wrecked cars or motorcycles.
Investigators eventually found a clue high on the roof of a nearby building: two sets of neatly folded clothes. Safe sex takes on a whole new meaning when you are perched on the edge of a pyramid-shaped metal roof. "It appears as if [they] accidentally fell off the roof," Sgt. Florence McCants said.
This is a true Darwin Award trifecta: TWO people die, WHILE in the act of procreation, due to an ASTONISHINGLY poor decision. Bottom line: If you put yourself in a precarious "position" at the edge of a pointy roof, you may well find yourself Falling in Love at the same time.
Ironically, one of the deceased was named "Tumbleston."
Oil Tank Trampoline
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(24 June 2007, Colorado) If you cut the rug on an oil tank, be careful not to light a cigarette, else you may soon be climbing the proverbial "Stairway to Heaven". After smoking marijuana and liquoring themselves up at a popular party spot in Routt National Forest, a group of teens decided that it would be fun to leap and cavort on an oil tank.
The energetic gyrations of the dancers caused fumes to leak from the relief valve, and "there were several ignitions sources," according to the sheriff. People were smoking, and there was a bonfire nearby. One of these ignition source sparked a "flashdance" and the crude oil storage tank exploded, hurling two men 150 yards to their deaths.
The deceased were identified as Samuel and Christopher, 17 and 19.
Crutch, Meet Crotch
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(November 2007, Russia) Late one night, Eduard entered the apartment of a 30-year-old handicapped man, who slept peacefully as Eduard quietly cleaned out the valuables. Eduard was preparing to leave when suddenly the man woke up.
"I couldn't believe my eyes! The dark shape of some goon was standing next to my nightstand!" recalls the burglary victim. "I cried out and he attacked me, who was defenseless, with his fists! I had no choice. I hit him between the legs with my crutch, and he leapt out the window. Thank God I live on the first floor, and he did not die from the fall.
"I didn't understand at first what had fallen out of his pants. When I looked closer, I realized that it was a testicle, a man's testicle! I put it in cold water, and rushed to the phone." The handicapped man dialed the emergency services several times, but "the doctors hung up on me when I told them I had ripped a burglar's balls off!"
Half an hour later, the blood-covered thief was found by a passerby, who called the police. "An unconscious man was lying on the sidewalk," said the police investigator. "When the medics revived him, he started screaming hysterically, 'Give me back my balls!'"
Eduard's genitals were so traumatized that doctors had to amputate the entire scrotum to prevent gangrene. In the hospital, the burglar filed a complaint against his victim. He said, "I will never forgive him!"
Beer for Bears
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 August 2007, Serbia) It's well known that alcohol impairs judgement. It's well known that carnivorous wild animals and humans don't mix. What happens when we combine all three? One might expect men, beer, and bears to combine with lethal consequences. Such was the case for a 23-year old man who inadvertently fed himself to Masha and Misha at the Belgrade Zoo.
The Zoo director said of the incident, "Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage."
The man's naked, mauled corpse was found inside the bear habitat, along with plenty of beer cans. His clothes were completely untouched, suggesting that he approached the bears bare-naked by choice. The bears, apparently fearing that his intentions were as dishonorable as they were ill-informed, meted out a summary justice.
Later, Masha and Misha "reacted angrily" when keepers tried to recover the man's corpse, but were eventually persuaded to give up their tasty prize.
Weight Lift
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(27 July 2007, Guadalajara, Mexico) 24-year-old Jessica was working out in the Provincia Hotel's gym when she realised she needed something from the floor below. Instead of picking up the phone, using the intercom, or just walking downstairs, she decided that the open shaft of the industrial lift was the communications device for her.
So Jessica stuck her head into the empty shaft to shout to the people downstairs. And somehow, she missed noticing that the elevator was coming up towards her. If the elevator had been going down, one could say that she was in no position to observe the approaching lift. But, leaving aside the stupidity of sticking your head into an elevator shaft, if she was looking down, how could she miss the mass of metal inexorably headed her way?
Since an elevator cage and a skull are both solid objects, one had to give. Let's just say, the elevator won. Jessica will be missed by her family, but not by the gene pool.
Stop. Look. Listen.
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(12 September 2007, Florida) A woman wins two concert tickets from a local radio station. The Dave Matthews Band, live! She can't believe her luck. She invites her friend to join her, but they are in for more than a concert experience.
Flash forward to the next morning. My buddy, head of operations at the amphitheater, looks like hell. He tells me that two women were killed the previous night at the concert. I am shocked. Nothing like this has ever happened at the amphitheater. I ask for details.
Flash back to the previous evening, 8:30pm and pouring rain. The show is delayed. Two women leave the venue to escape the rain. They pass multiple free shuttle buses that run directly to the parking lot. Instead, they opt for a shortcut across a 7-lane Interstate.
They run a hundred yards through wet grass and jump a six-foot fence that borders the road. Ahead are 3 lanes of freeway traffic, a 100' median, and another 4 lanes of traffic. Beyond that is another six-foot fence, the maze of an 'under construction' garage, and a long hike around a casino.
All in all, the 'shortcut' to their vehicle covers a distance of half a mile. And the women are in a torrential thunderstorm. Free shuttle bus, or mad dash across dangerous territory?
My buddy was an eyewitness when the first vehicle struck the women at 8:30 pm. Oddly, this was in the first lane of traffic, on a straightaway where one can see headlights for miles in either direction. The impact hurled the women farther into traffic, and each was struck by a second car. They did not survive the collisions.
Ironically, one of the women was an "energetic and gifted athlete" who won two national championships in gymnastics.
Elephants Press Back
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(2007, India) Increased mining and recent rains in southeast India have unsettled the wildife. In the past few months, migrating elephants have killed eleven people in southeast India. A team of four journalists decided to interview this herd of rogue elephants.
They went into the forest in search of the rogues--on foot.
Elephants are big, and elephants are fast. As the recent deaths illustrate, a person can't out-run an elephant. But these intrepid journalists apparently assumed that a press pass grants immunity.
With a nose for news, the journalists sniffed out the herd. Once located, it was only natural to capture the photogenic animals on film. Unfortunately, the elephants were camera shy. Angered by the flash, the irritated herd charged the paparazzi, miraculously killing only one of the four.
His remains could not be retrieved.
2007 Darwin Award Winner(21 May 2004, Texas) Michael was an alcoholic. And not an ordinary alcoholic, but an alcoholic who liked to take his liquor, well, rectally. His wife said he was "addicted to enemas" and often used alcohol in this manner. The result was the same: inebriation.
The machine shop owner couldn't imbibe alcohol by mouth due to a painful throat ailment, so he elected to receive his favourite beverage via enema. And tonight, Michael was in for one hell of a party. Two 1.5 litre bottles of sherry, more than 100 fluid ounces, right up the old address!
When the rest of us have had enough, we either stop drinking or pass out. When Michael had had enough (and subsequently passed out) the alcohol remaining in his rectal cavity continued to be absorbed. The next morning, Michael was dead.
The 58-year-old did a pretty good job of embalming himself. According to toxicology reports, his blood alcohol level was 0.47%.
The Laptop Still Works!
2007 Darwin Award Runner-Up(26 February 2007, California) "Driving is not a time to be practicing your multitasking skills," remarked CHP spokesman Tom Marshall. Oscar, 29, had been driving on Highway 99 near Yuba City when his Honda Accord crossed into oncoming traffic and collided with a Hummer. California Highway Patrol officers found Oscar's laptop still running, and plugged into the car's cigarette lighter.
Oscar is not alone. Last year, 510 California drivers were charged with reckless driving while using a TV, video, or computer monitor. A 2001 CHP study cites cellphone use as the top cause of crashes involving distracted drivers, followed by fiddling with music. "Anything that distracts you can kill you, whether it's eating lunch or working on a computer," an AAA spokesman said.
Oscar was a computer tutor. Hopefully his fatal lesson will teach others to surf on the information superhighway, not the asphalt superhighway.
Whac-A-Mole
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(10 January 2007, Germany) A 63-year-old man's extraordinary effort to eradicate moles from his property resulted in a victory for the moles. The man pounded several metal rods into the ground and connected them--not to household current, which would have been bad enough--but to a high-voltage power line, intending to render the subterranean realm uninhabitable.
Incidentally, the maneuver electrified the very ground on which he stood. He was found dead some time later, at his holiday property on the Baltic Sea. Police had to trip the main circuit breaker before venturing onto the property.
The precise date of the sexagenarian's demise could not be ascertained, but the electric bill may provide a clue.
Barn Razing
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(14 January 2007, West Virginia) Raising a new barn is an endeavor that brings a community together. Demolishing a barn is another question. A trio of friends set out to dismantle a dilapidated structure one bracing winter afternoon. Speaking of bracing...
It was all fun and games until one industrious fellow fired up his chainsaw and ripped through a crucial support post. Carrying the weight of a full barn roof, those wooden beams were all that stood between the demolition worker and structural collapse.
The roof succumbed to the pull of gravity, and the ill-fated lumberjack had a few brief moments to contemplate the approach of his deadly problem. As a consolation prize, the deceased was indeed successful at demolishing the barn.
A Prop-er Sendoff
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(Broome, Australia) When you work as a diver on a pearl farm, there are many ways to "buy the farm." Our head diver Mitchell, known as Sharky, was not afraid to take risks to get the job done. He was a loose gun in a company of cowboys. Sharky seeme destined to make an original exit.
A near miss happened in Roebuck Bay. He miscalculated the amount of fuel needed for the air compressor that pumps air to the divers below. Instead of following standard procedure--bringing everyone up and refuelling during a surface interval--he surfaced alone to top up the fuel tank while the compressor was still running.
The deck was unsteady, and naturally he spilled some petrol. The compressor had been running for hours. Its red-hot exhaust ignited the spilled fuel, and the flames followed the fuel into the tank.
The $200,000 dive boat was brand-new and fully kitted out for the pearl farm, including oxygen for resuscitations. The resulting mushroom cloud explosion from the oxy bottle startled observers all the way back in town, five kilometers away.
Luckily Sharky jumped back in the water before the big explosion. He and his crew were picked up by another dive boat.
Despite this incident, Sharky was promoted to skipper of a larger vessel. However, the skipper still found excuses to don the old dive gear. One such excuse was a mooring rope tangled around the propeller. Instead of asking an outfitted diver for assistance, Sharky chucked on his dive gear, started the compressor, clipped on a dive hose, and jumped off the back of the boat. But he neglected to take the boat out of gear...
The spinning prop entangled his hose and started reeling him in. His "lifeline" pulled him through the prop, and he died on the way to hospital.
Sharky didn't have any children (that he knew of) but he did have a wicked sense of humour. I hope he forgives me for submitting him for a Darwin Award! He died doing what he always did... having a go.
Electronic Fireworks
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(1 January 2007, Netherlands) The first Darwin Award of 2007 goes to Serge, 36, who thought it reasonable to hover over an illegal professional firework and light the electronic ignition with an open flame. This was not a traditional fuse--it was a device designed for precision timing, and a flame should not have been used at all. Regardless of the fuse type, a person's head should never be placed in the way of a firework.
The heat triggered an immediate launch and the fireworks catapulted upwards, killing our amateur pyrotechnician enroute to a spectacular burst across the night sky.
A witness told reporters, "His face disappeared. If someone has no face left, you know it's serious." Serge had purchased the firework legally in Belgium but then illegally transported it into the Netherlands. His father disputed the notion that Serge was careless, characterizing his son as a man who gave due consideration to his acts.
Falling in Love
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(20 June 2007, South Carolina) A passing cabbie found a 21 year-old couple naked and injured in the road an hour before sunrise. The two people died at the nearest hospital without regaining consciousness. Authorities were at a loss to explain what had happened. There were no witnesses, no trace of clothing, and no wrecked cars or motorcycles.
Investigators eventually found a clue high on the roof of a nearby building: two sets of neatly folded clothes. Safe sex takes on a whole new meaning when you are perched on the edge of a pyramid-shaped metal roof. "It appears as if [they] accidentally fell off the roof," Sgt. Florence McCants said.
This is a true Darwin Award trifecta: TWO people die, WHILE in the act of procreation, due to an ASTONISHINGLY poor decision. Bottom line: If you put yourself in a precarious "position" at the edge of a pointy roof, you may well find yourself Falling in Love at the same time.
Ironically, one of the deceased was named "Tumbleston."
Oil Tank Trampoline
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(24 June 2007, Colorado) If you cut the rug on an oil tank, be careful not to light a cigarette, else you may soon be climbing the proverbial "Stairway to Heaven". After smoking marijuana and liquoring themselves up at a popular party spot in Routt National Forest, a group of teens decided that it would be fun to leap and cavort on an oil tank.
The energetic gyrations of the dancers caused fumes to leak from the relief valve, and "there were several ignitions sources," according to the sheriff. People were smoking, and there was a bonfire nearby. One of these ignition source sparked a "flashdance" and the crude oil storage tank exploded, hurling two men 150 yards to their deaths.
The deceased were identified as Samuel and Christopher, 17 and 19.
Crutch, Meet Crotch
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(November 2007, Russia) Late one night, Eduard entered the apartment of a 30-year-old handicapped man, who slept peacefully as Eduard quietly cleaned out the valuables. Eduard was preparing to leave when suddenly the man woke up.
"I couldn't believe my eyes! The dark shape of some goon was standing next to my nightstand!" recalls the burglary victim. "I cried out and he attacked me, who was defenseless, with his fists! I had no choice. I hit him between the legs with my crutch, and he leapt out the window. Thank God I live on the first floor, and he did not die from the fall.
"I didn't understand at first what had fallen out of his pants. When I looked closer, I realized that it was a testicle, a man's testicle! I put it in cold water, and rushed to the phone." The handicapped man dialed the emergency services several times, but "the doctors hung up on me when I told them I had ripped a burglar's balls off!"
Half an hour later, the blood-covered thief was found by a passerby, who called the police. "An unconscious man was lying on the sidewalk," said the police investigator. "When the medics revived him, he started screaming hysterically, 'Give me back my balls!'"
Eduard's genitals were so traumatized that doctors had to amputate the entire scrotum to prevent gangrene. In the hospital, the burglar filed a complaint against his victim. He said, "I will never forgive him!"
Beer for Bears
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 August 2007, Serbia) It's well known that alcohol impairs judgement. It's well known that carnivorous wild animals and humans don't mix. What happens when we combine all three? One might expect men, beer, and bears to combine with lethal consequences. Such was the case for a 23-year old man who inadvertently fed himself to Masha and Misha at the Belgrade Zoo.
The Zoo director said of the incident, "Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage."
The man's naked, mauled corpse was found inside the bear habitat, along with plenty of beer cans. His clothes were completely untouched, suggesting that he approached the bears bare-naked by choice. The bears, apparently fearing that his intentions were as dishonorable as they were ill-informed, meted out a summary justice.
Later, Masha and Misha "reacted angrily" when keepers tried to recover the man's corpse, but were eventually persuaded to give up their tasty prize.
Weight Lift
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(27 July 2007, Guadalajara, Mexico) 24-year-old Jessica was working out in the Provincia Hotel's gym when she realised she needed something from the floor below. Instead of picking up the phone, using the intercom, or just walking downstairs, she decided that the open shaft of the industrial lift was the communications device for her.
So Jessica stuck her head into the empty shaft to shout to the people downstairs. And somehow, she missed noticing that the elevator was coming up towards her. If the elevator had been going down, one could say that she was in no position to observe the approaching lift. But, leaving aside the stupidity of sticking your head into an elevator shaft, if she was looking down, how could she miss the mass of metal inexorably headed her way?
Since an elevator cage and a skull are both solid objects, one had to give. Let's just say, the elevator won. Jessica will be missed by her family, but not by the gene pool.
Stop. Look. Listen.
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(12 September 2007, Florida) A woman wins two concert tickets from a local radio station. The Dave Matthews Band, live! She can't believe her luck. She invites her friend to join her, but they are in for more than a concert experience.
Flash forward to the next morning. My buddy, head of operations at the amphitheater, looks like hell. He tells me that two women were killed the previous night at the concert. I am shocked. Nothing like this has ever happened at the amphitheater. I ask for details.
Flash back to the previous evening, 8:30pm and pouring rain. The show is delayed. Two women leave the venue to escape the rain. They pass multiple free shuttle buses that run directly to the parking lot. Instead, they opt for a shortcut across a 7-lane Interstate.
They run a hundred yards through wet grass and jump a six-foot fence that borders the road. Ahead are 3 lanes of freeway traffic, a 100' median, and another 4 lanes of traffic. Beyond that is another six-foot fence, the maze of an 'under construction' garage, and a long hike around a casino.
All in all, the 'shortcut' to their vehicle covers a distance of half a mile. And the women are in a torrential thunderstorm. Free shuttle bus, or mad dash across dangerous territory?
My buddy was an eyewitness when the first vehicle struck the women at 8:30 pm. Oddly, this was in the first lane of traffic, on a straightaway where one can see headlights for miles in either direction. The impact hurled the women farther into traffic, and each was struck by a second car. They did not survive the collisions.
Ironically, one of the women was an "energetic and gifted athlete" who won two national championships in gymnastics.
Elephants Press Back
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
(2007, India) Increased mining and recent rains in southeast India have unsettled the wildife. In the past few months, migrating elephants have killed eleven people in southeast India. A team of four journalists decided to interview this herd of rogue elephants.
They went into the forest in search of the rogues--on foot.
Elephants are big, and elephants are fast. As the recent deaths illustrate, a person can't out-run an elephant. But these intrepid journalists apparently assumed that a press pass grants immunity.
With a nose for news, the journalists sniffed out the herd. Once located, it was only natural to capture the photogenic animals on film. Unfortunately, the elephants were camera shy. Angered by the flash, the irritated herd charged the paparazzi, miraculously killing only one of the four.
His remains could not be retrieved.
2006 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Score One For Goliath
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(9 September 2006, Florida) A fearsome mythical giant named Goliath was felled by David's humble slingshot. But a modern leviathan vs. a speargun is another tale altogether, as a 42-year-old man named Gary discovered.
Although it was outlawed in 1990, poaching giant groupers remains surprisingly popular in the Florida Keys. These muscular fish can weigh 600 pounds, yet underwater hunters voluntarily choose to tether themselves to the creatures with spearguns, in defiance of both the law and common sense.
Of this elite group, our Darwin Award winner further distinguished himself by disregarding one essential spearfishing precaution. The "fit and experienced snorkeler" embarked on a grouper hunt without a knife to cut himself loose, guaranteeing that his next attack would be his last. "Not wearing a knife is like crossing I-95 with your eyes closed," explained one experienced diver.
In those final hours, the tables were turned, and the leviathan fish was given an opportunity to experience "catching a person." The body of the spearfisher was found pinned to the coral, 17 feet underwater. Three coils of line were wrapped around his wrist, and one very dead grouper was impaled at the other end of the line.
Faithful Flotation
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(August 2006, Libreville, Gabon) During an impassioned sermon, a congregation was surprised to hear their 35-year old pastor insist that one could literally walk on water, if one had enough faith. His words were big and bold. He extolled the heavenly power possessed by a faithful man with such force that he may well have convinced himself.
Whether or not he believed in his heart, his speech only left room for shame should he leave his own faith untested. Thus, the fiery pastor set out to walk across a major estuary, along the path of a 20-minute ferry ride. Even though he could not swim.
Lacking the miraculous powers of David Copperfield, let alone Jesus Christ, this ill-fated cleric found only a damp Darwin Award at the end of his chosen path.
Crushing De'feet'
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 November 2006, Austria) Once the videotape from a monitoring camera was reviewed, all became clear. A man who had been reported missing was found the following morning in a trash compactor, victim of a self-induced industrial accident.
He worked for a parcel delivery service in Hall in Tirol. He had loaded the hydraulic press with empty boxes and started it up. At that point, the long-time employee walked to the edge of the charging (filling) hole and used his foot to press the boxes further into the hydraulic trash compactor.
His foot was was seized by the press, and he was drawn into the chamber and crushed. He was not discovered until his colleagues needed to use the press again the next day.
Hammer of Doom
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(August 2006, Brazil) August brings us a winner from Brazil, who tried to disassemble a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) by driving back and forth over it with a car. This technique was ineffective, so he escalated to pounding the RPG with a sledgehammer. The second try worked--in a sense. The explosion proved fatal to one man, six cars, and the repair shop wherein the efforts took place.
Fourteen more RPG were found in a car parked nearby. Police believe the ammunition was being scavenged to sell as scrap metal. If it wasn't scrap then, it certainly is now!
High on Life
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(3 June 2006, Florida) Two more candidates have thrown themselves into the running for a Darwin Award. The feet of Jason and Sara, both 21, were found protruding from a huge, deflated helium advertising balloon. Jason was a college student, and Sara attended community college, but apparently their education had glossed over the importance of breathing oxygen.
When one breathes pure helium the lack of oxygen in the bloodstream causes a rapid loss of consciousness. Some euthanasia experts advocate the use of helium to painlessly end one's life. At least Sara and Jason went peacefully.
A family member said, "Sara was mischievous, to be honest." The pair pulled down the 8' balloon, and climbed inside for a breath of helium goodness. Their last words consisted of high-pitched, incoherent giggling as they slowly passed out, and passed into the hereafter.
Sheriff's deputies said the two were not victims of foul play. They climbed into the balloon of their own volition, and no drugs or alcohol were involved.
A Slow Burn
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(6 July 2006, Ohio) Insurance fraud is harder than it looks. Just ask Andreas, who lost his life trying to collect on an amputated limb. Just ask Musa and his son Essa, who hired an arsonist to burn down their Steak Thyme sub shop so they could collect the insurance money. They promised the arsonist a $60,000 a year job, although where he would work once the shop was ashes is unknown.
Three times he tried, and three times he failed to destroy the sandwich shop. Whether it was a Molotov cocktail thrown through the window, or chairs doused with gasoline and set ablaze, the result was the same. Minor damage. The neighborhood was up in arms over the apparent "hate crimes" repeatedly being committed against the two Jordanian immigrants.
Musa grew tired of throwing good money after bad. This was getting him nowhere! For the fourth arson attempt, only 12 hours after the flaming chairs fizzled, he and his son decided to help their hired hand. They spread gasoline around their eatery. A single match would do the trick.
Tragically, they had more talent for arson than their amateur arsonist. They took a cigarette break. One flick of a lighter later, a gas explosion took out one wall, and burned both men so severely that, despite several weeks of hospitalized care, the men died.
Copper Kite String
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 March 2006, Belize) Benjamin Franklin reputedly flew his kite in a lightning storm, and discovered that lightning equals electricity. However, certain precautions must be taken to avoid sudden electrocution. Kennon, 26, replicated the conditions of Ben Franklin's experiment, but without Ben's sensible safety precautions.
Kennon was flying a kite with a short string that he had extended with a length of thin copper wire. The copper made contact with a high-tension line, sending a terminal bolt of electrical "lightning" sizzling towards the man.
Just bad luck? Not according to Kennon's father, who said his son was an electrician and "should have known better."
Rock Out
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(17 November 2006, Singapore) Picture a college dorm room. Dirty laundry, sexy posters, food wrappers, textbooks, and in the middle of it all, a 16-year-old male rocking out to loud music. A typical student, a typical day.
But this particular student, rocking out on his air guitar, was about to "take things too far," according to the coroner's report. Li Xiao, a student at the Hua Business School, bounced up and down on his bed with such enthusiasm that he rocked himself right out of the third-floor window.
Normally the windows are locked, but students reportedly force the locks so they can sneak a cigarette. Perhaps alluding to Ted Nugent's rock song, the court ruled it a case of "Death By Misadventure."
Modern Armor
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(26 August 2006, Leicester, England) Darren's death was a mystery. The 33-year-old was found slumped in the hallway of his house, bleeding from stab wounds to his chest. Police initially assumed that an assailant had attacked him, but they could find no supporting evidence. A year later, the inquest revealed why Darren can stake his claim to a place among the winners of the Darwin Award.
Darren had called a friend, but minutes after he hung up, rang back to ask for an ambulance. The front door was ajar, and Darren was found lying near a bloodstained lock-knife he had purchased whilst on holiday in Spain. Forensics investigators saw no indication of a struggle, and the coroner reported that the stab wounds seemed to be self-inflicted. However, Darren had shown no suicidal tendencies.
His wife, who was on holiday at the time of the incident, cleared up the mystery, and revealed why our subject will go down in history as a Darwin Award winner. As she was leaving for the holiday, she remembered Darren wondering whether his new jacket was 'stab-proof'.
That's right. Darren decided to find out if his jacket could withstand a knife attack. Did he choose to test his jacket while it was draped over the back of a chair? No, our man thought that the best approach would be to wear the garment and stab himself. Sadly, his choice of armor proved less resistant to a sharp blade than he had hoped.
The coroner reached a verdict of accidental death by 'misadventure'.
Rolling Stones
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(20 March 2006, Vietnam) A rolling stone is not all that gathers no moss. Three Vietnam men scavenging for scrap metal found an unexploded 500-pound bomb perched atop a hill near Hanoi, and decided to retrieve it with a little help from Sir Isaac Newton. After all, gravity is free. As they rolled the bomb down the hillside, it detonated, blasting a four-meter crater and sending all three entrepreneurs to a face to face meeting with their deceased hero.
Sudden Stop
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(Wisconsin) A patrol officer came to speak to our Drivers' Education class about safety. Like all such officers, he came with several cautionary tales, and the irony of this one stayed with me.
In a town down the road, seven college kids decided to raise a little ruckus after a party. They all piled into a pickup, one in the cab and the rest in the back, and they drove down deserted backroads pulling stop signs out of the dirt. The goal was to get as many as possible into the truck. Speeding back to the party, they were struck by a delivery vehicle at--you guessed it--an intersection which had, until recently, sported a safety marker.
The six in the back of the truck were killed, and the driver was badly injured. The patrol officer said he would never forget the sight of the dead students sprawled at the wreck, surrounded by twenty-seven stop signs.
Footloose in the Footwell
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 July 2006, Australia) Police wished to question Gareth, 38, in connection with a stabbing. But he evaded that unpleasant business by driving his car into a power pole. It was initially assumed that he had simply lost control of the vehicle, but Victoria police soon determined that the fatal crash was caused by an accidental shot to the groin. Apparently the deceased had been driving along with a loaded firearm that he kept handy in the footwell of the car.
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(9 September 2006, Florida) A fearsome mythical giant named Goliath was felled by David's humble slingshot. But a modern leviathan vs. a speargun is another tale altogether, as a 42-year-old man named Gary discovered.
Although it was outlawed in 1990, poaching giant groupers remains surprisingly popular in the Florida Keys. These muscular fish can weigh 600 pounds, yet underwater hunters voluntarily choose to tether themselves to the creatures with spearguns, in defiance of both the law and common sense.
Of this elite group, our Darwin Award winner further distinguished himself by disregarding one essential spearfishing precaution. The "fit and experienced snorkeler" embarked on a grouper hunt without a knife to cut himself loose, guaranteeing that his next attack would be his last. "Not wearing a knife is like crossing I-95 with your eyes closed," explained one experienced diver.
In those final hours, the tables were turned, and the leviathan fish was given an opportunity to experience "catching a person." The body of the spearfisher was found pinned to the coral, 17 feet underwater. Three coils of line were wrapped around his wrist, and one very dead grouper was impaled at the other end of the line.
Faithful Flotation
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(August 2006, Libreville, Gabon) During an impassioned sermon, a congregation was surprised to hear their 35-year old pastor insist that one could literally walk on water, if one had enough faith. His words were big and bold. He extolled the heavenly power possessed by a faithful man with such force that he may well have convinced himself.
Whether or not he believed in his heart, his speech only left room for shame should he leave his own faith untested. Thus, the fiery pastor set out to walk across a major estuary, along the path of a 20-minute ferry ride. Even though he could not swim.
Lacking the miraculous powers of David Copperfield, let alone Jesus Christ, this ill-fated cleric found only a damp Darwin Award at the end of his chosen path.
Crushing De'feet'
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 November 2006, Austria) Once the videotape from a monitoring camera was reviewed, all became clear. A man who had been reported missing was found the following morning in a trash compactor, victim of a self-induced industrial accident.
He worked for a parcel delivery service in Hall in Tirol. He had loaded the hydraulic press with empty boxes and started it up. At that point, the long-time employee walked to the edge of the charging (filling) hole and used his foot to press the boxes further into the hydraulic trash compactor.
His foot was was seized by the press, and he was drawn into the chamber and crushed. He was not discovered until his colleagues needed to use the press again the next day.
Hammer of Doom
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(August 2006, Brazil) August brings us a winner from Brazil, who tried to disassemble a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) by driving back and forth over it with a car. This technique was ineffective, so he escalated to pounding the RPG with a sledgehammer. The second try worked--in a sense. The explosion proved fatal to one man, six cars, and the repair shop wherein the efforts took place.
Fourteen more RPG were found in a car parked nearby. Police believe the ammunition was being scavenged to sell as scrap metal. If it wasn't scrap then, it certainly is now!
High on Life
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(3 June 2006, Florida) Two more candidates have thrown themselves into the running for a Darwin Award. The feet of Jason and Sara, both 21, were found protruding from a huge, deflated helium advertising balloon. Jason was a college student, and Sara attended community college, but apparently their education had glossed over the importance of breathing oxygen.
When one breathes pure helium the lack of oxygen in the bloodstream causes a rapid loss of consciousness. Some euthanasia experts advocate the use of helium to painlessly end one's life. At least Sara and Jason went peacefully.
A family member said, "Sara was mischievous, to be honest." The pair pulled down the 8' balloon, and climbed inside for a breath of helium goodness. Their last words consisted of high-pitched, incoherent giggling as they slowly passed out, and passed into the hereafter.
Sheriff's deputies said the two were not victims of foul play. They climbed into the balloon of their own volition, and no drugs or alcohol were involved.
A Slow Burn
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(6 July 2006, Ohio) Insurance fraud is harder than it looks. Just ask Andreas, who lost his life trying to collect on an amputated limb. Just ask Musa and his son Essa, who hired an arsonist to burn down their Steak Thyme sub shop so they could collect the insurance money. They promised the arsonist a $60,000 a year job, although where he would work once the shop was ashes is unknown.
Three times he tried, and three times he failed to destroy the sandwich shop. Whether it was a Molotov cocktail thrown through the window, or chairs doused with gasoline and set ablaze, the result was the same. Minor damage. The neighborhood was up in arms over the apparent "hate crimes" repeatedly being committed against the two Jordanian immigrants.
Musa grew tired of throwing good money after bad. This was getting him nowhere! For the fourth arson attempt, only 12 hours after the flaming chairs fizzled, he and his son decided to help their hired hand. They spread gasoline around their eatery. A single match would do the trick.
Tragically, they had more talent for arson than their amateur arsonist. They took a cigarette break. One flick of a lighter later, a gas explosion took out one wall, and burned both men so severely that, despite several weeks of hospitalized care, the men died.
Copper Kite String
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 March 2006, Belize) Benjamin Franklin reputedly flew his kite in a lightning storm, and discovered that lightning equals electricity. However, certain precautions must be taken to avoid sudden electrocution. Kennon, 26, replicated the conditions of Ben Franklin's experiment, but without Ben's sensible safety precautions.
Kennon was flying a kite with a short string that he had extended with a length of thin copper wire. The copper made contact with a high-tension line, sending a terminal bolt of electrical "lightning" sizzling towards the man.
Just bad luck? Not according to Kennon's father, who said his son was an electrician and "should have known better."
Rock Out
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(17 November 2006, Singapore) Picture a college dorm room. Dirty laundry, sexy posters, food wrappers, textbooks, and in the middle of it all, a 16-year-old male rocking out to loud music. A typical student, a typical day.
But this particular student, rocking out on his air guitar, was about to "take things too far," according to the coroner's report. Li Xiao, a student at the Hua Business School, bounced up and down on his bed with such enthusiasm that he rocked himself right out of the third-floor window.
Normally the windows are locked, but students reportedly force the locks so they can sneak a cigarette. Perhaps alluding to Ted Nugent's rock song, the court ruled it a case of "Death By Misadventure."
Modern Armor
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(26 August 2006, Leicester, England) Darren's death was a mystery. The 33-year-old was found slumped in the hallway of his house, bleeding from stab wounds to his chest. Police initially assumed that an assailant had attacked him, but they could find no supporting evidence. A year later, the inquest revealed why Darren can stake his claim to a place among the winners of the Darwin Award.
Darren had called a friend, but minutes after he hung up, rang back to ask for an ambulance. The front door was ajar, and Darren was found lying near a bloodstained lock-knife he had purchased whilst on holiday in Spain. Forensics investigators saw no indication of a struggle, and the coroner reported that the stab wounds seemed to be self-inflicted. However, Darren had shown no suicidal tendencies.
His wife, who was on holiday at the time of the incident, cleared up the mystery, and revealed why our subject will go down in history as a Darwin Award winner. As she was leaving for the holiday, she remembered Darren wondering whether his new jacket was 'stab-proof'.
That's right. Darren decided to find out if his jacket could withstand a knife attack. Did he choose to test his jacket while it was draped over the back of a chair? No, our man thought that the best approach would be to wear the garment and stab himself. Sadly, his choice of armor proved less resistant to a sharp blade than he had hoped.
The coroner reached a verdict of accidental death by 'misadventure'.
Rolling Stones
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(20 March 2006, Vietnam) A rolling stone is not all that gathers no moss. Three Vietnam men scavenging for scrap metal found an unexploded 500-pound bomb perched atop a hill near Hanoi, and decided to retrieve it with a little help from Sir Isaac Newton. After all, gravity is free. As they rolled the bomb down the hillside, it detonated, blasting a four-meter crater and sending all three entrepreneurs to a face to face meeting with their deceased hero.
Sudden Stop
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(Wisconsin) A patrol officer came to speak to our Drivers' Education class about safety. Like all such officers, he came with several cautionary tales, and the irony of this one stayed with me.
In a town down the road, seven college kids decided to raise a little ruckus after a party. They all piled into a pickup, one in the cab and the rest in the back, and they drove down deserted backroads pulling stop signs out of the dirt. The goal was to get as many as possible into the truck. Speeding back to the party, they were struck by a delivery vehicle at--you guessed it--an intersection which had, until recently, sported a safety marker.
The six in the back of the truck were killed, and the driver was badly injured. The patrol officer said he would never forget the sight of the dead students sprawled at the wreck, surrounded by twenty-seven stop signs.
Footloose in the Footwell
2006 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 July 2006, Australia) Police wished to question Gareth, 38, in connection with a stabbing. But he evaded that unpleasant business by driving his car into a power pole. It was initially assumed that he had simply lost control of the vehicle, but Victoria police soon determined that the fatal crash was caused by an accidental shot to the groin. Apparently the deceased had been driving along with a loaded firearm that he kept handy in the footwell of the car.
2005 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Surprise Attack Surprise
2005 Darwin Award Winner
(3 January 2005, St. Maurice, Switzerland) It was the first week of a weapons refresher course, and Swiss Army Grenadier Detachment 20/5 had just finished training with live ammunition. The shooting instructor ordered the soldiers to secure their weapons for a break.
The 24-year-old second lieutenant, in charge of this detachment, decided this would be a good time to demonstrate a knife attack on a soldier. Wielding his bayonet, he leaped toward one of his men, achieving complete surprise.
But earlier that week, the soldiers had been drilled to release the safety catch and ready their guns for firing in the shortest possible time. The surprised soldier, seeing his lieutenant leaping toward him with a knife, snapped off a shot to protect himself from the attack.
The lesson could not have been more successful: the soldier had saved himself and protected the rest of the detachment from a surprise attack. The lieutenant might have wished to commend his soldier on his quick action and accurate marksmanship. Unfortunately, he had been killed with one shot.
And this, kiddies, is why we don't play with knives or guns. Ever. Even if we are trained professionals, and especially if our target is a trained professional.
"Plug Me In"
2005 Darwin Award Winner
(7 March 2005, Vietnam) Nguyen, 21, had been drinking with friends in Hanoi, when he pulled out an old detonator he had found. It was about six centimeters long and eight centimeters in diameter, with two wires hanging out. Because it was old and rusty, Nguyen said, it couldn't explode. His friends disagreed.
To prove his point, Nguyen put the detonator in his mouth and asked his friend to plug the dangling wires into a 220-volt electrical receptacle.
Turns out Nyugen was wrong!
The victim had little time to reflect on his mistaken, or whether 220 volts alone could have been fatal. According to police, "the explosion blew out his cheeks and smashed all his teeth." He died on the way to the hospital.
Chimney-Cleaning Grenade
2005 Darwin Award Winner
(13 January 2005, Croatia) One fateful afternoon, 55-year-old Marko retreated to his semi-detached workshop to make himself a tool for chimney cleaning. The chimney was too high for a simple broom to work, but if he could attach a brush to a chain and then weigh it down with something, that would do the trick. But what could he use as a weight?
He happened to have the perfect object. It was heavy, yet compact. And best of all, it was made of metal, so he could weld it to the chain. He must have somehow overlooked the fact that it was also a hand grenade and was filled with explosive material.
Marko turned on his welding apparatus and began to create an arc between the chain and the grenade. As the metal heated up, the grenade exploded. The force of the explosion killed poor Marko instantly, blasting shrapnel through the walls of the shed and shattering the windshield of a Mercedes parked outside. Marko's chimney was untouched, however.
Mining for Elephants
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(15 February 2005, Rushinga, Zimbabwe) The elephants were trampling Christian's maize field, which he had planted on an elephant trail of long standing. He had to find a way to fight back! Fortunately, there was an old minefield nearby, on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border. Christian figured a few landmines planted around his field would soon teach the elephants a lesson they would never forget.
Christian may have gotten the idea of using the mines from a couple of incidents that had recently transpired. A local resident had been injured after picking up a landmine while herding cattle the week before. A week before that, another Rushinga man had lost part of his leg after stepping on a landmine. The other villagers saw the writing on the wall, and avoided the landmines.
But Christian realized they were just what he needed. Clearly, these mines could cause great damage to an elephant! He dug up five that had been exposed by recent heavy rains. As he carried them home, the unstable mines detonated, killing Christian instantly.
Then total number of elephants injured? Zero.
Elephant Tail
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 January 2005, Pendang, Thailand) It's no secret that elephants are big. Elephants eat hundreds of pounds of food a day just to maintain their weight. Indian elephants are nine feet tall at the shoulder. They're so powerful that in Southeast Asia, males are used to haul massive tree trunks with their three-foot tusks, work performed by heavy equipment in other countries.
It's also no secret that teasing an animal makes it mad. Teasing a animal that can carry a tree with its tusks may not be a good idea. Yet that was the very idea that formed in Prawat's head, when he saw a herd of five performing elephants chained to trees outside a Buddhist temple.
While the owner waited inside for an entertainment permit, Prawat, a 50-year-old rubber-tapper, offered sugar cane to one of the ever-hungry elephants... then pulled it away. Then he did it again. And again. And again.
The game was great fun for Prawat, but the elephant quickly tired of it. The last time Prawat withdrew the treat, the elephant swung his massive tusks and gored him through the stomach. Prawat died on the way to the hospital. The elephant got his treat.
Failed Frame-Up
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 March 2005, Michigan) "Unusual" and "complicated" is how the Missaukee County sheriff described the mysterious death of 19-year-old Christopher.
After an evening spent imbibing large quantities of alcohol, Christopher noticed a shortage in his liquor supply that could not be attributed to his own depredations. He concluded that his neighbor had stolen a bottle of booze! He menaced the neighbor with a knife, to no avail, whereupon he retired to his own apartment to brood about revenge.
Finally he figured out the perfect way to get back at that conniving bottle-thief: Christopher would stab himself and blame the neighbor!
A witness saw Christopher enter the bathroom as he called 911. He calmly informed the dispatcher that his neighbor had stabbed him. Witnesses said he looked fine when he emerged from the bathroom, but a moment later gouts of blood spewed from his chest. Suddenly he began screaming begging for help. The dispatcher heard a woman shout, "Why did you do this?" He collapsed at the door of his apartment.
Deputies arrived quickly, but Christopher had already bled to death from self-inflicted stab wounds to his chest. An autopsy determined that he had stabbed himself in the chest twice. The first wound apparently didn't look dangerous enough, so he tried again. The second time, the knife plunged into his left ventricle. This wound was plenty dangerous: he had only two minutes to live.
Christopher died in vain. His deathbed accusation of his neighbor failed, as a witness confirmed that the neighbor was not in the apartment. All Christopher got for revenge was an accidental death sentence.
Death Valley Daze
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(27 July 2005, California) Robert, 35, was eager to hang out with the nudists at the Palm Springs campground, in a part of Death Valley where temperatures reached 136 degrees. The track was rough but passable until he was lured into the Saline Mud Flats by the deceptively dry appearance of its crackled surface, radiating heat in the baking sun. Within a few feet, the wheels of his VW microbus sunk deep into the muck that lay hidden beneath the crust.
Robert was miles from nowhere, surrounded by the bleached skulls of other animals that had become trapped in the mire. But he had plenty of water, so he waited for help to find him on the remote dirt track. After six days, he abandoned the microbus and began walking to a less deserted location where someone was more likely to pass.
Luck was with him! As he was shaking the last drop of water from his bottle, help arrived in the form of 14-year-old British lads from the League of Venturers, who were training in search-and-rescue techniques. "He was crying and completely hysterical. I don't think he expected to last the day," said the unit leader. They gave him a lift to the nearest ranger station, 80 miles away, where he kissed the ground in gratitude.
Robert had cheated death once, but that didn't stop him from tempting fate again.
In nearby Bishop, he found someone to tow the microbus out of the mudflats. Alas, it had two flat tires and other mechanical problems, so he returned to Bishop for automotive supplies. He snagged another ride into Death Valley, this time with a couple who took an unfamiliar route from the north, and dropped him off at a washout in the road about 15 miles from the Palm Springs campground.
His plan was to locate the campground and enlist help fixing his vehicle. He stashed his supplies and began walking. His body was found three days later, without a map, a GPS, or even water. Authorities estimated that he had walked along the road for 10 miles before heading into the open desert, seeking water.
All Wound Up
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 April 2005, Moscow, Russia) A construction worker drilling the foundation of a parking garage project on Starobitsevskaya Street noticed something shiny stuck to the swiftly rotating auger. He took a closer look but still couldn't identify the shiny object, so he reached down to grab it. Unfortunately, his jacket caught on the auger, winding his hand, his arm, and then his whole body into the apparatus. By the time his fellow workers could shut down the rig, "only the man's legs below the knees remained intact," according to the daily newspaper.
What I Can Still Do
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 January 2005, Florida) Two North Fort Myers residents, 23-year-old Molly and her husband, had rented a room in a local motel for some unspecified activity, perhaps involving perpetuation of the species. As Molly entered the second-floor room, she went straight for the lanai, which overlooked a concrete patio. Most guests would have seen the railing on the edge of the lanai as a safety feature, but for Molly it brought to mind fond memories of her youthful gymnastic abilities.
Molly called out to Todd, "Watch to see what I can still do." These would be her last words. She did a flip onto the railing for a handstand, just the way she used to do, then toppled over the other side, slamming into the patio 15 feet below. She was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Rocketing to Glory
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(7 February 2005, Malaysia) Fireworks are a longstanding lunar New Year's tradition among Malaysia's large Chinese minority, and continue to be widely used to celebrate, despite a ban on their saleS and use.
Wan, a 29-year-old excavator operator, spent the evening watching people set off fireworks outside a suburban Kuala Lumpur nightclub. These were no mere firecrackers. They were rockets that shot as high as a ten-story building before exploding.
His curiosity piqued, Wan bent over one of the launching tubes for a closer look, wondering how these powerful rockets worked. He was peering down the tube when it fired, sending him flying ten meters. He died instantly from severe head injuries, according to a senior police official.
Tide Waits for No Man
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(23 May 2005, Texas) After surf-fishing on Crystal Beach, John was fatigued, but unwilling to call it a night. The full moon threatened to disturbed his nap, so John curled up for forty winks in the darkest place available: underneath his truck, which was parked on the beach.
The next morning, a pickup truck was reported abandoned in the surf off Crystal Beach. A tow truck driver was called in, and had barely moved the pickup a foot, when he found the body of a 37-year-old man embedded in the sand beneath it.
It turned out that the truck was not abandoned, after all. As John slept, time passed and the tide rolled back in. The wet sand shifted beneath the truck's weight, and John was trapped beneath it, unable to escape. The beach became his final resting place.
Freeway Dangler
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 May 2005, Seattle, Washington) Strength and endurance are two of the most important characteristics that can be passed on to improve the species, so physical challenges between males are frequent. In this case, two drinking buddies found themselves on an overpass 40 feet above a busy freeway in downtown Seattle at 2:45 a.m. It turned out to be the perfect place to determine who had more strength and endurance. Whoever could dangle from the overpass the longest would win!
Unfortunately, the winner was too tired from his victory to climb back up, despite help from his 31-year-old friend. The unidentified champion fell smack into the front of a semi-truck barreling down the highway at 60 mph and bounced onto the pavement, where he was hit by a car. The car did not stop. Authorities did not identify the winner of the competition.
Wales Wins
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(8 February 2005, Caerphilly, Wales) "If Wales wins, I'll cut my balls off," Geoff told his mates at a social club while watching the rugby match between England and its arch-rival. His friends thought the 26-year-old was joking, but after Wales' 11-9 victory over England, he went home, castrated himself with a knife, and walked the length of two rugby fields back to the bar to show his shocked friends the evidence.
It was Wales' first home win over England in 12 years. Geoff was taken to a hospital where he remained "in a seriously ill condition."
The Nuisance of Seatbelts
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(5 January 2005, Nebraska) In September of his senior year at the University of Nebraska, 21-year-old Derek wrote an impassioned declaration of independence from seatbelts for his college newspaper. Although "intrusive and ridiculous" seatbelt laws saved 6100 lives a year, according to statistics from the U.S. Congress, Derek concluded with the statement, "If I want to be the jerk that flirts with death, I should be able to do that."
Derek "was a bright young boy, a 4.0" majoring in five subjects and planning to attend law school. He was also smart enough to tutor friends in subjects he didn't even take. But good grades don't equate with common sense.
Derek was returning from a holiday in San Antonio, Texas. The driver of the Ford Explorer and his front seat passenger both wore seatbelts. Only Derek was willing to buck the system, sitting without a seatbelt in the back seat because, in the words of his newspaper column, he belonged to the "die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to buckle up, no matter what the government does."
When the SUV hit a patch of ice, slid off US 80 and rolled several times, Derek, in an involuntary display of his freedom, was thrown from the vehicle. He died at the scene. The other occupants of the SUV, slaves to the seatbelt, survived with minor injuries.
Alcohol was not involved in the accident.
Off-Road Driving
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(6 January 2005, Johannesburg, South Africa) Massive thunderstorms had turned the Braamfontein Spruit into a raging river. It was a little past midnight when police warned Barbara, 33, that a flash flood was inundating the bridge ahead. They urged her not to cross. But Barbara was driving a BMW X3, an off-road vehicle with xDrive all-wheel-drive.
Brochures assured her that the luxury SUV with Sensatec upholstery and an 8-speaker stereo system had "virtually unlimited agility." So Barbara laughed off the police advice, and continued towards the bridge. xDrive all-wheel drive lost its grip as the floodwaters swept her BMW X3 off the bridge. Her body was found later inside the vehicle over a mile down the river.
Kittie Toy
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(18 December 2005, South Africa) Two muggers were working a crowd. The had just taken a cellphone and purse from a couple at knifepoint, when the woman screamed. The muggers sprinted away. But working a crowd and working out are entirely different things, and one of the muggers was out of shape.
As he watched his compatriot recede into the distance, he felt the stitch in his side, and knew he could run no farther. Perhaps he was thinking he should have spent some of his ill-gotten gains on a trip to the gym. But then he spotted a high fence, and that, at least, he could manage.
He put on a burst of speed, and leapt the fence. Sure enough, no one followed. Escape! But he had failed to take into consideration a very important fact. He was at the Bloemfontein Zoo. Just as he was congratulating himself on his foolproof escape, he realized that the other side of the fence was a 10 meter drop into a cage of bored Bengal tigers!
Speaking of foolproof, the tigers wasted no time in treating the nearest fool as their own little kitty toy. The mauled body of the mugger was not noticed until noon. A zoo spokesperson said that the tigers had been fed the previous afternoon, else they would have left no evidence behind.
Police said a post mortem would be carried out to determine the exact cause of his death--as if that wasn't obvious.
2005 Darwin Award Winner(3 January 2005, St. Maurice, Switzerland) It was the first week of a weapons refresher course, and Swiss Army Grenadier Detachment 20/5 had just finished training with live ammunition. The shooting instructor ordered the soldiers to secure their weapons for a break.
The 24-year-old second lieutenant, in charge of this detachment, decided this would be a good time to demonstrate a knife attack on a soldier. Wielding his bayonet, he leaped toward one of his men, achieving complete surprise.
But earlier that week, the soldiers had been drilled to release the safety catch and ready their guns for firing in the shortest possible time. The surprised soldier, seeing his lieutenant leaping toward him with a knife, snapped off a shot to protect himself from the attack.
The lesson could not have been more successful: the soldier had saved himself and protected the rest of the detachment from a surprise attack. The lieutenant might have wished to commend his soldier on his quick action and accurate marksmanship. Unfortunately, he had been killed with one shot.
And this, kiddies, is why we don't play with knives or guns. Ever. Even if we are trained professionals, and especially if our target is a trained professional.
"Plug Me In"
2005 Darwin Award Winner(7 March 2005, Vietnam) Nguyen, 21, had been drinking with friends in Hanoi, when he pulled out an old detonator he had found. It was about six centimeters long and eight centimeters in diameter, with two wires hanging out. Because it was old and rusty, Nguyen said, it couldn't explode. His friends disagreed.
To prove his point, Nguyen put the detonator in his mouth and asked his friend to plug the dangling wires into a 220-volt electrical receptacle.
Turns out Nyugen was wrong!
The victim had little time to reflect on his mistaken, or whether 220 volts alone could have been fatal. According to police, "the explosion blew out his cheeks and smashed all his teeth." He died on the way to the hospital.
Chimney-Cleaning Grenade
2005 Darwin Award Winner(13 January 2005, Croatia) One fateful afternoon, 55-year-old Marko retreated to his semi-detached workshop to make himself a tool for chimney cleaning. The chimney was too high for a simple broom to work, but if he could attach a brush to a chain and then weigh it down with something, that would do the trick. But what could he use as a weight?
He happened to have the perfect object. It was heavy, yet compact. And best of all, it was made of metal, so he could weld it to the chain. He must have somehow overlooked the fact that it was also a hand grenade and was filled with explosive material.
Marko turned on his welding apparatus and began to create an arc between the chain and the grenade. As the metal heated up, the grenade exploded. The force of the explosion killed poor Marko instantly, blasting shrapnel through the walls of the shed and shattering the windshield of a Mercedes parked outside. Marko's chimney was untouched, however.
Mining for Elephants
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(15 February 2005, Rushinga, Zimbabwe) The elephants were trampling Christian's maize field, which he had planted on an elephant trail of long standing. He had to find a way to fight back! Fortunately, there was an old minefield nearby, on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border. Christian figured a few landmines planted around his field would soon teach the elephants a lesson they would never forget.
Christian may have gotten the idea of using the mines from a couple of incidents that had recently transpired. A local resident had been injured after picking up a landmine while herding cattle the week before. A week before that, another Rushinga man had lost part of his leg after stepping on a landmine. The other villagers saw the writing on the wall, and avoided the landmines.
But Christian realized they were just what he needed. Clearly, these mines could cause great damage to an elephant! He dug up five that had been exposed by recent heavy rains. As he carried them home, the unstable mines detonated, killing Christian instantly.
Then total number of elephants injured? Zero.
Elephant Tail
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 January 2005, Pendang, Thailand) It's no secret that elephants are big. Elephants eat hundreds of pounds of food a day just to maintain their weight. Indian elephants are nine feet tall at the shoulder. They're so powerful that in Southeast Asia, males are used to haul massive tree trunks with their three-foot tusks, work performed by heavy equipment in other countries.
It's also no secret that teasing an animal makes it mad. Teasing a animal that can carry a tree with its tusks may not be a good idea. Yet that was the very idea that formed in Prawat's head, when he saw a herd of five performing elephants chained to trees outside a Buddhist temple.
While the owner waited inside for an entertainment permit, Prawat, a 50-year-old rubber-tapper, offered sugar cane to one of the ever-hungry elephants... then pulled it away. Then he did it again. And again. And again.
The game was great fun for Prawat, but the elephant quickly tired of it. The last time Prawat withdrew the treat, the elephant swung his massive tusks and gored him through the stomach. Prawat died on the way to the hospital. The elephant got his treat.
Failed Frame-Up
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 March 2005, Michigan) "Unusual" and "complicated" is how the Missaukee County sheriff described the mysterious death of 19-year-old Christopher.
After an evening spent imbibing large quantities of alcohol, Christopher noticed a shortage in his liquor supply that could not be attributed to his own depredations. He concluded that his neighbor had stolen a bottle of booze! He menaced the neighbor with a knife, to no avail, whereupon he retired to his own apartment to brood about revenge.
Finally he figured out the perfect way to get back at that conniving bottle-thief: Christopher would stab himself and blame the neighbor!
A witness saw Christopher enter the bathroom as he called 911. He calmly informed the dispatcher that his neighbor had stabbed him. Witnesses said he looked fine when he emerged from the bathroom, but a moment later gouts of blood spewed from his chest. Suddenly he began screaming begging for help. The dispatcher heard a woman shout, "Why did you do this?" He collapsed at the door of his apartment.
Deputies arrived quickly, but Christopher had already bled to death from self-inflicted stab wounds to his chest. An autopsy determined that he had stabbed himself in the chest twice. The first wound apparently didn't look dangerous enough, so he tried again. The second time, the knife plunged into his left ventricle. This wound was plenty dangerous: he had only two minutes to live.
Christopher died in vain. His deathbed accusation of his neighbor failed, as a witness confirmed that the neighbor was not in the apartment. All Christopher got for revenge was an accidental death sentence.
Death Valley Daze
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(27 July 2005, California) Robert, 35, was eager to hang out with the nudists at the Palm Springs campground, in a part of Death Valley where temperatures reached 136 degrees. The track was rough but passable until he was lured into the Saline Mud Flats by the deceptively dry appearance of its crackled surface, radiating heat in the baking sun. Within a few feet, the wheels of his VW microbus sunk deep into the muck that lay hidden beneath the crust.
Robert was miles from nowhere, surrounded by the bleached skulls of other animals that had become trapped in the mire. But he had plenty of water, so he waited for help to find him on the remote dirt track. After six days, he abandoned the microbus and began walking to a less deserted location where someone was more likely to pass.
Luck was with him! As he was shaking the last drop of water from his bottle, help arrived in the form of 14-year-old British lads from the League of Venturers, who were training in search-and-rescue techniques. "He was crying and completely hysterical. I don't think he expected to last the day," said the unit leader. They gave him a lift to the nearest ranger station, 80 miles away, where he kissed the ground in gratitude.
Robert had cheated death once, but that didn't stop him from tempting fate again.
In nearby Bishop, he found someone to tow the microbus out of the mudflats. Alas, it had two flat tires and other mechanical problems, so he returned to Bishop for automotive supplies. He snagged another ride into Death Valley, this time with a couple who took an unfamiliar route from the north, and dropped him off at a washout in the road about 15 miles from the Palm Springs campground.
His plan was to locate the campground and enlist help fixing his vehicle. He stashed his supplies and began walking. His body was found three days later, without a map, a GPS, or even water. Authorities estimated that he had walked along the road for 10 miles before heading into the open desert, seeking water.
All Wound Up
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 April 2005, Moscow, Russia) A construction worker drilling the foundation of a parking garage project on Starobitsevskaya Street noticed something shiny stuck to the swiftly rotating auger. He took a closer look but still couldn't identify the shiny object, so he reached down to grab it. Unfortunately, his jacket caught on the auger, winding his hand, his arm, and then his whole body into the apparatus. By the time his fellow workers could shut down the rig, "only the man's legs below the knees remained intact," according to the daily newspaper.
What I Can Still Do
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 January 2005, Florida) Two North Fort Myers residents, 23-year-old Molly and her husband, had rented a room in a local motel for some unspecified activity, perhaps involving perpetuation of the species. As Molly entered the second-floor room, she went straight for the lanai, which overlooked a concrete patio. Most guests would have seen the railing on the edge of the lanai as a safety feature, but for Molly it brought to mind fond memories of her youthful gymnastic abilities.
Molly called out to Todd, "Watch to see what I can still do." These would be her last words. She did a flip onto the railing for a handstand, just the way she used to do, then toppled over the other side, slamming into the patio 15 feet below. She was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Rocketing to Glory
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(7 February 2005, Malaysia) Fireworks are a longstanding lunar New Year's tradition among Malaysia's large Chinese minority, and continue to be widely used to celebrate, despite a ban on their saleS and use.
Wan, a 29-year-old excavator operator, spent the evening watching people set off fireworks outside a suburban Kuala Lumpur nightclub. These were no mere firecrackers. They were rockets that shot as high as a ten-story building before exploding.
His curiosity piqued, Wan bent over one of the launching tubes for a closer look, wondering how these powerful rockets worked. He was peering down the tube when it fired, sending him flying ten meters. He died instantly from severe head injuries, according to a senior police official.
Tide Waits for No Man
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(23 May 2005, Texas) After surf-fishing on Crystal Beach, John was fatigued, but unwilling to call it a night. The full moon threatened to disturbed his nap, so John curled up for forty winks in the darkest place available: underneath his truck, which was parked on the beach.
The next morning, a pickup truck was reported abandoned in the surf off Crystal Beach. A tow truck driver was called in, and had barely moved the pickup a foot, when he found the body of a 37-year-old man embedded in the sand beneath it.
It turned out that the truck was not abandoned, after all. As John slept, time passed and the tide rolled back in. The wet sand shifted beneath the truck's weight, and John was trapped beneath it, unable to escape. The beach became his final resting place.
Freeway Dangler
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 May 2005, Seattle, Washington) Strength and endurance are two of the most important characteristics that can be passed on to improve the species, so physical challenges between males are frequent. In this case, two drinking buddies found themselves on an overpass 40 feet above a busy freeway in downtown Seattle at 2:45 a.m. It turned out to be the perfect place to determine who had more strength and endurance. Whoever could dangle from the overpass the longest would win!
Unfortunately, the winner was too tired from his victory to climb back up, despite help from his 31-year-old friend. The unidentified champion fell smack into the front of a semi-truck barreling down the highway at 60 mph and bounced onto the pavement, where he was hit by a car. The car did not stop. Authorities did not identify the winner of the competition.
Wales Wins
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(8 February 2005, Caerphilly, Wales) "If Wales wins, I'll cut my balls off," Geoff told his mates at a social club while watching the rugby match between England and its arch-rival. His friends thought the 26-year-old was joking, but after Wales' 11-9 victory over England, he went home, castrated himself with a knife, and walked the length of two rugby fields back to the bar to show his shocked friends the evidence.
It was Wales' first home win over England in 12 years. Geoff was taken to a hospital where he remained "in a seriously ill condition."
The Nuisance of Seatbelts
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(5 January 2005, Nebraska) In September of his senior year at the University of Nebraska, 21-year-old Derek wrote an impassioned declaration of independence from seatbelts for his college newspaper. Although "intrusive and ridiculous" seatbelt laws saved 6100 lives a year, according to statistics from the U.S. Congress, Derek concluded with the statement, "If I want to be the jerk that flirts with death, I should be able to do that."
Derek "was a bright young boy, a 4.0" majoring in five subjects and planning to attend law school. He was also smart enough to tutor friends in subjects he didn't even take. But good grades don't equate with common sense.
Derek was returning from a holiday in San Antonio, Texas. The driver of the Ford Explorer and his front seat passenger both wore seatbelts. Only Derek was willing to buck the system, sitting without a seatbelt in the back seat because, in the words of his newspaper column, he belonged to the "die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to buckle up, no matter what the government does."
When the SUV hit a patch of ice, slid off US 80 and rolled several times, Derek, in an involuntary display of his freedom, was thrown from the vehicle. He died at the scene. The other occupants of the SUV, slaves to the seatbelt, survived with minor injuries.
Alcohol was not involved in the accident.
Off-Road Driving
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(6 January 2005, Johannesburg, South Africa) Massive thunderstorms had turned the Braamfontein Spruit into a raging river. It was a little past midnight when police warned Barbara, 33, that a flash flood was inundating the bridge ahead. They urged her not to cross. But Barbara was driving a BMW X3, an off-road vehicle with xDrive all-wheel-drive.
Brochures assured her that the luxury SUV with Sensatec upholstery and an 8-speaker stereo system had "virtually unlimited agility." So Barbara laughed off the police advice, and continued towards the bridge. xDrive all-wheel drive lost its grip as the floodwaters swept her BMW X3 off the bridge. Her body was found later inside the vehicle over a mile down the river.
Kittie Toy
2005 Darwin Award Nominee
(18 December 2005, South Africa) Two muggers were working a crowd. The had just taken a cellphone and purse from a couple at knifepoint, when the woman screamed. The muggers sprinted away. But working a crowd and working out are entirely different things, and one of the muggers was out of shape.
As he watched his compatriot recede into the distance, he felt the stitch in his side, and knew he could run no farther. Perhaps he was thinking he should have spent some of his ill-gotten gains on a trip to the gym. But then he spotted a high fence, and that, at least, he could manage.
He put on a burst of speed, and leapt the fence. Sure enough, no one followed. Escape! But he had failed to take into consideration a very important fact. He was at the Bloemfontein Zoo. Just as he was congratulating himself on his foolproof escape, he realized that the other side of the fence was a 10 meter drop into a cage of bored Bengal tigers!
Speaking of foolproof, the tigers wasted no time in treating the nearest fool as their own little kitty toy. The mauled body of the mugger was not noticed until noon. A zoo spokesperson said that the tigers had been fed the previous afternoon, else they would have left no evidence behind.
Police said a post mortem would be carried out to determine the exact cause of his death--as if that wasn't obvious.
2004 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Amateur Bomb Inspector
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(25 May 2004, Indonesia) The city of Ambon was on edge. Just two days before, a bomb hidden in a cookie tin, disguised with two bottles of beer and some peanuts, had exploded and wounded five people. So police took extra precautions when a worried man alerted them to a suspicious black plastic bag that had been hung on the handle of his motorbike, while it was parked outside an open market.
The police cleared the area, moved the bag to the middle of the street, and waited for the bomb squad to arrive. Alarmingly, this bag also contained a cookie tin. The police set up a safety cordon 20 meters away from the bag, and warned people to stay back. But after 25 minutes spent waiting for the bomb squad, curiosity got the best of Willem, a 45-year-old fish vendor, and a number of other onlookers. They wanted to get a closer look, see what else was in the bag. What could happen?
What indeed. As they approached the bomb, it exploded, killing Willem and injuring 16 others...
Tunnel Vision
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 March 2004, Virginia) Paul, 48, was an electrician for the state Department of Transportation (DOT). He and Charles were part of a 15-person crew assigned to replace the lights in the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. The crew would ride through the tunnel in a converted dump truck that had a ledge on the back used to hold tools during the procedure. DOT uses a different truck for each side of the tube, because the eastbound tube is three feet higher above the truck than the westbound tube. The taller truck had a tight squeeze returning through the westbound tube. Paul and Charles should have paid more attention to this fact.
The crew had finished working on the eastbound tube. On the return trip to the tunnel office for their lunch break, Paul and Charles chose to ride on the high platform facing backwards, rather than climbing into the cab. This was in violation of safety rules. Paul and Charles learned one major reason for the rules when the truck turned into the westbound tunnel.
Perhaps they had forgotten that this tunnel was three feet lower than the one they had recently left. Perhaps they felt their safety helmets protected them from just about anything. They soon learned otherwise. Paul was knocked off the truck when his head hit the entrance of the tunnel and died of massive head injuries. Charles was lower down, and survived with minor injuries, earning him an Honorable Mention.
Closer Look at Victoria Falls
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 December 2004, Zimbabwe) The 100-year-old Victoria Falls Bridge, linking Zimbabwe and Zambia, offers a spectacular view of the 80-meter chasm. Continuous spray from the massive waterfall makes the rocks and vegetation along the lip as slippery as a slide at a water park, but far less tolerant of error.
While taking pictures at the falls with his girlfriend on New Year's Eve, Michael, 50, dropped his spectacles over the rim. He would hardly be able to enjoy the view without them, so he decided to retrieve them.
He was intelligent enough to be aware of the risk. Headmaster at Summit College in Johannesburg, and a highly regarded lecturer at geography conferences, he knew how to assess the physical world. Edging out on the slick rim, reaching towards his glasses -- he slipped -- and fell 40 meters to his death. His body was recovered by helicopter.
Lava Lamp
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(30 November 2004, Washington) Twenty-four year old Philip was found dead in the bedroom of his trailer home, with burnt remains of a Lava Lamp strewn over his kitchen. Puzzled investigators eventually pieced together a likely scenario for Philip's last moments.
Lava lamps are a mesmerizing distraction. Philip couldn't wait to fire up his new Lava Lamp. He plugged it in and waited for the pretty globs to begin their surreal dance. But after several frustrating minutes, nothing happened. Then a bright idea hit him: "Why not accelerate this painfully slow process?" He took the lamp to the kitchen, placed it on the stove, and turned up the heat.
In short order, the wax melted and began its sinuous dance. But the liquid was designed to be warmed by a 40-watt bulb. It was over-heated. Entranced by the display, Philip forgot that "heat expands". Whereas there was no room for expansion in the glass bottle, the Lava Lamp resorted to a violent explosion to relieve the pressure.*
One thick shard of glass blew straight through Philips's chest and into his heart. Philip stumbled into his bedroom, perhaps uttering "Aeternum vale!" (latin: farewell forever) as he collapsed and died.
Police found no evidence of alcohol or drug use, so it is safely presumed that Philip was in full possession of his senses when he went out with a bang.
Hold That Bus!
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(2 November 2004, Portland, Oregon) Dianne, a 56-year-old bus driver with 22 years of experience, pulled into the Sunset Transit Center shortly before noon. She was running six minutes late, and was eager to use the bathroom.
After waiting impatiently for her passengers to disembark, Dianne hurried off the bus, leaving the engine in gear and running, with no parking brake engaged. She walked around the front of the bus and reached in the driver's window to pull the lever that closed the door.
The bus is equipped with automatic brakes that keep it from moving as long as the doors are open. Once the doors shut, the brakes release after a one-and-a-half-second delay.
As Dianne passed in front of the bus on her way to the toilet, she suddenly found the 15-ton bus creeping slowly towards her. She could have jumped out of the way. In fact, she could have ambled out of the way. Instead, witnesses watched her push against the bus with her arms outstretched, in an effort to stop it.
The mass of a bus is more than 200 times the mass of an adult woman. You do the math. The bus did indeed stop, eventually, due to circumstances other than Dianne's efforts.
Paramedics arrived within minutes, to find Dianne dead beneath the bus.
An investigation blamed the accident on "operator error."
Right Over the Dam
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(24 July 2004, Wisconsin) Barbara, 26, must have listened too many times to the old song "High Hopes" and its verse about a perky little fish: "And she swam, and she swam right over the dam." But Barbara needed more than willpower to fulfill her high hopes, when she decided to take the shortest route between the Upper Dells and the Lower Dells.
She piloted a personal watercraft at high speed past numerous signs warning craft to slow down because of the imminent danger. She wove through the support posts of two separate bridges, one for trains, and one for cars. She ignored the screaming pleas of her 24-year-old passenger, who finally jumped off at the last minute. And she did it--she soared over that dam like a flying fish.
Then she crash-landed on the concrete spillway, dying instantly from massive head injuries.
Nearby residents told police that Barbara had been speeding like a maniac at high speeds in no-wake zones near the shore, despite the many posted warnings. Blood tests showed she had also been drinking like a fish. When asked to comment on her demise, the Police Chief said, "It kind of speaks for itself."
The Army's a Blast
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(6 May 2004, Ukraine) Piling up live artillery is grueling work, so it makes perfect sense that a group of soldiers would take a cigarette break at lunchtime. The warehouse was filled with 92,000 tons of ammunition -- until the soldiers lit up their ciggies and inhaled deeply, ignoring warnings that smoking can cause cancer. They flicked the butts away and went back to work. The glowing embers of the tobacco butts acted like slow fuses, which started a small fire that nobody noticed until it ignited a chain reaction of massive explosions.
The explosions lasted for a week, tossing debris as far as 25 miles away, destroying buildings in a two-mile radius, and forcing the evacuation of thousands of nearby residents. Red-hot shrapnel set off additional fires in nearby towns and ruptured a minor gas pipeline. Total damage from the smoke break was estimated at $750 million.
Miraculously, only one of the soldiers at the arsenal died in the disaster. Six soldiers were charged with "grossly neglecting the fire safety rules and smoking on the ammunition site."
Tree vs Man
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(21 December 2004, Georgia) It looked at first like a bizarre traffic accident. Smoke rose from the charred remains of a large tree that had toppled onto a smoldering pickup truck. The body of a man, burned beyond recognition, was found inside the truck. Investigators were puzzled. How could the truck have collided with a tree behind a house? And why did the tree fall onto the truck instead of away from it? And what had started the fire?
As the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, it became clear that the dead man was the victim of his own good deed. Reggie, 47, had offered to remove a tree behind his girlfriend's house. He borrowed his father's pickup truck, apparently in the belief that he could yank out the bottom of the tree, which would then, cartoon-like, fall away from the truck. He tied the truck to the tree and floored the accelerator.
The uprooted tree, pulled in the direction of the force, toppled onto the truck, crushing the cab and trapping Reggie. The still-running engine eventually overheated, starting a grass fire which ignited the truck's gas tank, turning it into a fireball that spread to the tree.
Thankfully for Reggie, police determined that he was probably dead before the truck caught fire.
Stepping Out
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(12 April 2004, Netherlands) Certain land animals have evolved over the millennia to use speed in the pursuit of prey or avoidance of predators. The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) can run as fast as 60 mph over the plains of Africa, and the pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana) can reach 55 mph over the plains of North America. Humans (Homo sapiens) are not among these animals built for speed. The very fastest human can achieve a maximum sprint of 16 mph for short distances.
So things were bound to go wrong when a 19-year-old male, driving the A67 highway near the Dutch town of Blerick, sought to impress his two passengers by putting his car on cruise control at 20 mph, getting out of the car, and running alongside it. He planned to jump back in and drive on, but the moment his feet hit the ground, he fell over and slammed headfirst into the asphalt. He was admitted to the hospital with severe brain damage, and died the next day.
"Who Wants Summa This?"
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(10 November 2004, Wales) Kebab-eating amateur rugby player Gareth, 22, was a bit wobbly after a pub crawl with his friends. His flat was filled with men and women when he pulled down his pants and waddled over to the window, shouting "Who wants summa this?" to the empty street below. A friend grabbed him before he could fall out the window.
In the morning when they awoke from their drunken stupor, Gareth admitted it was a pretty stupid thing to do. But that didn't stop the determined Darwin Award candidate from successfully trying again.
The very next night, with his blood-alcohol level at four times the legal limit, just short of lethal intoxication, he pulled down his pants again and waddled over to the open window, shouting "Who wants summa this?" Nobody was near enough to grab him this time. A friend told the coroner's court that he bent forward and went out the window, hands flailing. Gareth was found outside, impaled on a spike fence below.
Daring Feet
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(18 July 2004, Washington) Michael, 27, was spending a pleasant afternoon cruising on his motorcycle. But witnesses who saw him speeding down Meridian Avenue were not surprised when state troopers reported that he had lost control near the Kapowsin Highway. You see, he was steering with his feet. Michael was killed instantly after being thrown from his motorcycle, which had veered to the right and hit a guardrail.
Rutting Contest
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(October 2004, Chiayi, Taiwan) Most rutting contests involve two male mammals, like the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis dallis), which ram into each other at high speed in order to impress a female sheep and win the right to procreate. These mammals tend to have unusually thick skulls and extra fluid surrounding the brain to prevent damage from the competition. Humans tend not to have such thick skulls and other natural adaptations, and therefore do not generally rut.
Of course, man, the tool user, can find artificial means to overcome natural limitations. One well-known example of this behavior is the medieval jousting contest in which participants wear armor and ride horses toward each other at high speed.
The most recent observation of human rutting behavior occurred when two Taiwanese university students donned protective helmets and revved their motor scooters in an effort to impress a comely female of their species. The two were the same class, but not friends. Other classmates reported that both men fancied the same female student.
After indulging in a few drinks during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the two encountered each other, and words were spoken. The gauntlet was thrown down. In lieu of horses, the two would ride their motor scooters at each other at high speed, and the one who didn't turn away would win the exclusive right to pursue the female.
Obviously both were very keen on her, because neither of them turned away. Their scooters collided head-on at 50 mph. Both died instantly. The girl at the center of the rut refused to comment, other than to say that she "wasn't interested in either of them."
Snake Man
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 March 2004, Si Sa Ket Province, Thailand) During his snake-handling performance, Boonreung the "Snake Man" was bitten on the right elbow by a deadly mamba. While a lesser mortal might have rushed to a doctor for a dose of antivenin, the daring 34-year-old had his own treatment method: he downed a shot of whiskey and some herbal medicine. But alcohol and herbs are not generally recognized as effective against snake bites. It was on with the show -- until paralysis gradually took hold, and he collapsed.
At this point, he was unable to speak, and thus raised no objections as bystanders took him to Praibung Hospital. But it was too late. The poison had spread throughout his body, and he died the same day. Ironically, Boonreung is immortalized in the Guinness Book of World Records for having spent seven days in a roomful of venomous snakes in 1998.
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(25 May 2004, Indonesia) The city of Ambon was on edge. Just two days before, a bomb hidden in a cookie tin, disguised with two bottles of beer and some peanuts, had exploded and wounded five people. So police took extra precautions when a worried man alerted them to a suspicious black plastic bag that had been hung on the handle of his motorbike, while it was parked outside an open market.
The police cleared the area, moved the bag to the middle of the street, and waited for the bomb squad to arrive. Alarmingly, this bag also contained a cookie tin. The police set up a safety cordon 20 meters away from the bag, and warned people to stay back. But after 25 minutes spent waiting for the bomb squad, curiosity got the best of Willem, a 45-year-old fish vendor, and a number of other onlookers. They wanted to get a closer look, see what else was in the bag. What could happen?
What indeed. As they approached the bomb, it exploded, killing Willem and injuring 16 others...
Tunnel Vision
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 March 2004, Virginia) Paul, 48, was an electrician for the state Department of Transportation (DOT). He and Charles were part of a 15-person crew assigned to replace the lights in the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. The crew would ride through the tunnel in a converted dump truck that had a ledge on the back used to hold tools during the procedure. DOT uses a different truck for each side of the tube, because the eastbound tube is three feet higher above the truck than the westbound tube. The taller truck had a tight squeeze returning through the westbound tube. Paul and Charles should have paid more attention to this fact.
The crew had finished working on the eastbound tube. On the return trip to the tunnel office for their lunch break, Paul and Charles chose to ride on the high platform facing backwards, rather than climbing into the cab. This was in violation of safety rules. Paul and Charles learned one major reason for the rules when the truck turned into the westbound tunnel.
Perhaps they had forgotten that this tunnel was three feet lower than the one they had recently left. Perhaps they felt their safety helmets protected them from just about anything. They soon learned otherwise. Paul was knocked off the truck when his head hit the entrance of the tunnel and died of massive head injuries. Charles was lower down, and survived with minor injuries, earning him an Honorable Mention.
Closer Look at Victoria Falls
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 December 2004, Zimbabwe) The 100-year-old Victoria Falls Bridge, linking Zimbabwe and Zambia, offers a spectacular view of the 80-meter chasm. Continuous spray from the massive waterfall makes the rocks and vegetation along the lip as slippery as a slide at a water park, but far less tolerant of error.
While taking pictures at the falls with his girlfriend on New Year's Eve, Michael, 50, dropped his spectacles over the rim. He would hardly be able to enjoy the view without them, so he decided to retrieve them.
He was intelligent enough to be aware of the risk. Headmaster at Summit College in Johannesburg, and a highly regarded lecturer at geography conferences, he knew how to assess the physical world. Edging out on the slick rim, reaching towards his glasses -- he slipped -- and fell 40 meters to his death. His body was recovered by helicopter.
Lava Lamp
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(30 November 2004, Washington) Twenty-four year old Philip was found dead in the bedroom of his trailer home, with burnt remains of a Lava Lamp strewn over his kitchen. Puzzled investigators eventually pieced together a likely scenario for Philip's last moments.
Lava lamps are a mesmerizing distraction. Philip couldn't wait to fire up his new Lava Lamp. He plugged it in and waited for the pretty globs to begin their surreal dance. But after several frustrating minutes, nothing happened. Then a bright idea hit him: "Why not accelerate this painfully slow process?" He took the lamp to the kitchen, placed it on the stove, and turned up the heat.
In short order, the wax melted and began its sinuous dance. But the liquid was designed to be warmed by a 40-watt bulb. It was over-heated. Entranced by the display, Philip forgot that "heat expands". Whereas there was no room for expansion in the glass bottle, the Lava Lamp resorted to a violent explosion to relieve the pressure.*
One thick shard of glass blew straight through Philips's chest and into his heart. Philip stumbled into his bedroom, perhaps uttering "Aeternum vale!" (latin: farewell forever) as he collapsed and died.
Police found no evidence of alcohol or drug use, so it is safely presumed that Philip was in full possession of his senses when he went out with a bang.
Hold That Bus!
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(2 November 2004, Portland, Oregon) Dianne, a 56-year-old bus driver with 22 years of experience, pulled into the Sunset Transit Center shortly before noon. She was running six minutes late, and was eager to use the bathroom.
After waiting impatiently for her passengers to disembark, Dianne hurried off the bus, leaving the engine in gear and running, with no parking brake engaged. She walked around the front of the bus and reached in the driver's window to pull the lever that closed the door.
The bus is equipped with automatic brakes that keep it from moving as long as the doors are open. Once the doors shut, the brakes release after a one-and-a-half-second delay.
As Dianne passed in front of the bus on her way to the toilet, she suddenly found the 15-ton bus creeping slowly towards her. She could have jumped out of the way. In fact, she could have ambled out of the way. Instead, witnesses watched her push against the bus with her arms outstretched, in an effort to stop it.
The mass of a bus is more than 200 times the mass of an adult woman. You do the math. The bus did indeed stop, eventually, due to circumstances other than Dianne's efforts.
Paramedics arrived within minutes, to find Dianne dead beneath the bus.
An investigation blamed the accident on "operator error."
Right Over the Dam
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(24 July 2004, Wisconsin) Barbara, 26, must have listened too many times to the old song "High Hopes" and its verse about a perky little fish: "And she swam, and she swam right over the dam." But Barbara needed more than willpower to fulfill her high hopes, when she decided to take the shortest route between the Upper Dells and the Lower Dells.
She piloted a personal watercraft at high speed past numerous signs warning craft to slow down because of the imminent danger. She wove through the support posts of two separate bridges, one for trains, and one for cars. She ignored the screaming pleas of her 24-year-old passenger, who finally jumped off at the last minute. And she did it--she soared over that dam like a flying fish.
Then she crash-landed on the concrete spillway, dying instantly from massive head injuries.
Nearby residents told police that Barbara had been speeding like a maniac at high speeds in no-wake zones near the shore, despite the many posted warnings. Blood tests showed she had also been drinking like a fish. When asked to comment on her demise, the Police Chief said, "It kind of speaks for itself."
The Army's a Blast
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(6 May 2004, Ukraine) Piling up live artillery is grueling work, so it makes perfect sense that a group of soldiers would take a cigarette break at lunchtime. The warehouse was filled with 92,000 tons of ammunition -- until the soldiers lit up their ciggies and inhaled deeply, ignoring warnings that smoking can cause cancer. They flicked the butts away and went back to work. The glowing embers of the tobacco butts acted like slow fuses, which started a small fire that nobody noticed until it ignited a chain reaction of massive explosions.
The explosions lasted for a week, tossing debris as far as 25 miles away, destroying buildings in a two-mile radius, and forcing the evacuation of thousands of nearby residents. Red-hot shrapnel set off additional fires in nearby towns and ruptured a minor gas pipeline. Total damage from the smoke break was estimated at $750 million.
Miraculously, only one of the soldiers at the arsenal died in the disaster. Six soldiers were charged with "grossly neglecting the fire safety rules and smoking on the ammunition site."
Tree vs Man
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(21 December 2004, Georgia) It looked at first like a bizarre traffic accident. Smoke rose from the charred remains of a large tree that had toppled onto a smoldering pickup truck. The body of a man, burned beyond recognition, was found inside the truck. Investigators were puzzled. How could the truck have collided with a tree behind a house? And why did the tree fall onto the truck instead of away from it? And what had started the fire?
As the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, it became clear that the dead man was the victim of his own good deed. Reggie, 47, had offered to remove a tree behind his girlfriend's house. He borrowed his father's pickup truck, apparently in the belief that he could yank out the bottom of the tree, which would then, cartoon-like, fall away from the truck. He tied the truck to the tree and floored the accelerator.
The uprooted tree, pulled in the direction of the force, toppled onto the truck, crushing the cab and trapping Reggie. The still-running engine eventually overheated, starting a grass fire which ignited the truck's gas tank, turning it into a fireball that spread to the tree.
Thankfully for Reggie, police determined that he was probably dead before the truck caught fire.
Stepping Out
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(12 April 2004, Netherlands) Certain land animals have evolved over the millennia to use speed in the pursuit of prey or avoidance of predators. The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) can run as fast as 60 mph over the plains of Africa, and the pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana) can reach 55 mph over the plains of North America. Humans (Homo sapiens) are not among these animals built for speed. The very fastest human can achieve a maximum sprint of 16 mph for short distances.
So things were bound to go wrong when a 19-year-old male, driving the A67 highway near the Dutch town of Blerick, sought to impress his two passengers by putting his car on cruise control at 20 mph, getting out of the car, and running alongside it. He planned to jump back in and drive on, but the moment his feet hit the ground, he fell over and slammed headfirst into the asphalt. He was admitted to the hospital with severe brain damage, and died the next day.
"Who Wants Summa This?"
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(10 November 2004, Wales) Kebab-eating amateur rugby player Gareth, 22, was a bit wobbly after a pub crawl with his friends. His flat was filled with men and women when he pulled down his pants and waddled over to the window, shouting "Who wants summa this?" to the empty street below. A friend grabbed him before he could fall out the window.
In the morning when they awoke from their drunken stupor, Gareth admitted it was a pretty stupid thing to do. But that didn't stop the determined Darwin Award candidate from successfully trying again.
The very next night, with his blood-alcohol level at four times the legal limit, just short of lethal intoxication, he pulled down his pants again and waddled over to the open window, shouting "Who wants summa this?" Nobody was near enough to grab him this time. A friend told the coroner's court that he bent forward and went out the window, hands flailing. Gareth was found outside, impaled on a spike fence below.
Daring Feet
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(18 July 2004, Washington) Michael, 27, was spending a pleasant afternoon cruising on his motorcycle. But witnesses who saw him speeding down Meridian Avenue were not surprised when state troopers reported that he had lost control near the Kapowsin Highway. You see, he was steering with his feet. Michael was killed instantly after being thrown from his motorcycle, which had veered to the right and hit a guardrail.
Rutting Contest
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(October 2004, Chiayi, Taiwan) Most rutting contests involve two male mammals, like the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis dallis), which ram into each other at high speed in order to impress a female sheep and win the right to procreate. These mammals tend to have unusually thick skulls and extra fluid surrounding the brain to prevent damage from the competition. Humans tend not to have such thick skulls and other natural adaptations, and therefore do not generally rut.
Of course, man, the tool user, can find artificial means to overcome natural limitations. One well-known example of this behavior is the medieval jousting contest in which participants wear armor and ride horses toward each other at high speed.
The most recent observation of human rutting behavior occurred when two Taiwanese university students donned protective helmets and revved their motor scooters in an effort to impress a comely female of their species. The two were the same class, but not friends. Other classmates reported that both men fancied the same female student.
After indulging in a few drinks during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the two encountered each other, and words were spoken. The gauntlet was thrown down. In lieu of horses, the two would ride their motor scooters at each other at high speed, and the one who didn't turn away would win the exclusive right to pursue the female.
Obviously both were very keen on her, because neither of them turned away. Their scooters collided head-on at 50 mph. Both died instantly. The girl at the center of the rut refused to comment, other than to say that she "wasn't interested in either of them."
Snake Man
2004 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 March 2004, Si Sa Ket Province, Thailand) During his snake-handling performance, Boonreung the "Snake Man" was bitten on the right elbow by a deadly mamba. While a lesser mortal might have rushed to a doctor for a dose of antivenin, the daring 34-year-old had his own treatment method: he downed a shot of whiskey and some herbal medicine. But alcohol and herbs are not generally recognized as effective against snake bites. It was on with the show -- until paralysis gradually took hold, and he collapsed.
At this point, he was unable to speak, and thus raised no objections as bystanders took him to Praibung Hospital. But it was too late. The poison had spread throughout his body, and he died the same day. Ironically, Boonreung is immortalized in the Guinness Book of World Records for having spent seven days in a roomful of venomous snakes in 1998.
2003 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Shooting Blanks
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(11 March 2003, Spain) Early one morning, police received a call. Three robbers had invaded a Madrid brothel! Officers surrounded the building, and used a bullhorn to coax the offenders from the premises.
The robbers were understandably frightened to be surrounded by dozens of policemen. But Instead of surrendering, they decided to go out in a blaze of glory, and fled the building while shooting at everything in sight. The policemen ducked, covered, and shot back. Two running robbers were fatally injured, and the third was wounded.
Why was the gunfight over so quickly? The three robbers were carrying REAL guns loaded with FAKE ammunition. They were firing blanks, making enough flash and thunder to fool the police into shooting back, but not enough to actually help them escape.
Dying for a Ciggie
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(17 June 2003, United Kingdom) The National Express bus service between Aberdeen and London takes approximately twelve hours, with NO SMOKING on the coach. A 43-year-old woman was riding south from Glasgow, and as the miles rolled by, she became more and more desperate for a cigarette. It's a long trip for addicts.
The coach stopped at Carlisle--at last, she could satisfy her craving! But no, she was not allowed off the coach. She sat in her seat, becoming more agitated by the mile. She was craving a cigarette. She was fuming.
Fellow passengers said she became increasingly anxious as the journey continued, and started shouting that she wanted off. However, the coach was on a motorway at the time. It was not permitted to stop, save for emergencies.
Somewhere between Shap and Penrith, passengers saw the woman push against the passenger door in the middle of the lower deck. She couldn't be trying to get off to smoke, could she?
Oh, yes she could!
Police concluded that the coach was traveling approximately sixty miles per hour. Our involuntary non-smoker was crushed beneath its wheels. At that point, the coach did make that hoped-for emergency stop, but life is not fair. Unlike a condemned man, our heroine never did get that last cigarette.
Workin' at the Car Wash
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(29 January 2003, Brazil) At work, Manoel was responsible for cleaning out the storage tanks of gasoline tanker trucks. He had been employed in that capacity for two months when he ran afoul of fuel.
The 35-year-old began to fill a tanker with water, a standard safety procedure that forces flammable vapor out of the container. He returned an hour later to check whether the water level was high enough to proceed. But he had trouble deciding, because it was so DARK inside the tanker.
A resourceful employee, Manoel forgot the very reason why he was filling the tank with water when he lit a cigarette lighter to shed some light on the situation. His little test successfully determined that the water level was NOT yet high enough for safety. The vapor explosion launched him through the air, and he landed in the company parking lot 100 meters away.
Manoel suffered severe burns, blunt force trauma, and an injury to the head that exposed his brain. Our witless car washer had learned his terminal lesson in safety by the time the firemen arrived.
Love Struck
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(3 March 2002, England) As Kim and Paul left the Sheffield pub, they noticed that a streetlight was burned out, creating a pool of darkness on the road. Unable to rein in their passion, they began to canoodle -- consummate their relationship -- on the asphalt outside the pub. Witnesses said the couple was lying right on the white line, kissing and cuddling.
The passionate pair were warned of the danger of their coital position not once, not twice, but three times -- by a car driver, a bus driver, and a pedestrian. An off-duty paramedic honked and shouted, "You want to get up, otherwise you'll be run over." The man simply said "Cheers, mate," and the paramedic heard a female laughing. A bus driver swerved to avoid them, and drove past with wheels on the curb. A concerned pedestrian shouted to warn them that another bus was headed their way.
Despite these disruptions, Kim and Paul continued, oblivious to the approach of a small, single-decker Nipper bus. The bus driver mistook the undulating shape for a bag of rubbish in the poorly lit street, and was unable to stop in time. There was a dull thud...
Kim and Paul were struck and killed at midnight. Paramedics found Kim lying on her back with her jumper pulled up, and Paul between her legs with his trousers pulled down.
The only downside to this timely removal of lunacy from the gene pool is the fate of the bus driver. Despite the couple's irregular actions, and a police investigator's statement that "to expect a driver to anticipate a pedestrian lying in the road is out of the ordinary," a judge fined him for careless driving, and his license was revoked for six months. Fortunately, his employers consider him an excellent employee, and plan to give him other duties for six months. Relatives of the victims said they were glad the driver had kept his job.
Pancake Thief
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(January 2003, India) Regarding accidental deaths during the construction of a subway in New Delhi, the New York Times wrote, "One of those killed was an unlucky thief who tried to steal braces holding up a concrete slab; it fell and killed him."
Second Time's the Charm
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 March 2003, Michigan) Ignoring Coast Guard warnings, David ventured onto the icy surface of Saginaw Bay with his pickup truck one chilly morning. Predictably, the vehicle broke through the ice, but the 41-year-old managed to avert tragedy and escape from the sinking truck. He reached the shore wet and cold, but alive.
Despite his traumatic experience, and despite a day of sunshine and warm temperatures in the 60s, David returned to Saginaw Bay late the following night. This time he was driving an all-terrain vehicle, and accompanied by a friend. Surprise! The ATV also plunged through the ice.
His companion survived, but David had used up his luck. His body was recovered by the Coast Guard southwest of the Channel Islands. An autopsy was scheduled to determine whether anything besides a desire to win a Darwin Award was a factor in his demise.
Slaughterhouse Robbery
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(12 February 2003) Three men wielding knives tried to rob a slaughterhouse. But when it comes to hand to hand combat with sharp blades, butchers working in a slaughterhouse are more than a match for your average thief. They stabbed two of the intruders to death. The third man escaped from the angry butchers and fled in his car.
Police soon spotted him, and after a brief car chase, the would-be thief pulled over and leapt from his vehicle. But instead of fleeing into the underbrush, he tried to dodge heavy traffic and escape across the highway. Perhaps he thought that threatening butchers with knives was not a sufficient demonstration of his intelligence.
Within seconds, the natural justice system meted out his punishment in the form of a large truck, which struck and killed him.
Tree Hard, Head Empty
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(17 February 2003, New York) A 25-year-old man, long accustomed to annoying neighbors by snowmobiling at high speeds through sleeping streets, finally received his comeuppance -- and in the process, a Darwinian nomination -- when he drove headfirst into a tree.
It is not only his reckless speeding through a nighttime residential area that makes him eligible; nor is it merely because he was driving an unregistered, uninsured snowmobile without a helmet while drunk. Although these spectacularly stupid ideas were ultimately responsible for his demise, there is yet another relevant aspect to report.
Brian "The Brain" was a fireman, a member of the same company dispatched to peel him off the tree, the same organization that preaches snowmobile safety; responds to other gruesome, drunken snowmobile "accidents, and the very same company that posts an illuminated "helmet safety" notice 700 feet from his own home.
Clearly, while others have been as foolish as Brian in their choice of recreational activities, few have been so uniquely aware of the possible repercussions prior to making that choice!
Master Welder
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(February 2003, Australia) I heard this on radio and happened to pass the house the next day. A homeowner was doing some welding on the roof of his house at Port Macquarie in New South Wales. He had problems with his oxyacetylene tanks slipping, so he decided to tack weld them to the roofing iron. That was the last thing he ever did. When I passed the house the next day, there wasn't much left of the roof on that side of the house.
Darwin says, "Could this actually happen? A request for confirmation on www.DarwinAwards.com went unanswered, but details were discussed. The incident occurred in Australia, home to many metal roofs, where repairs are often most easily accomplished using oxyacetylene welding instead of less volatile forms of electric-arc welding. Pure acetylene is explosive at a mere 15 pounds of pressure per square inch, and can also explode when exposed to air. So what happened here? One possibility is that our homeowner, blithely blow-torching the tank for the tack weld, heated it and created enough pressure to turn it into a giant bomb. Another possibility is that the weld weakened the tank enough to allow a leak, which exposed the acetylene to air: KABOOM. A third possibility is that the heat increased the pressure, which popped open relief valves, creating a blowtorch with a 6,000-degree (F) flame, easily hot enough to melt part of the roof and catch the wooden framing on fire. A fourth possibility is that the tank's relief valve turned it into a flaming rocket, which shot into the house and set the whole place on fire. The only sure thing is that the homeowner found a new home in the annals of the Darwin Awards.
Sharp Landing
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(February 2003, East Timor) A man was found lying facedown, covered in mud and blood, the apparent victim of a street crime in Dili. It was not until a post mortem examination was conducted that U.N. police were able to reconstruct his last moments, based on an unusual discovery in his pants.
This up-and-coming young man decided it was cool to shove his weapons, two long knives, down the waistband of his trousers. Unsheathed. The hapless fellow jumped over a small fence and landed in a large puddle of mud. He slipped, which sent the blade of his "trouser knife" into his leg, severing his femoral artery. This has the same effect as cutting off the bottom of a paper cup filled with water. In thirty seconds, one loses enough blood to be rendered unconcious, with nearly complete blood loss within two minutes. He bled to death before he could stagger ten feet from the puddle.
Jack Up
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(9 April 2003, New Zealand) Phil needed to make repairs to the underside of his car. But when he jacked it up, there wasn't enough room for him to work. So he removed the car's battery, placed the jack on top of it, and set to work again, this time with plenty of elbow-room.
Unfortunately for Phil, car batteries are not designed to carry much weight. The battery collapsed and the jack toppled, trapping him beneath the car. Unable to breathe due to the weight on his chest, he quickly expired in a pool of battery acid.
This incident is illuminated by two additional facts: First, Phil's occupation was Accident Prevention Officer at a large food processing plant. And second, ten years previous, he had been working under a car when the jack collapsed, trapping him and breaking one of his legs. Some people just don't learn -- even from their own mistakes.
Ultimate Quest for Airtime
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 May 2003, Indiana) Tamar came all the way from New York for the annual Stark Raven Mad event at the Splashin' Safari waterpark at Holiday World, where members of the American Coaster Enthusiasts planned to rendezvous on Memorial Day weekend. The 32-year-old eagerly looked forward to riding the Raven, later described by Spencer County Prosecutor Jon Dartt as "one of the world's most terrifying roller coasters."
Tamar planned what coaster enthusiasts call "catching airtime," standing up during the ride to show bravery. The park staff warned the "spirited and intelligent" Harvard MBA, along with the rest of the group, "Don't mess with our safety equipment." Tamar's seat belt and lap bar restraint were in place when the train left the station. But you can't catch airtime that way. Her seatbelt was later found unbuckled and tucked into the seat cushions.
As the train swooped over the precipice into the "infamous drop" on the fifth turn at 60 mph, where the G-forces are notoriously skyward, Tamar unlatched her seat belt and stood up. The train dropped, but Tamar didn't. She caught good air until she landed on the ground, 69 feet below.
Hurricane Blumpkin
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 September 2003, Virginia) Another day, another rugby player...
Hurricane Isabel whipped shallow creeks into raging rivers, before she calmed down to a violent tropical storm. What better time for a canoe trip? Especially at 2:30 in the morning, on a moonless night? Enter "Blumpkin" 21, captain of the University rugby team, described as "insane, just indestructible."
He left his own party with friends who "thought it would be all ha, ha and funny" to take the canoe straight down Blacks Run Stream, to Blumpkin's old house.
Winds were gusting to 50 mph, as nearly a foot of rain fell on the Shenandoah Valley. The Boy Scout canoe merit badge says, "If in doubt... survey the water from shore. Do not run any but the mildest rapids unless you have a guide who knows the river. Wear life jackets in all rough water." Surely Blumpkin noticed that the knee-deep water of Blacks Run was now a flood churning higher than his head. Nevertheless he launched, and just as quickly capsized, the boat occpuants tossed into the swift storm-fed stream.
Our "indestructible" friend Blumpkin was sucked underwater twice, to resurface at dawn, 100 yards downstream with a Darwin Award clutched in his fist. His female companion managed to reach shore, as did his male companion, who knew it "wasn't a good idea from the start."
Whether alcohol or drugs were involved, Chief Peavy was not allowed to comment.
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(11 March 2003, Spain) Early one morning, police received a call. Three robbers had invaded a Madrid brothel! Officers surrounded the building, and used a bullhorn to coax the offenders from the premises.
The robbers were understandably frightened to be surrounded by dozens of policemen. But Instead of surrendering, they decided to go out in a blaze of glory, and fled the building while shooting at everything in sight. The policemen ducked, covered, and shot back. Two running robbers were fatally injured, and the third was wounded.
Why was the gunfight over so quickly? The three robbers were carrying REAL guns loaded with FAKE ammunition. They were firing blanks, making enough flash and thunder to fool the police into shooting back, but not enough to actually help them escape.
Dying for a Ciggie
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(17 June 2003, United Kingdom) The National Express bus service between Aberdeen and London takes approximately twelve hours, with NO SMOKING on the coach. A 43-year-old woman was riding south from Glasgow, and as the miles rolled by, she became more and more desperate for a cigarette. It's a long trip for addicts.
The coach stopped at Carlisle--at last, she could satisfy her craving! But no, she was not allowed off the coach. She sat in her seat, becoming more agitated by the mile. She was craving a cigarette. She was fuming.
Fellow passengers said she became increasingly anxious as the journey continued, and started shouting that she wanted off. However, the coach was on a motorway at the time. It was not permitted to stop, save for emergencies.
Somewhere between Shap and Penrith, passengers saw the woman push against the passenger door in the middle of the lower deck. She couldn't be trying to get off to smoke, could she?
Oh, yes she could!
Police concluded that the coach was traveling approximately sixty miles per hour. Our involuntary non-smoker was crushed beneath its wheels. At that point, the coach did make that hoped-for emergency stop, but life is not fair. Unlike a condemned man, our heroine never did get that last cigarette.
Workin' at the Car Wash
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(29 January 2003, Brazil) At work, Manoel was responsible for cleaning out the storage tanks of gasoline tanker trucks. He had been employed in that capacity for two months when he ran afoul of fuel.
The 35-year-old began to fill a tanker with water, a standard safety procedure that forces flammable vapor out of the container. He returned an hour later to check whether the water level was high enough to proceed. But he had trouble deciding, because it was so DARK inside the tanker.
A resourceful employee, Manoel forgot the very reason why he was filling the tank with water when he lit a cigarette lighter to shed some light on the situation. His little test successfully determined that the water level was NOT yet high enough for safety. The vapor explosion launched him through the air, and he landed in the company parking lot 100 meters away.
Manoel suffered severe burns, blunt force trauma, and an injury to the head that exposed his brain. Our witless car washer had learned his terminal lesson in safety by the time the firemen arrived.
Love Struck
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(3 March 2002, England) As Kim and Paul left the Sheffield pub, they noticed that a streetlight was burned out, creating a pool of darkness on the road. Unable to rein in their passion, they began to canoodle -- consummate their relationship -- on the asphalt outside the pub. Witnesses said the couple was lying right on the white line, kissing and cuddling.
The passionate pair were warned of the danger of their coital position not once, not twice, but three times -- by a car driver, a bus driver, and a pedestrian. An off-duty paramedic honked and shouted, "You want to get up, otherwise you'll be run over." The man simply said "Cheers, mate," and the paramedic heard a female laughing. A bus driver swerved to avoid them, and drove past with wheels on the curb. A concerned pedestrian shouted to warn them that another bus was headed their way.
Despite these disruptions, Kim and Paul continued, oblivious to the approach of a small, single-decker Nipper bus. The bus driver mistook the undulating shape for a bag of rubbish in the poorly lit street, and was unable to stop in time. There was a dull thud...
Kim and Paul were struck and killed at midnight. Paramedics found Kim lying on her back with her jumper pulled up, and Paul between her legs with his trousers pulled down.
The only downside to this timely removal of lunacy from the gene pool is the fate of the bus driver. Despite the couple's irregular actions, and a police investigator's statement that "to expect a driver to anticipate a pedestrian lying in the road is out of the ordinary," a judge fined him for careless driving, and his license was revoked for six months. Fortunately, his employers consider him an excellent employee, and plan to give him other duties for six months. Relatives of the victims said they were glad the driver had kept his job.
Pancake Thief
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(January 2003, India) Regarding accidental deaths during the construction of a subway in New Delhi, the New York Times wrote, "One of those killed was an unlucky thief who tried to steal braces holding up a concrete slab; it fell and killed him."
Second Time's the Charm
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 March 2003, Michigan) Ignoring Coast Guard warnings, David ventured onto the icy surface of Saginaw Bay with his pickup truck one chilly morning. Predictably, the vehicle broke through the ice, but the 41-year-old managed to avert tragedy and escape from the sinking truck. He reached the shore wet and cold, but alive.
Despite his traumatic experience, and despite a day of sunshine and warm temperatures in the 60s, David returned to Saginaw Bay late the following night. This time he was driving an all-terrain vehicle, and accompanied by a friend. Surprise! The ATV also plunged through the ice.
His companion survived, but David had used up his luck. His body was recovered by the Coast Guard southwest of the Channel Islands. An autopsy was scheduled to determine whether anything besides a desire to win a Darwin Award was a factor in his demise.
Slaughterhouse Robbery
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(12 February 2003) Three men wielding knives tried to rob a slaughterhouse. But when it comes to hand to hand combat with sharp blades, butchers working in a slaughterhouse are more than a match for your average thief. They stabbed two of the intruders to death. The third man escaped from the angry butchers and fled in his car.
Police soon spotted him, and after a brief car chase, the would-be thief pulled over and leapt from his vehicle. But instead of fleeing into the underbrush, he tried to dodge heavy traffic and escape across the highway. Perhaps he thought that threatening butchers with knives was not a sufficient demonstration of his intelligence.
Within seconds, the natural justice system meted out his punishment in the form of a large truck, which struck and killed him.
Tree Hard, Head Empty
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(17 February 2003, New York) A 25-year-old man, long accustomed to annoying neighbors by snowmobiling at high speeds through sleeping streets, finally received his comeuppance -- and in the process, a Darwinian nomination -- when he drove headfirst into a tree.
It is not only his reckless speeding through a nighttime residential area that makes him eligible; nor is it merely because he was driving an unregistered, uninsured snowmobile without a helmet while drunk. Although these spectacularly stupid ideas were ultimately responsible for his demise, there is yet another relevant aspect to report.
Brian "The Brain" was a fireman, a member of the same company dispatched to peel him off the tree, the same organization that preaches snowmobile safety; responds to other gruesome, drunken snowmobile "accidents, and the very same company that posts an illuminated "helmet safety" notice 700 feet from his own home.
Clearly, while others have been as foolish as Brian in their choice of recreational activities, few have been so uniquely aware of the possible repercussions prior to making that choice!
Master Welder
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(February 2003, Australia) I heard this on radio and happened to pass the house the next day. A homeowner was doing some welding on the roof of his house at Port Macquarie in New South Wales. He had problems with his oxyacetylene tanks slipping, so he decided to tack weld them to the roofing iron. That was the last thing he ever did. When I passed the house the next day, there wasn't much left of the roof on that side of the house.
Darwin says, "Could this actually happen? A request for confirmation on www.DarwinAwards.com went unanswered, but details were discussed. The incident occurred in Australia, home to many metal roofs, where repairs are often most easily accomplished using oxyacetylene welding instead of less volatile forms of electric-arc welding. Pure acetylene is explosive at a mere 15 pounds of pressure per square inch, and can also explode when exposed to air. So what happened here? One possibility is that our homeowner, blithely blow-torching the tank for the tack weld, heated it and created enough pressure to turn it into a giant bomb. Another possibility is that the weld weakened the tank enough to allow a leak, which exposed the acetylene to air: KABOOM. A third possibility is that the heat increased the pressure, which popped open relief valves, creating a blowtorch with a 6,000-degree (F) flame, easily hot enough to melt part of the roof and catch the wooden framing on fire. A fourth possibility is that the tank's relief valve turned it into a flaming rocket, which shot into the house and set the whole place on fire. The only sure thing is that the homeowner found a new home in the annals of the Darwin Awards.
Sharp Landing
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(February 2003, East Timor) A man was found lying facedown, covered in mud and blood, the apparent victim of a street crime in Dili. It was not until a post mortem examination was conducted that U.N. police were able to reconstruct his last moments, based on an unusual discovery in his pants.
This up-and-coming young man decided it was cool to shove his weapons, two long knives, down the waistband of his trousers. Unsheathed. The hapless fellow jumped over a small fence and landed in a large puddle of mud. He slipped, which sent the blade of his "trouser knife" into his leg, severing his femoral artery. This has the same effect as cutting off the bottom of a paper cup filled with water. In thirty seconds, one loses enough blood to be rendered unconcious, with nearly complete blood loss within two minutes. He bled to death before he could stagger ten feet from the puddle.
Jack Up
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(9 April 2003, New Zealand) Phil needed to make repairs to the underside of his car. But when he jacked it up, there wasn't enough room for him to work. So he removed the car's battery, placed the jack on top of it, and set to work again, this time with plenty of elbow-room.
Unfortunately for Phil, car batteries are not designed to carry much weight. The battery collapsed and the jack toppled, trapping him beneath the car. Unable to breathe due to the weight on his chest, he quickly expired in a pool of battery acid.
This incident is illuminated by two additional facts: First, Phil's occupation was Accident Prevention Officer at a large food processing plant. And second, ten years previous, he had been working under a car when the jack collapsed, trapping him and breaking one of his legs. Some people just don't learn -- even from their own mistakes.
Ultimate Quest for Airtime
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 May 2003, Indiana) Tamar came all the way from New York for the annual Stark Raven Mad event at the Splashin' Safari waterpark at Holiday World, where members of the American Coaster Enthusiasts planned to rendezvous on Memorial Day weekend. The 32-year-old eagerly looked forward to riding the Raven, later described by Spencer County Prosecutor Jon Dartt as "one of the world's most terrifying roller coasters."
Tamar planned what coaster enthusiasts call "catching airtime," standing up during the ride to show bravery. The park staff warned the "spirited and intelligent" Harvard MBA, along with the rest of the group, "Don't mess with our safety equipment." Tamar's seat belt and lap bar restraint were in place when the train left the station. But you can't catch airtime that way. Her seatbelt was later found unbuckled and tucked into the seat cushions.
As the train swooped over the precipice into the "infamous drop" on the fifth turn at 60 mph, where the G-forces are notoriously skyward, Tamar unlatched her seat belt and stood up. The train dropped, but Tamar didn't. She caught good air until she landed on the ground, 69 feet below.
Hurricane Blumpkin
2003 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 September 2003, Virginia) Another day, another rugby player...
Hurricane Isabel whipped shallow creeks into raging rivers, before she calmed down to a violent tropical storm. What better time for a canoe trip? Especially at 2:30 in the morning, on a moonless night? Enter "Blumpkin" 21, captain of the University rugby team, described as "insane, just indestructible."
He left his own party with friends who "thought it would be all ha, ha and funny" to take the canoe straight down Blacks Run Stream, to Blumpkin's old house.
Winds were gusting to 50 mph, as nearly a foot of rain fell on the Shenandoah Valley. The Boy Scout canoe merit badge says, "If in doubt... survey the water from shore. Do not run any but the mildest rapids unless you have a guide who knows the river. Wear life jackets in all rough water." Surely Blumpkin noticed that the knee-deep water of Blacks Run was now a flood churning higher than his head. Nevertheless he launched, and just as quickly capsized, the boat occpuants tossed into the swift storm-fed stream.
Our "indestructible" friend Blumpkin was sucked underwater twice, to resurface at dawn, 100 yards downstream with a Darwin Award clutched in his fist. His female companion managed to reach shore, as did his male companion, who knew it "wasn't a good idea from the start."
Whether alcohol or drugs were involved, Chief Peavy was not allowed to comment.
2002 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Chainsaw Insurance
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(January 2002, Italy) A violent attack on an innocent man? Andreas, a 23-year-old ex-bouncer from Italy, was found lying in a pool of blood near a country road. Police initially mistook him for a victim of sadistic mutilation. His left leg had been nearly severed by a chainsaw. His last act was an emergency call to operators who heard only a "death rattle." By the time help arrived, copious bleeding had drained his body of blood.
Sad plight? Not quite.The incredible truth was far odder.
Andreas had conspired with his cousin in an insurance scam. The 29-year-old accomplice confessed that he was the "assailant" who attacked--and inadvertently killed--the younger man in a mutually planned insurance fraud that went badly awry.
Andreas had convinced his cousin to cut his left leg off with a chainsaw in order to reap nearly a million dollars from numerous insurance policies. Permanent disability was all that was required. Andreas relied on his cunning, and his knowledge of first aid, to survive the chainsaw incident.
The attack took place near a country lay-by. The cousin sawed Andreas' leg below the knee, and severed a major artery in a gambit timed too close for survival. Emergency crews arrived to find Andreas dead and his cousin fled, tossing the chainsaw in a river on the way out of town.
The cousin now languishes in a cell on homicide charges. Andreas' death was a classic example of fate noticing those who buy chain saws.
Depth of a Fisherman
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(9 January 2002, New Zealand) A fisherman was swept away from the wild West Coast beaches of Auckland, pushed to sea by 12-foot swells encountered after ignoring warnings of the impending danger.
Onlookers could only look on in conditions too poor to allow for a rescue attempt. A Surf Lifesaver reported seeing the man standing and fishing as swells broke over his head in the wake of the oncoming gale.
His body was recovered not far from the rocks.
He is not the first fisherman to drown recently off the West Coast beach. Another man tied himself to the rocks to prevent being swept away, and was drowned by the incoming tide.
Sneakers
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(8 February 2002, Pennsylvania) Outside a camp for troubled youths, sneakers dangled from the electricity line, presumably tossed there by a camper who enjoyed the challenge and notoriety. But the sneakers were an eyesore to one 20-year-old employee. They must be eliminated!
He stood in the raised bucket of a front-end loader, and poked at the sneakers with a device consisting of a fourteen-foot coppper tube with a pocketknife taped to the end. The determined employee had nearly removed a pair of shoes, when the knife pierced the insulation and made contact with the electrical wire. He was knocked out of the bucket and landed on the hood of the loader, with burns on his hands, a foot, and his buttocks. He died from his injuries three weeks later.
Does his death seem the obvious result of a foolish choice? Not according to his mother, who said, "Nobody knows what really happened."
Human Torch
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(23 November 2002, Oslo, Norway) Around 4:45 p.m., neighbors reported hearing a loud pop followed by a fire at a rail yard in Filipstad, just outside Oslo. Fearing a potential terrorist attack, fire and police crews rushed to the scene. The top of an electric train was burning! When the fire died down, investigators pieced together its cause.
The spray cans and wet paint on the side of the train were the first clues. Inner-city Norwegian youth, victims of a society polite to its core, were lashing out in desperation at the brutal cleanliness and order of a country where the trains always run on time, and sticking it to The Man by tagging the symbol of their oppression. So desperate were they to make their political point that they walked right past several signs warning of the danger of high voltage, and climbed over fences to reach their objective.
One of them, a 17-year-old, wanted to tag where no man had tagged before--on the roof of the train. The fact that few people would ever see his art was no impediment to this brave young man as he sought to subvert the dominant paradigm. He climbed atop the train, sprayed his creation, and rose up to proclaim his accomplishment -- touching the main power line and lighting up the neighborhood as 15,000 volts coursed through his body. His remains were so badly burned that authorities were initially unable to determine that the victim was human.
Faulty Aim Fatal
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(7 March 2002, Colorado) When Gerald was pulled over by police for erratic driving, he decided it was better to flee from the stolen car on foot, rather than face possible jail time for a parole violation. This was the first of two successive mental lapses. Gerald's actual thoughts are unknown, but *may* have been something like this: "The officers are only suspicious and alert now... I'll make them hot, sweaty, tired, and angry by leading them on a wild chase through dark alleys and fields."
During the subsequent foot chase, Gerald attempted to dissuade officers from the pursuit by firing a 9mm Ruger semiautomatic handgun blindly over his shoulder. This was the second illustration of a potential mental deficiency. "Officers are running behind me. They have guns. I have a gun! They have eyes in the front of their heads, so they can see to aim at me. I don't have eyes in the back of my head, so I'll fire wildly behind me and see what happens!"
Unfortunately, Gerald appears to have been one of those folks who can't chew gum and walk at the same time. Or at least he couldn't flee and fire at the same time. While discharging the weapon over his shoulder, Gerald managed to shoot himself in the head with his own gun, bringing the chase to a sudden conclusion.
Four shots were fired, none by the officers, who found Gerald's pistol next to his fallen body. Gerald was transported to a local hospital where he expired the following day, thus removing a set of genes deficient in both judgment and coordination from the gene pool.
Wounded Wire Bites Back
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(14 February 2002, Pennsylvania) Daniel and his friend were practicing their marksmanship by shooting at targets in a farm field. But instead of the usual choices of mice, bottles, or birds, they selected a more worthy adversary: electrical insulators.
These pear-shaped glass or plastic devices are intended to hold electrical wires aloft. But after the men shot six insulators off two utility poles, the shattered targets were no longer up to the job. A high-voltage wire fell to the ground and Daniel, attempting to prevent a serious fire, seized the sizzling wire in his hand, and was electrocuted.
An Allegheny Power spokesman advised people not to shoot at electrical insulators.
Return to Trees Fails
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(18 February 2002, Hawaii) Millennia after an evolving human species descended from the trees, 30-year-old Joshua reversed the process, removing himself from the gene pool while perched in a tree. Joshua had hiked several miles onto a ranch and climbed a Koa tree under cover of darkness, intent upon stealing a branch of the expensive native hardwood. To his credit, he was smarter than a classic cartoon character, and didn't make the mistake of cutting the branch supporting him. However he was not smart enough to avoid cutting a branch directly above his head. The severed branch struck and killed him, and authorities found him still in the tree, twenty feet off the ground.
Firecracker Chainsaw Massacre
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(January 2002, Croatia) A Croatian was killed while trying to open a hand grenade with a chainsaw. He wanted to retrieve the explosive to make firecrackers for the New Year's holiday.
Caveat Emptor
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(4 February 2002, New Mexico) Police say three men tried to rob an Albuquerque man who had placed a newspaper ad to sell a gun. The robbers arranged a meeting, then beat and sprayed mace on the gun owner in an attempt to steal the weapon. Surprise! The gun seller was also a gun owner. 18-year-old Carlos intercepted a bullet and died before rescue crews arrived.
One can understand the mistake of robbing a man who unexpectedly turns and shoots, but if the robber singles out a victim because he is selling a gun, then tries to steal the weapon, there's no excuse for being surprised to discover he is armed.
As a Darwinian bonus, there's a fairly good chance that the 18-year-old has not yet reproduced...
Jet Taxi
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(30 January 2002, Brazil) Airport taxi drivers frequently hear the announcement, "The white zone is for loading and unloading of passengers only." But Santos Dumont airport in Rio de Janeiro may need to add a new phrase: "The runway is for take-off and landing of airplanes only."
"The signs that tell you to stop when the plane is on the runway are practically invisible," said the director of the local taxi cooperative. Apparently a Boeing 737 preparing for takeoff was equally invisible to one 64-year-old taxi driver, who sped onto the runway after dropping off his fare. He was right behind the jet when it revved its engines in preparation for a 140-mph takeoff.
Local aviation experts say the force of the 737's jets is comparable to a hurricane, but, we assume, much hotter. The taxi was spun 25 meters through the air, hit the rocks at Guanabara Bay, and ejected its driver. The man's tip for the trip was a broken skull and thorax. He is presently in a coma.
Airport authorities cited driver error as the cause of the accident.
Truck Stop
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 March 2002, Bangladesh) Six highway robbers, who had apparently watched too many gangster movies, were caught in their own trap when they blocked a bypass with their car at midnight. The driver of an oncoming truck carrying a cargo of cows was unable to halt his heavy vehicle in time. The truck rolled right through the blockade, crushing the car and its scheming occupants. Five dacoits died, and the sixth was critically wounded.
A cow was also killed in the accident.
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(January 2002, Italy) A violent attack on an innocent man? Andreas, a 23-year-old ex-bouncer from Italy, was found lying in a pool of blood near a country road. Police initially mistook him for a victim of sadistic mutilation. His left leg had been nearly severed by a chainsaw. His last act was an emergency call to operators who heard only a "death rattle." By the time help arrived, copious bleeding had drained his body of blood.
Sad plight? Not quite.The incredible truth was far odder.
Andreas had conspired with his cousin in an insurance scam. The 29-year-old accomplice confessed that he was the "assailant" who attacked--and inadvertently killed--the younger man in a mutually planned insurance fraud that went badly awry.
Andreas had convinced his cousin to cut his left leg off with a chainsaw in order to reap nearly a million dollars from numerous insurance policies. Permanent disability was all that was required. Andreas relied on his cunning, and his knowledge of first aid, to survive the chainsaw incident.
The attack took place near a country lay-by. The cousin sawed Andreas' leg below the knee, and severed a major artery in a gambit timed too close for survival. Emergency crews arrived to find Andreas dead and his cousin fled, tossing the chainsaw in a river on the way out of town.
The cousin now languishes in a cell on homicide charges. Andreas' death was a classic example of fate noticing those who buy chain saws.
Depth of a Fisherman
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(9 January 2002, New Zealand) A fisherman was swept away from the wild West Coast beaches of Auckland, pushed to sea by 12-foot swells encountered after ignoring warnings of the impending danger.
Onlookers could only look on in conditions too poor to allow for a rescue attempt. A Surf Lifesaver reported seeing the man standing and fishing as swells broke over his head in the wake of the oncoming gale.
His body was recovered not far from the rocks.
He is not the first fisherman to drown recently off the West Coast beach. Another man tied himself to the rocks to prevent being swept away, and was drowned by the incoming tide.
Sneakers
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(8 February 2002, Pennsylvania) Outside a camp for troubled youths, sneakers dangled from the electricity line, presumably tossed there by a camper who enjoyed the challenge and notoriety. But the sneakers were an eyesore to one 20-year-old employee. They must be eliminated!
He stood in the raised bucket of a front-end loader, and poked at the sneakers with a device consisting of a fourteen-foot coppper tube with a pocketknife taped to the end. The determined employee had nearly removed a pair of shoes, when the knife pierced the insulation and made contact with the electrical wire. He was knocked out of the bucket and landed on the hood of the loader, with burns on his hands, a foot, and his buttocks. He died from his injuries three weeks later.
Does his death seem the obvious result of a foolish choice? Not according to his mother, who said, "Nobody knows what really happened."
Human Torch
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(23 November 2002, Oslo, Norway) Around 4:45 p.m., neighbors reported hearing a loud pop followed by a fire at a rail yard in Filipstad, just outside Oslo. Fearing a potential terrorist attack, fire and police crews rushed to the scene. The top of an electric train was burning! When the fire died down, investigators pieced together its cause.
The spray cans and wet paint on the side of the train were the first clues. Inner-city Norwegian youth, victims of a society polite to its core, were lashing out in desperation at the brutal cleanliness and order of a country where the trains always run on time, and sticking it to The Man by tagging the symbol of their oppression. So desperate were they to make their political point that they walked right past several signs warning of the danger of high voltage, and climbed over fences to reach their objective.
One of them, a 17-year-old, wanted to tag where no man had tagged before--on the roof of the train. The fact that few people would ever see his art was no impediment to this brave young man as he sought to subvert the dominant paradigm. He climbed atop the train, sprayed his creation, and rose up to proclaim his accomplishment -- touching the main power line and lighting up the neighborhood as 15,000 volts coursed through his body. His remains were so badly burned that authorities were initially unable to determine that the victim was human.
Faulty Aim Fatal
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(7 March 2002, Colorado) When Gerald was pulled over by police for erratic driving, he decided it was better to flee from the stolen car on foot, rather than face possible jail time for a parole violation. This was the first of two successive mental lapses. Gerald's actual thoughts are unknown, but *may* have been something like this: "The officers are only suspicious and alert now... I'll make them hot, sweaty, tired, and angry by leading them on a wild chase through dark alleys and fields."
During the subsequent foot chase, Gerald attempted to dissuade officers from the pursuit by firing a 9mm Ruger semiautomatic handgun blindly over his shoulder. This was the second illustration of a potential mental deficiency. "Officers are running behind me. They have guns. I have a gun! They have eyes in the front of their heads, so they can see to aim at me. I don't have eyes in the back of my head, so I'll fire wildly behind me and see what happens!"
Unfortunately, Gerald appears to have been one of those folks who can't chew gum and walk at the same time. Or at least he couldn't flee and fire at the same time. While discharging the weapon over his shoulder, Gerald managed to shoot himself in the head with his own gun, bringing the chase to a sudden conclusion.
Four shots were fired, none by the officers, who found Gerald's pistol next to his fallen body. Gerald was transported to a local hospital where he expired the following day, thus removing a set of genes deficient in both judgment and coordination from the gene pool.
Wounded Wire Bites Back
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(14 February 2002, Pennsylvania) Daniel and his friend were practicing their marksmanship by shooting at targets in a farm field. But instead of the usual choices of mice, bottles, or birds, they selected a more worthy adversary: electrical insulators.
These pear-shaped glass or plastic devices are intended to hold electrical wires aloft. But after the men shot six insulators off two utility poles, the shattered targets were no longer up to the job. A high-voltage wire fell to the ground and Daniel, attempting to prevent a serious fire, seized the sizzling wire in his hand, and was electrocuted.
An Allegheny Power spokesman advised people not to shoot at electrical insulators.
Return to Trees Fails
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(18 February 2002, Hawaii) Millennia after an evolving human species descended from the trees, 30-year-old Joshua reversed the process, removing himself from the gene pool while perched in a tree. Joshua had hiked several miles onto a ranch and climbed a Koa tree under cover of darkness, intent upon stealing a branch of the expensive native hardwood. To his credit, he was smarter than a classic cartoon character, and didn't make the mistake of cutting the branch supporting him. However he was not smart enough to avoid cutting a branch directly above his head. The severed branch struck and killed him, and authorities found him still in the tree, twenty feet off the ground.
Firecracker Chainsaw Massacre
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(January 2002, Croatia) A Croatian was killed while trying to open a hand grenade with a chainsaw. He wanted to retrieve the explosive to make firecrackers for the New Year's holiday.
Caveat Emptor
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(4 February 2002, New Mexico) Police say three men tried to rob an Albuquerque man who had placed a newspaper ad to sell a gun. The robbers arranged a meeting, then beat and sprayed mace on the gun owner in an attempt to steal the weapon. Surprise! The gun seller was also a gun owner. 18-year-old Carlos intercepted a bullet and died before rescue crews arrived.
One can understand the mistake of robbing a man who unexpectedly turns and shoots, but if the robber singles out a victim because he is selling a gun, then tries to steal the weapon, there's no excuse for being surprised to discover he is armed.
As a Darwinian bonus, there's a fairly good chance that the 18-year-old has not yet reproduced...
Jet Taxi
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(30 January 2002, Brazil) Airport taxi drivers frequently hear the announcement, "The white zone is for loading and unloading of passengers only." But Santos Dumont airport in Rio de Janeiro may need to add a new phrase: "The runway is for take-off and landing of airplanes only."
"The signs that tell you to stop when the plane is on the runway are practically invisible," said the director of the local taxi cooperative. Apparently a Boeing 737 preparing for takeoff was equally invisible to one 64-year-old taxi driver, who sped onto the runway after dropping off his fare. He was right behind the jet when it revved its engines in preparation for a 140-mph takeoff.
Local aviation experts say the force of the 737's jets is comparable to a hurricane, but, we assume, much hotter. The taxi was spun 25 meters through the air, hit the rocks at Guanabara Bay, and ejected its driver. The man's tip for the trip was a broken skull and thorax. He is presently in a coma.
Airport authorities cited driver error as the cause of the accident.
Truck Stop
2002 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 March 2002, Bangladesh) Six highway robbers, who had apparently watched too many gangster movies, were caught in their own trap when they blocked a bypass with their car at midnight. The driver of an oncoming truck carrying a cargo of cows was unable to halt his heavy vehicle in time. The truck rolled right through the blockade, crushing the car and its scheming occupants. Five dacoits died, and the sixth was critically wounded.
A cow was also killed in the accident.
2001 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
BulletProof
2001 Darwin Award Winner
(March 2001, Ghana) Tribal clashes are common in Northern Ghana, and people often resort to witchcraft with the hope of becoming invulnerable to weapons. For example, Aleobiga, 23, and fifteen fellow believers who purchased a "magical" potion to render them invincible to bullets.
After smearing the magical lotion over their bodies for two weeks, Aleobiga volunteered to test the spell. He stood in a clearing while his friends raised their weapons, aimed, fired...
You'd think he would have tested the spell on a non-essential body part first. Aleobiga is now roaming the Great Savannah in the sky, and the jujuman who supplied the defective magic was beaten for his failure.
Crystal Daze
2001 Darwin Award Winner
Chihuahua, Mexico is home to two hot caverns containing the largest natural crystals known to man. "Walking into either of these caves is like stepping into a (sweltering) gigantic geode," described one awed observer. Some of the clear selenite crystals are over 20 feet long.
The newly-discovered caverns, 1200 feet below the surface of the earth, carry a curse for those who seek to plunder their riches. A man recently tried to steal one of the magnificent crystals from the roof, and might have succeeded... if he hadn't stood directly beneath it while chopping it free. He was pinned beneath the sparkling stalactite as it heeded the call of gravity, and roasted in the 108 F cave.
Blown Away
2001 Darwin Award Winner
(16 July, 2001, United States) An assistant plant manager for Blacklidge Emulsions died when he used an acetylene torch to cut a hole in a 10,000 gallon tank of asphalt emulsion. He was attempting to visually survey the amount of emulsion that remained in the tank, but "no safety precautions were taken before the cutting operation began," stated an OSHA representative. "[His] attention was twice called to a warning sign on the side of the structure which stated the contents were combustible. In complete disregard of safety procedures," the erstwhile manager "lit an acetylene torch and began cutting, causing an explosion that blew him 93 feet away.
Intersecting Darwins
2001 Darwin Award Winner
(15 April 2001, Tennessee) The day before the US tax filing deadline, a Memphis Darwin Award winner trying to beat a train drove around the crossing gates -- only to be struck by an oncoming vehicle whose driver had the same mad plan. The driver of one vehicle was killed, making this monumental stupidity the first instance we have witnessed of a Darwin Award winner crashing into an Honorable Mention. The accident happened to one side of the tracks, so the train passed by unimpeded.
Think Before You Leap
2001 Darwin Award Winner
(21 July 2001, Idaho) When his brakes failed while driving down a steep mountain road, Marco bailed out on his eight passengers and leapt from his Dodge van. Too bad Marco didn't alert the others to the problem before he took flight so precipitously. Another passenger was able to bring the vehicle to a stop a short distance away. Marco struck his head on the pavement and died at the scene. No one else was injured.
Fifteen Minutes of Flame
2001 Darwin Award "April Fools' Day Joke"
(1 April 2001, New York) A literary agent found himself dazed and patting out flames shortly after arriving at a two-alarm house fire equipped with a sandwich, a bullhorn, whiskey and a lawnchair. He climbed to the roof of a nearby house, perched on his lawnchair, and proceeded to lecture the startled emergency crew while enjoying his drink.
Three firemen had just finished clearing the house, locating the residents' young golden retriever in the process, when they heard Frank's imperious command. "Drop the dog and open the hydrant this instant!"
They turned in surprise and dropped the yelping puppy, which fell through the burning timbers and burst into flames. Onlookers mobbed the base of the heckler's house and threw cans and shrubbery at the obstreperous critic, who batted the projectiles aside with his bullhorn while continuing to drink whiskey and issue commands.
"The north side is engaged!"
"Position the hose along the azalea bushes!"
"Stop picking your nose!"
Sorely provoked, the the senior fireman, currently on administrative leave, picked up the dead (but still burning) dog and flung it onto the roof. The flaming animal landed in Frank's lap, igniting his spilled whiskey and severely burning his crotch.
Frank heaved the dog off himself, but neglected to brace his feet on the slanted roof. The lawnchair toppled and fell from the house, miraculously avoiding onlookers, who watched aghast while the prostrate man suffered further injuries from falling embers and his own roof-top accoutrements.
The house fire was eventually subdued, and paramedics transported the injured man and his loudspeaker to the hospital. Although he is recovering from his injuries, the prognosis is that he will never again be able to procreate with quite the same gusto.
Skeleton Key
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
Another would-be thief has been discovered languishing as a pile of bones, this one by an artisan brick mason. The protruding foot and leg bones found during building renovations belonged to a thief who tried to rob a Gift shop by way of the second-floor chimney fifteen years before, speculated bemused authorities. Maybe he should have tried a skeleton key.
Enraged Elephant
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(7 January 2001, Tanzania) Yet another safari tourist met with an early demise when she left the safety of the tour bus in order to frame a better picture. The woman, a volunteer with the US Peace Corps, and her camera were fatally trampled by an enraged elephant in Ruaha National Park. Let her fate remind you to "keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times."
Scooter Snuff
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(25 January 2001, New Mexico) Cross the street at night wearing dark clothing, and you court danger. Ride a push scooter down the center lane of a major road wearing dark clothes in the middle of the night, and you take your life into your hands. Ride that scooter in the dark carrying a bottle of Tequila Rose liqueur, and you're a Darwin Award waiting to happen.
An unidentified 18-year-old died doing just that, when the driver of a pickup truck veered to avoid him and accidentally clipped him with the side mirror at 9pm. The unhelmeted scooter rider hit the pavement and died at the scene from severe head injuries.
In an earnest display of common sense, Police Sgt. Brian McCutcheon warned that piloting a scooter down a street after dark is "a very bad idea" and "extremely unsafe."
Sweet Release
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(1 January 2001, Illinois) Collin and a fellow University of Illinois police officer were good friends who shared a disaffection for their employer. They often relaxed after work to gripe about policies and enjoy an unusual game they had invented to relieve their frustrations. They called the game "Sweet Release," "65% Disability," and "Million-Dollar Wound."
On New Year's Eve, Collin's partner handed over his Glock semiautomatic handgun, saying, "Sweet Release." The two men had exchanged their duty weapons in their game on prior occasions, but this night was different.
"I wonder if this is loaded?" With those portentous parting words, Collin stuck the gun in his mouth and played his final round of "Sweet Release."
Investigators interviewed the two men and three women present during the fatal shooting, and all agreed that Collin was his normal, happy self, and did not intend to commit suicide.
Although Collin had been drinking with friends for several hours on the night of the accident, his blood alcohol level at 0.09% was barely over the Illinois legal limit for driving. This level is high enough to dull reflexes, but is not sufficient to seriously impair cognitive function.
The deceased had worked for the Charleston Police Department and the Champaign County sheriff's office before taking a job at the University. But in all his years in law enforcement, he had apparently never fully absorbed the cardinal rule of handling weapons, stated by investigator Jim Rein: "Whether civilian or police officer, the assumption [should be] that every weapon is loaded."
Sheep Sleep
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(9 March 2001, Cairo) Police were baffled to discover a 20-year-old Bedouin shepherd shot dead in the middle of the desert. No one else was around, and no footprints led to or from the scene of the crime.
Investigators from Sidi Barrani sifted through the meager clues surrounding Mochtar's death, and soon fingered the culprit.
The Egyptian man had fallen asleep amid his sheep without securing his rifle. One moment of neglect, one wooly misstep on the trigger, and a speeding slug sentenced the sleeping shepherd to his final slumber.
The unregistered weapon was confiscated from the flock.
"The murderous sheep has been sentenced to ewethanasia."
God Saves?
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(24 February 2001, Iowa) A wealth of literature makes it abundantly clear that deities often intercede to protect their sanctuaries from desecration. In light of this knowledge, two teen-agers who planned to burgle a church probably should have brought along their rosaries and their crosses.
Travis, 16, was on the roof of Grace Church in Des Moines, lowering a stolen generator to the ground, when his jacket became wrapped in the electrical cord and pulled him over the ledge to dangle precariously in the air. At that point he could have cut himself free with the sharp knife in his pocket. He could have escaped by wriggling out of his jacket. Travis, Inexplicably, did neither.
The surviving thief, unaware of his friend's plight, waited a fifteen minutes before leaving Travis, trapped in the freezing rain, to die of exposure.
Next time you steal from a church, remember Travis' fate and reconsider. That bit of booty is not worth risking the touch of a vengeful God.
Fishing With No Compass
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(March 2001, Ohio) Lake Erie claimed three more victims who were hoping to catch a few fish but caught instead a fatal chill. "Someone noticed tracks leading to a hole and an ice chest floating in the water," said Deputy Sheriff Roger Garn.
The three men had been driving on a thin sheet of ice surrounded by open patches of water, which they may have overlooked due to poor visibility caused by a morning snowstorm. Suddenly, to no one's surprise but theirs, their all-terrain vehicle plunged through the ice. Hours later divers rescued the bodies from 10 feet of 34-degree water.
The winters have not been cold enough to allow ice fishing on the lake for at least three years, and authorities have warned the public about the unsafe conditions. In January 21 anglers were rescued from a patch of ice that broke away from shore. Yet even the recent deaths do little to deter fisherman. Deputy Sheriff Garn said bemusedly, "We're taking three people off in body bags, and (dozens) were still going out to fish."
Rubbish!
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(1 March 2000, New Zealand) Baldwin Street in Dunedin is listed as the steepest in the world in The Guinness Book of World Records, and it was at the top of this 38-degree incline that Ana and her friend hatched a plan for a midnight downhill slide. The two university students dragged a two-wheeled rubbish bin up the street, climbed in, shoved off, and down they went in their makeshift sleigh.
As they hurtled pell-mell down Baldwin Street in the wee hours of the morning, residents described being awakened by "a hell of a racket" which went on for some time before ending with a sickening crash. Their 50-meter dash ended precipitously when the rubbish bin slammed into a legally parked trailer. Ana, 19, was killed instantly, and her co-pilot suffered serious head injuries, though one wonders how they noticed.
The feat did not make it into the Guinness Book of World Records, as the top speed of the rubbish bin is unknown.
2001 Darwin Award Winner(March 2001, Ghana) Tribal clashes are common in Northern Ghana, and people often resort to witchcraft with the hope of becoming invulnerable to weapons. For example, Aleobiga, 23, and fifteen fellow believers who purchased a "magical" potion to render them invincible to bullets.
After smearing the magical lotion over their bodies for two weeks, Aleobiga volunteered to test the spell. He stood in a clearing while his friends raised their weapons, aimed, fired...
You'd think he would have tested the spell on a non-essential body part first. Aleobiga is now roaming the Great Savannah in the sky, and the jujuman who supplied the defective magic was beaten for his failure.
Crystal Daze
2001 Darwin Award WinnerChihuahua, Mexico is home to two hot caverns containing the largest natural crystals known to man. "Walking into either of these caves is like stepping into a (sweltering) gigantic geode," described one awed observer. Some of the clear selenite crystals are over 20 feet long.
The newly-discovered caverns, 1200 feet below the surface of the earth, carry a curse for those who seek to plunder their riches. A man recently tried to steal one of the magnificent crystals from the roof, and might have succeeded... if he hadn't stood directly beneath it while chopping it free. He was pinned beneath the sparkling stalactite as it heeded the call of gravity, and roasted in the 108 F cave.
Blown Away
2001 Darwin Award Winner(16 July, 2001, United States) An assistant plant manager for Blacklidge Emulsions died when he used an acetylene torch to cut a hole in a 10,000 gallon tank of asphalt emulsion. He was attempting to visually survey the amount of emulsion that remained in the tank, but "no safety precautions were taken before the cutting operation began," stated an OSHA representative. "[His] attention was twice called to a warning sign on the side of the structure which stated the contents were combustible. In complete disregard of safety procedures," the erstwhile manager "lit an acetylene torch and began cutting, causing an explosion that blew him 93 feet away.
Intersecting Darwins
2001 Darwin Award Winner(15 April 2001, Tennessee) The day before the US tax filing deadline, a Memphis Darwin Award winner trying to beat a train drove around the crossing gates -- only to be struck by an oncoming vehicle whose driver had the same mad plan. The driver of one vehicle was killed, making this monumental stupidity the first instance we have witnessed of a Darwin Award winner crashing into an Honorable Mention. The accident happened to one side of the tracks, so the train passed by unimpeded.
Think Before You Leap
2001 Darwin Award Winner(21 July 2001, Idaho) When his brakes failed while driving down a steep mountain road, Marco bailed out on his eight passengers and leapt from his Dodge van. Too bad Marco didn't alert the others to the problem before he took flight so precipitously. Another passenger was able to bring the vehicle to a stop a short distance away. Marco struck his head on the pavement and died at the scene. No one else was injured.
Fifteen Minutes of Flame
2001 Darwin Award "April Fools' Day Joke"
(1 April 2001, New York) A literary agent found himself dazed and patting out flames shortly after arriving at a two-alarm house fire equipped with a sandwich, a bullhorn, whiskey and a lawnchair. He climbed to the roof of a nearby house, perched on his lawnchair, and proceeded to lecture the startled emergency crew while enjoying his drink.
Three firemen had just finished clearing the house, locating the residents' young golden retriever in the process, when they heard Frank's imperious command. "Drop the dog and open the hydrant this instant!"
They turned in surprise and dropped the yelping puppy, which fell through the burning timbers and burst into flames. Onlookers mobbed the base of the heckler's house and threw cans and shrubbery at the obstreperous critic, who batted the projectiles aside with his bullhorn while continuing to drink whiskey and issue commands.
"The north side is engaged!"
"Position the hose along the azalea bushes!"
"Stop picking your nose!"
Sorely provoked, the the senior fireman, currently on administrative leave, picked up the dead (but still burning) dog and flung it onto the roof. The flaming animal landed in Frank's lap, igniting his spilled whiskey and severely burning his crotch.
Frank heaved the dog off himself, but neglected to brace his feet on the slanted roof. The lawnchair toppled and fell from the house, miraculously avoiding onlookers, who watched aghast while the prostrate man suffered further injuries from falling embers and his own roof-top accoutrements.
The house fire was eventually subdued, and paramedics transported the injured man and his loudspeaker to the hospital. Although he is recovering from his injuries, the prognosis is that he will never again be able to procreate with quite the same gusto.
Skeleton Key
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
Another would-be thief has been discovered languishing as a pile of bones, this one by an artisan brick mason. The protruding foot and leg bones found during building renovations belonged to a thief who tried to rob a Gift shop by way of the second-floor chimney fifteen years before, speculated bemused authorities. Maybe he should have tried a skeleton key.
Enraged Elephant
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(7 January 2001, Tanzania) Yet another safari tourist met with an early demise when she left the safety of the tour bus in order to frame a better picture. The woman, a volunteer with the US Peace Corps, and her camera were fatally trampled by an enraged elephant in Ruaha National Park. Let her fate remind you to "keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times."
Scooter Snuff
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(25 January 2001, New Mexico) Cross the street at night wearing dark clothing, and you court danger. Ride a push scooter down the center lane of a major road wearing dark clothes in the middle of the night, and you take your life into your hands. Ride that scooter in the dark carrying a bottle of Tequila Rose liqueur, and you're a Darwin Award waiting to happen.
An unidentified 18-year-old died doing just that, when the driver of a pickup truck veered to avoid him and accidentally clipped him with the side mirror at 9pm. The unhelmeted scooter rider hit the pavement and died at the scene from severe head injuries.
In an earnest display of common sense, Police Sgt. Brian McCutcheon warned that piloting a scooter down a street after dark is "a very bad idea" and "extremely unsafe."
Sweet Release
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(1 January 2001, Illinois) Collin and a fellow University of Illinois police officer were good friends who shared a disaffection for their employer. They often relaxed after work to gripe about policies and enjoy an unusual game they had invented to relieve their frustrations. They called the game "Sweet Release," "65% Disability," and "Million-Dollar Wound."
On New Year's Eve, Collin's partner handed over his Glock semiautomatic handgun, saying, "Sweet Release." The two men had exchanged their duty weapons in their game on prior occasions, but this night was different.
"I wonder if this is loaded?" With those portentous parting words, Collin stuck the gun in his mouth and played his final round of "Sweet Release."
Investigators interviewed the two men and three women present during the fatal shooting, and all agreed that Collin was his normal, happy self, and did not intend to commit suicide.
Although Collin had been drinking with friends for several hours on the night of the accident, his blood alcohol level at 0.09% was barely over the Illinois legal limit for driving. This level is high enough to dull reflexes, but is not sufficient to seriously impair cognitive function.
The deceased had worked for the Charleston Police Department and the Champaign County sheriff's office before taking a job at the University. But in all his years in law enforcement, he had apparently never fully absorbed the cardinal rule of handling weapons, stated by investigator Jim Rein: "Whether civilian or police officer, the assumption [should be] that every weapon is loaded."
Sheep Sleep
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(9 March 2001, Cairo) Police were baffled to discover a 20-year-old Bedouin shepherd shot dead in the middle of the desert. No one else was around, and no footprints led to or from the scene of the crime.
Investigators from Sidi Barrani sifted through the meager clues surrounding Mochtar's death, and soon fingered the culprit.
The Egyptian man had fallen asleep amid his sheep without securing his rifle. One moment of neglect, one wooly misstep on the trigger, and a speeding slug sentenced the sleeping shepherd to his final slumber.
The unregistered weapon was confiscated from the flock.
"The murderous sheep has been sentenced to ewethanasia."
God Saves?
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(24 February 2001, Iowa) A wealth of literature makes it abundantly clear that deities often intercede to protect their sanctuaries from desecration. In light of this knowledge, two teen-agers who planned to burgle a church probably should have brought along their rosaries and their crosses.
Travis, 16, was on the roof of Grace Church in Des Moines, lowering a stolen generator to the ground, when his jacket became wrapped in the electrical cord and pulled him over the ledge to dangle precariously in the air. At that point he could have cut himself free with the sharp knife in his pocket. He could have escaped by wriggling out of his jacket. Travis, Inexplicably, did neither.
The surviving thief, unaware of his friend's plight, waited a fifteen minutes before leaving Travis, trapped in the freezing rain, to die of exposure.
Next time you steal from a church, remember Travis' fate and reconsider. That bit of booty is not worth risking the touch of a vengeful God.
Fishing With No Compass
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(March 2001, Ohio) Lake Erie claimed three more victims who were hoping to catch a few fish but caught instead a fatal chill. "Someone noticed tracks leading to a hole and an ice chest floating in the water," said Deputy Sheriff Roger Garn.
The three men had been driving on a thin sheet of ice surrounded by open patches of water, which they may have overlooked due to poor visibility caused by a morning snowstorm. Suddenly, to no one's surprise but theirs, their all-terrain vehicle plunged through the ice. Hours later divers rescued the bodies from 10 feet of 34-degree water.
The winters have not been cold enough to allow ice fishing on the lake for at least three years, and authorities have warned the public about the unsafe conditions. In January 21 anglers were rescued from a patch of ice that broke away from shore. Yet even the recent deaths do little to deter fisherman. Deputy Sheriff Garn said bemusedly, "We're taking three people off in body bags, and (dozens) were still going out to fish."
Rubbish!
2001 Darwin Award Nominee
(1 March 2000, New Zealand) Baldwin Street in Dunedin is listed as the steepest in the world in The Guinness Book of World Records, and it was at the top of this 38-degree incline that Ana and her friend hatched a plan for a midnight downhill slide. The two university students dragged a two-wheeled rubbish bin up the street, climbed in, shoved off, and down they went in their makeshift sleigh.
As they hurtled pell-mell down Baldwin Street in the wee hours of the morning, residents described being awakened by "a hell of a racket" which went on for some time before ending with a sickening crash. Their 50-meter dash ended precipitously when the rubbish bin slammed into a legally parked trailer. Ana, 19, was killed instantly, and her co-pilot suffered serious head injuries, though one wonders how they noticed.
The feat did not make it into the Guinness Book of World Records, as the top speed of the rubbish bin is unknown.
2000 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Father Knows Best
2000 Darwin Award Winner
(13 March 2000, New Jersey) It started out like a scene from The Brady Bunch. Andrew and his fianc?e were living together with his three children and her three children in Dover Township, when an argument over chocolate cake icing erupted.
Andrew accused his ten-year-old son of taking the missing container, and the two became embroiled in a heated disagreement. Andrew took the boy out to the garage for a private discussion, and there the conversation became even more emotional. Then the man made his fatal mistake.
He handed a five-inch kitchen knife to his angry son, and challenged the boy to stab him if he hated him so much. The boy put the knife down, but Andrew picked it up and placed it in his hand again. In the heat of the moment the outraged boy took him up on the offer and plunged the knife into his chest. The deadly blow happened so fast that no one could stop it.
Andrew was pronounced dead at Community Medical Center. His last words were "Would you believe the kid did that?"
The fourth grader, charged with manslaughter and illegal possession of a weapon, faces up to three years imprisonment. But Ocean County prosecutor E. David Millard said it was unlikely that he would serve jail time, as the boy had been provoked.
The Daily Grind
2000 Darwin Award Winner
(01 March 2000, Maine) The owner of the Carrier Chipping Company inadvertently reproduced the chilling climactic scene in the movie Fargo, and was rent asunder by his own wood chipper.
The chipper, affectionately known as the "Hog," will take birch or maple logs up to 24 inches in diameter and reduce them to 3/4" chips of wood. Employees were working late to make up for time spent repairing equipment malfunctions earlier in the day. When the Hog jammed, Michael climbed the conveyor belt feeding the chipper and used a rake to break up the bark jam in the chute.
Director C. William Freeman of the Bangor Occupational Safety and Health Administration said, "Generally, our experience (of fatal accidents involving chippers) has found two causes: inadequate machine guarding, or a failure to institute an effective lockout-tagout program when someone is unjamming pieces of equipment." Apparently Michael was not a proponent of lockout-tagout procedures. His efforts were directed against a machine that was still in operation.
The Skowhegan resident was somewhat the worse for the wear after his passage through the Hog. Police Chief Butch Asselin said that the remains would be subjected to DNA analysis for a positive ID, and added "I hope I never, ever see anything like this, ever again. I had a hard time sleeping last night."
Forklift Safety Video
2000 Darwin Award Winner
(11 March 2000, Perth, Australia) It just stands to reason, one should follow safe practices while filming a safety video. But the 52-year-old owner of a machinery and equipment training school violated that rule of common sense while filming a forklift safety demonstration.
With the cameras rolling, he was thrown from the forklift cabin and crushed. Subsequent investigation fingered the culprits responsible for the fatality: driver error and high speed over varied terrain, coupled with an unused seat belt.
His final safety demonstration was the most convincing of his career.
Home Grown Parachute
2000 Darwin Award Winner
(25 May 2000, Philippines) We all enjoy learning from the past. Reflect back to November 24, 1971, aboard a Northwest Orient Airlines flight in Portland. A man who had purchased his ticket under the name of "Dan Cooper" demanded two hundred thousand dollars in cash and four parachutes. The plane made a landing in Seattle to accommodate his requests and disgorge the passengers. Once the plane was back in the air, Cooper asked how to lower the tail stairs, and then ordered the flight attendant out of the cabin. When the plane landed in Reno, the tail stairs were open and Cooper and the money were gone.
For all his cool demeanor, Cooper had the crosshairs of evolution on him when he decided to jump. There was a freezing rainstorm outside, and the wind chill from the plane's velocity dropped the effective temperature to -60 degrees Fahrenheit. To seal his fate, he jumped with no food or survival gear into a heavily wooded forest in winter at night.
The peanuts provided on the plane were just not enough to sustain his life. It is assumed that the man the FBI called D. B. Cooper died in the mountains or hit the Columbia River and drowned. History, then, teaches us that one cannot jump out of an airplane and survive. You would think that a hijacker would know better, but…
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.
Do It Yourself, Do Yourself In
2000 Darwin Award Winner
(2000, Colorado) Summer is the most blissful of seasons, when our favorite summertime activity -- do it yourself stupidity -- kicks into high gear. Meet Charles, 34, a Denver masonry contractor who created brick and mortar edifices. Charles was in construction. He had worked on houses, he had watched electricians install wiring. He believed this qualified him as a member of the Junior Electrician Society. He figured he could handle any electrical issue that came up around his own home.
One day on the job, Charles was apparently bonked in the head by his bricks. He had the great idea! He would build an electric fence in his own backyard. "An electric fence will keep the dogs in." Charles connected a wire to an extension cord, and managed to encircle his backyard with a 120-V strand of wire without mishap. His dogs will not be sued for puppy support with this security system in place!
The household became accustomed to the fence, and things settled down to normal, until Charles picked up a passion for gardening. Charles had a real nice set of tomatoes, and I'm not referring to his wife. One day he reached for a tomato, put his hand on the electrified wire, and there's really no need to explain what happened next.
Why did this man die? Like other inexperienced people, he thought he knew what he was doing. But his design had two major flaws. Fences constructed for dogs use one-tenth the voltage of cattle fences (which do use 120 volts.) And he needed to install a repeater, which transmits 150-microsecond pulses, to hit a cow with a jolt of juice that cuts off in time to avoid creating a pile of rare steaks by the fence.
The moral of this story is, as always, one of the guiding principles of common sense: if you don't know how to do something, don't do it!
Gun Safety Training
2000 Darwin Award Runner-Up
(28 February 2000, Texas) A Houston man earned a succinct lesson in gun safety when he played Russian roulette with a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Rashaad, nineteen, was visiting friends when he announced his intention to play the deadly game. He apparently did not realize that a semiautomatic pistol, unlike a revolver, automatically inserts a cartridge into the firing chamber when the gun is cocked. His chance of winning a round of Russian roulette was zero, as he quickly discovered.
Stoned Sleep
2000 Darwin Award Runner-Up
(26 March 2000, South Carolina) A North Carolina woman learned a hard lesson about drugs when she decided to sleep on the roof. Police reports say that Patricia and her boyfriend had been drinking and smoking marijuana, when they decided to enjoy the fresh air on the roof of the King Charles Inn. They climbed over a guard rail with pillows and blankets, and fell asleep under the stars. Sound asleep, apparently. Patricia slid off the roof and fell to her death on Hasell Street shortly before dawn on Sunday. When police arrived at the scene, the boyfriend was found still sleeping on the roof, curled up in a blanket and pillow. The death has been ruled accidental, but we feel that the blame belongs to the stoned woman who chose to snooze on the roof.
Jumping Jack Cash
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(March 2000) The Grand Canyon in Arizona is cordoned off by a fence around the more treacherous overlooks, to prevent unsteady sightseers from tottering into the depths. Some of these overlooks have small towering plateaus a short distance from the fence. Tourists toss coins onto the plateaus, like dry wishing wells. Quite a few coins pile up on the surfaces, while others fall to the valley floor far below. One entrepreneur climbed over the fence with a bag, and leapt to one of the precarious, coin-covered perches. He filled the bag with booty, then tried to leap back to the fence with the coins. But the heavy bag arrested his jump, and several tourist were treated to a view of his plunge to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. He did not survive to harvest the piles of coins that had suffered his same fate.
Crappy Driving Award
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(9 October 1999, Maine) Some men die peacefully in bed, while others suffer less pleasant ends. 23-year-old Benjamin lost his life in one of the most unappetizing manners possible when he careened into a 400,000-gallon tank of raw sewage on Friday night. Police speculated that he was driving his 1998 Mazda pickup much too fast to make the sharp right turn in front of the wastewater treatment plant. He was apparently exceeding the speed limit by a generous margin, as his momentum carried him through a chain link fence, across an easement, and through a low post-and-rail fence surrounding the tank of decomposing sewage. Divers located his body beside his upright pickup on the bottom of the 16-foot deep tank. The autopsy failed to provide a conclusive cause for death, but we speculate they will find he died from "taking too much crap".
(3 March 2000, Pennsylvania) In a related event, Andrew died in a messy farming accident at Crooked Creek Farm when he slipped into a manure spreader. Rescue crews failed to revive him (and who can blame them?) The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma.
What's That Ringing?
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(4 March 2000, California) We here in the Silicon Valley are besieged by rude and arrogant idiots. Those of us who grew up here are always hoping more of them will remove themselves from our presence in some amusing way. I am happy to report that one such woman has not only removed herself from the Bay Area through her arrogant idiocy, she has even gone so far as to remove herself from existence itself. Sivaenga was killed and three of her family members injured when they were hit by a train apparently after an arrogant, I-am-more-important-than-God-himself attempt to skirt around a railroad crossing gate that was already down. She sped ahead of a line of cars waiting for the train to cross and attempted to get around the crossing gates, despite ringing warning bells and flashing red lights. Luckily, these deterrents that normally stop people were not enough for Sivaenga or we would still be stuck with her.
Rappin' on Heaven's Door
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 February 2000, London, Ohio) Some artists bleed for their creative work, but usually not literally. That standard changed on Monday, when a gangster-rap video artist put his final effort into his project, and shot himself in the head while the cameras rolled.
24-year-old Robert created the 10-minute video at his apartment with his brother Michael and a friend named Fred. On camera, Robert reached for a .22-caliber handgun, swung the muzzle of the gun to his temple, and fired the gun.
The two co-producers hindered efforts to save the injured man. Police were summoned to the scene by complaints from a neighbor who objected to the loud music and violent shouting. But when they arrived, Michael had to be restrained from preventing police from controlling the scene, and Fred struck a paramedic. Both face misdemeanor charges.
Robert was 24 when he died in a coma at the Ohio State University Medical Center.
Polar Bear Swim
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(1 January 2000, Canada) Believe it or not, there are people who dive into the ocean for a refreshing swim every New Year's Day. It's called a Polar Bear swim, and it's just a crazy ritual to most of us. Anyone who has seen the film Titanic, or read a book about Eskimos, knows that icy water brings on rapid hypothermia and death. But our hero Adrian, studying for his doctorate in Forestry, was not one to heed such trivial concerns.
This 38-year-old man was enjoying a hockey game with friends on Kingsmere Lake when he attempted a Polar Bear swim between holes cut two meters apart on the lake. He dove in at 1:30 AM and failed to resurface.
It is common knowledge that it is nearly impossible to find a small hole in the ice once you've slid beneath the surface. Particularly when you are suffering from the effects of hypothermia: low blood pressure, confusion, and weakness.
Frantic friends jumped in but were unable to find him. They aimed car headlights at the hole to help Adrian find his way back, but to no avail. "The water was only waist deep," said the man's brother. "He must have gotten disoriented."
Adrian's frigid body was recovered Saturday by firefighters, not far from the ice hole that tempted him to his doom.
Kiss of Death
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(23 March 2000, California) A 36-year-old biochemist who was dying to see the legendary rock band KISS on their farewell tour got his wish. Shawn traveled from Calistoga to the Oakland Coliseum, and was enjoying the show, except for one little problem. He was dissatisfied with his seat in the top row of the stadium. He climbed a 7-foot wall to gain a better view of the stage - only to inadvertently discover a new seat three stories below.
The group he had traveled to the concert with had no idea he was missing, until the show ended and the police began asking questions. That's when they learned that Shawn had mistaken a curtain for a solid wall, leaned back, and fallen to his death on an escalator 100 feet below.
A police spokesman said the site of the accident was "a good place to obtain a better view."
Tired of it All
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 August 1999) Daniel was tired to death - literally -- at the Buckeye Ford Dealership in London. He had sneaked onto the lot in the wee hours of the morning with theft on his mind. His modus operandi was to jack up the back of a pickup truck, remove the wheels, heave them into the bed of a hot-wired Buckeye Ford pickup, and move on to the next target. Daniel possessed what local police referred to as "an extensive criminal background," and had apparently spent years honing his craft. But his expertise failed him this time. The pickup was half full when the 47-year-old thief's next (and final) target slipped off the jack and landed squarely on his chest at 4AM. A clear case of live by the truck, die by the truck.
In a related incident, Police in London, Ohio say a thief was killed while stealing tires from a Ford dealership. Employees found the body of Daniel Nolan, 47, when they arrived for work Monday morning. The jack holding up a truck slipped and crushed him.
A Fell Death
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(22 February 2000, Pennsylvania) A man clearing timber from his lot in Chestnuthill Township failed to notice that the tree he was working on had other trees leaning against it. When the weight of its neighbors pushed the tree over in the expected direction, the erstwhile lumberjack ran for his life, but slipped in the icy snow and fell directly in the path of the looming trunk, which landed on him with the expected result.
2000 Darwin Award Winner(13 March 2000, New Jersey) It started out like a scene from The Brady Bunch. Andrew and his fianc?e were living together with his three children and her three children in Dover Township, when an argument over chocolate cake icing erupted.
Andrew accused his ten-year-old son of taking the missing container, and the two became embroiled in a heated disagreement. Andrew took the boy out to the garage for a private discussion, and there the conversation became even more emotional. Then the man made his fatal mistake.
He handed a five-inch kitchen knife to his angry son, and challenged the boy to stab him if he hated him so much. The boy put the knife down, but Andrew picked it up and placed it in his hand again. In the heat of the moment the outraged boy took him up on the offer and plunged the knife into his chest. The deadly blow happened so fast that no one could stop it.
Andrew was pronounced dead at Community Medical Center. His last words were "Would you believe the kid did that?"
The fourth grader, charged with manslaughter and illegal possession of a weapon, faces up to three years imprisonment. But Ocean County prosecutor E. David Millard said it was unlikely that he would serve jail time, as the boy had been provoked.
The Daily Grind
2000 Darwin Award Winner(01 March 2000, Maine) The owner of the Carrier Chipping Company inadvertently reproduced the chilling climactic scene in the movie Fargo, and was rent asunder by his own wood chipper.
The chipper, affectionately known as the "Hog," will take birch or maple logs up to 24 inches in diameter and reduce them to 3/4" chips of wood. Employees were working late to make up for time spent repairing equipment malfunctions earlier in the day. When the Hog jammed, Michael climbed the conveyor belt feeding the chipper and used a rake to break up the bark jam in the chute.
Director C. William Freeman of the Bangor Occupational Safety and Health Administration said, "Generally, our experience (of fatal accidents involving chippers) has found two causes: inadequate machine guarding, or a failure to institute an effective lockout-tagout program when someone is unjamming pieces of equipment." Apparently Michael was not a proponent of lockout-tagout procedures. His efforts were directed against a machine that was still in operation.
The Skowhegan resident was somewhat the worse for the wear after his passage through the Hog. Police Chief Butch Asselin said that the remains would be subjected to DNA analysis for a positive ID, and added "I hope I never, ever see anything like this, ever again. I had a hard time sleeping last night."
Forklift Safety Video
2000 Darwin Award Winner(11 March 2000, Perth, Australia) It just stands to reason, one should follow safe practices while filming a safety video. But the 52-year-old owner of a machinery and equipment training school violated that rule of common sense while filming a forklift safety demonstration.
With the cameras rolling, he was thrown from the forklift cabin and crushed. Subsequent investigation fingered the culprits responsible for the fatality: driver error and high speed over varied terrain, coupled with an unused seat belt.
His final safety demonstration was the most convincing of his career.
Home Grown Parachute
2000 Darwin Award Winner(25 May 2000, Philippines) We all enjoy learning from the past. Reflect back to November 24, 1971, aboard a Northwest Orient Airlines flight in Portland. A man who had purchased his ticket under the name of "Dan Cooper" demanded two hundred thousand dollars in cash and four parachutes. The plane made a landing in Seattle to accommodate his requests and disgorge the passengers. Once the plane was back in the air, Cooper asked how to lower the tail stairs, and then ordered the flight attendant out of the cabin. When the plane landed in Reno, the tail stairs were open and Cooper and the money were gone.
For all his cool demeanor, Cooper had the crosshairs of evolution on him when he decided to jump. There was a freezing rainstorm outside, and the wind chill from the plane's velocity dropped the effective temperature to -60 degrees Fahrenheit. To seal his fate, he jumped with no food or survival gear into a heavily wooded forest in winter at night.
The peanuts provided on the plane were just not enough to sustain his life. It is assumed that the man the FBI called D. B. Cooper died in the mountains or hit the Columbia River and drowned. History, then, teaches us that one cannot jump out of an airplane and survive. You would think that a hijacker would know better, but…
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.
- Don't throw yourself out of a perfectly good airplane.
- If you feel compelled to violate Lesson 1, at least don't roll your own... parachute, that is.
Do It Yourself, Do Yourself In
2000 Darwin Award Winner(2000, Colorado) Summer is the most blissful of seasons, when our favorite summertime activity -- do it yourself stupidity -- kicks into high gear. Meet Charles, 34, a Denver masonry contractor who created brick and mortar edifices. Charles was in construction. He had worked on houses, he had watched electricians install wiring. He believed this qualified him as a member of the Junior Electrician Society. He figured he could handle any electrical issue that came up around his own home.
One day on the job, Charles was apparently bonked in the head by his bricks. He had the great idea! He would build an electric fence in his own backyard. "An electric fence will keep the dogs in." Charles connected a wire to an extension cord, and managed to encircle his backyard with a 120-V strand of wire without mishap. His dogs will not be sued for puppy support with this security system in place!
The household became accustomed to the fence, and things settled down to normal, until Charles picked up a passion for gardening. Charles had a real nice set of tomatoes, and I'm not referring to his wife. One day he reached for a tomato, put his hand on the electrified wire, and there's really no need to explain what happened next.
Why did this man die? Like other inexperienced people, he thought he knew what he was doing. But his design had two major flaws. Fences constructed for dogs use one-tenth the voltage of cattle fences (which do use 120 volts.) And he needed to install a repeater, which transmits 150-microsecond pulses, to hit a cow with a jolt of juice that cuts off in time to avoid creating a pile of rare steaks by the fence.
The moral of this story is, as always, one of the guiding principles of common sense: if you don't know how to do something, don't do it!
Gun Safety Training
2000 Darwin Award Runner-Up(28 February 2000, Texas) A Houston man earned a succinct lesson in gun safety when he played Russian roulette with a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Rashaad, nineteen, was visiting friends when he announced his intention to play the deadly game. He apparently did not realize that a semiautomatic pistol, unlike a revolver, automatically inserts a cartridge into the firing chamber when the gun is cocked. His chance of winning a round of Russian roulette was zero, as he quickly discovered.
Stoned Sleep
2000 Darwin Award Runner-Up(26 March 2000, South Carolina) A North Carolina woman learned a hard lesson about drugs when she decided to sleep on the roof. Police reports say that Patricia and her boyfriend had been drinking and smoking marijuana, when they decided to enjoy the fresh air on the roof of the King Charles Inn. They climbed over a guard rail with pillows and blankets, and fell asleep under the stars. Sound asleep, apparently. Patricia slid off the roof and fell to her death on Hasell Street shortly before dawn on Sunday. When police arrived at the scene, the boyfriend was found still sleeping on the roof, curled up in a blanket and pillow. The death has been ruled accidental, but we feel that the blame belongs to the stoned woman who chose to snooze on the roof.
Jumping Jack Cash
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(March 2000) The Grand Canyon in Arizona is cordoned off by a fence around the more treacherous overlooks, to prevent unsteady sightseers from tottering into the depths. Some of these overlooks have small towering plateaus a short distance from the fence. Tourists toss coins onto the plateaus, like dry wishing wells. Quite a few coins pile up on the surfaces, while others fall to the valley floor far below. One entrepreneur climbed over the fence with a bag, and leapt to one of the precarious, coin-covered perches. He filled the bag with booty, then tried to leap back to the fence with the coins. But the heavy bag arrested his jump, and several tourist were treated to a view of his plunge to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. He did not survive to harvest the piles of coins that had suffered his same fate.
Crappy Driving Award
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(9 October 1999, Maine) Some men die peacefully in bed, while others suffer less pleasant ends. 23-year-old Benjamin lost his life in one of the most unappetizing manners possible when he careened into a 400,000-gallon tank of raw sewage on Friday night. Police speculated that he was driving his 1998 Mazda pickup much too fast to make the sharp right turn in front of the wastewater treatment plant. He was apparently exceeding the speed limit by a generous margin, as his momentum carried him through a chain link fence, across an easement, and through a low post-and-rail fence surrounding the tank of decomposing sewage. Divers located his body beside his upright pickup on the bottom of the 16-foot deep tank. The autopsy failed to provide a conclusive cause for death, but we speculate they will find he died from "taking too much crap".
(3 March 2000, Pennsylvania) In a related event, Andrew died in a messy farming accident at Crooked Creek Farm when he slipped into a manure spreader. Rescue crews failed to revive him (and who can blame them?) The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma.
What's That Ringing?
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(4 March 2000, California) We here in the Silicon Valley are besieged by rude and arrogant idiots. Those of us who grew up here are always hoping more of them will remove themselves from our presence in some amusing way. I am happy to report that one such woman has not only removed herself from the Bay Area through her arrogant idiocy, she has even gone so far as to remove herself from existence itself. Sivaenga was killed and three of her family members injured when they were hit by a train apparently after an arrogant, I-am-more-important-than-God-himself attempt to skirt around a railroad crossing gate that was already down. She sped ahead of a line of cars waiting for the train to cross and attempted to get around the crossing gates, despite ringing warning bells and flashing red lights. Luckily, these deterrents that normally stop people were not enough for Sivaenga or we would still be stuck with her.
Rappin' on Heaven's Door
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 February 2000, London, Ohio) Some artists bleed for their creative work, but usually not literally. That standard changed on Monday, when a gangster-rap video artist put his final effort into his project, and shot himself in the head while the cameras rolled.
24-year-old Robert created the 10-minute video at his apartment with his brother Michael and a friend named Fred. On camera, Robert reached for a .22-caliber handgun, swung the muzzle of the gun to his temple, and fired the gun.
The two co-producers hindered efforts to save the injured man. Police were summoned to the scene by complaints from a neighbor who objected to the loud music and violent shouting. But when they arrived, Michael had to be restrained from preventing police from controlling the scene, and Fred struck a paramedic. Both face misdemeanor charges.
Robert was 24 when he died in a coma at the Ohio State University Medical Center.
Polar Bear Swim
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(1 January 2000, Canada) Believe it or not, there are people who dive into the ocean for a refreshing swim every New Year's Day. It's called a Polar Bear swim, and it's just a crazy ritual to most of us. Anyone who has seen the film Titanic, or read a book about Eskimos, knows that icy water brings on rapid hypothermia and death. But our hero Adrian, studying for his doctorate in Forestry, was not one to heed such trivial concerns.
This 38-year-old man was enjoying a hockey game with friends on Kingsmere Lake when he attempted a Polar Bear swim between holes cut two meters apart on the lake. He dove in at 1:30 AM and failed to resurface.
It is common knowledge that it is nearly impossible to find a small hole in the ice once you've slid beneath the surface. Particularly when you are suffering from the effects of hypothermia: low blood pressure, confusion, and weakness.
Frantic friends jumped in but were unable to find him. They aimed car headlights at the hole to help Adrian find his way back, but to no avail. "The water was only waist deep," said the man's brother. "He must have gotten disoriented."
Adrian's frigid body was recovered Saturday by firefighters, not far from the ice hole that tempted him to his doom.
Kiss of Death
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(23 March 2000, California) A 36-year-old biochemist who was dying to see the legendary rock band KISS on their farewell tour got his wish. Shawn traveled from Calistoga to the Oakland Coliseum, and was enjoying the show, except for one little problem. He was dissatisfied with his seat in the top row of the stadium. He climbed a 7-foot wall to gain a better view of the stage - only to inadvertently discover a new seat three stories below.
The group he had traveled to the concert with had no idea he was missing, until the show ended and the police began asking questions. That's when they learned that Shawn had mistaken a curtain for a solid wall, leaned back, and fallen to his death on an escalator 100 feet below.
A police spokesman said the site of the accident was "a good place to obtain a better view."
Tired of it All
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 August 1999) Daniel was tired to death - literally -- at the Buckeye Ford Dealership in London. He had sneaked onto the lot in the wee hours of the morning with theft on his mind. His modus operandi was to jack up the back of a pickup truck, remove the wheels, heave them into the bed of a hot-wired Buckeye Ford pickup, and move on to the next target. Daniel possessed what local police referred to as "an extensive criminal background," and had apparently spent years honing his craft. But his expertise failed him this time. The pickup was half full when the 47-year-old thief's next (and final) target slipped off the jack and landed squarely on his chest at 4AM. A clear case of live by the truck, die by the truck.
In a related incident, Police in London, Ohio say a thief was killed while stealing tires from a Ford dealership. Employees found the body of Daniel Nolan, 47, when they arrived for work Monday morning. The jack holding up a truck slipped and crushed him.
A Fell Death
2000 Darwin Award Nominee
(22 February 2000, Pennsylvania) A man clearing timber from his lot in Chestnuthill Township failed to notice that the tree he was working on had other trees leaning against it. When the weight of its neighbors pushed the tree over in the expected direction, the erstwhile lumberjack ran for his life, but slipped in the icy snow and fell directly in the path of the looming trunk, which landed on him with the expected result.
1999 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Living on Zionist Time
1999 Darwin Award Winner
(5 September 1999, Jerusalem) In most parts of the world, the switch away from Daylight Saving Time proceeds smoothly. But the time change raised havoc with Palestinian terrorists this year.
Israel insisted on a premature switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time to accommodate a week of pre-sunrise prayers. Palestinians refused to live on "Zionist Time." Two weeks of scheduling havoc ensued. Nobody knew the "correct" time.
At precisely 5:30pm on Sunday, two coordinated car bombs exploded in different cities, killing three terrorists who were transporting the bombs. It was initially believed that the devices had been detonated prematurely by klutzy amateurs. A closer look revealed the truth behind the explosions.
The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to detonate on Daylight Saving Time. But the confused drivers had already switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists to their untimely demises.
Fatal Footsie
1999 Darwin Award Runner-Up
(22 March 1999, Phnom Penh) Decades of armed strife have littered Cambodia with unexploded munitions and ordnance. Authorities warn citizens not to tamper with the devices.
Three friends recently spent an evening sharing drinks and exchanging insults at a local cafe in the southeastern province of Svay Rieng. Their companionable arguing continued for hours, until one man pulled out a 25-year-old unexploded anti-tank mine found in his backyard.
He tossed it under the table, and the three men began playing Russian roulette, each tossing down a drink and then stamping on the mine. The other villagers fled in terror.
Minutes later, the explosive detonated with a tremendous boom, killing the three men in the bar. "Their wives could not even find their flesh because the blast destroyed everything," the Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper reported.
Good Trumps Evil at Church
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(08 March 1999, Kenya) A middle-aged thief sat quietly through the Sunday service at All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi. But when the offering basket was passed, fellow worshippers were astonished to see him stashing handfuls of the money in his pockets.
Realizing he had been spotted, the thief fled from the church and onto a busy highway, where a speeding bus killed him. The cause of death? An act of God. The moral? Don't annoy the ruler of the universe, or you just may wind up a Darwin Award.
Hard Work Rewards
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(8 February 1999, Georgia) Fred Brooks of Forest Park, a 46 year old plumber seeking employment, used shovels to remove a manhole cover on a street and entered the aperture. In Fred's haste to identify the source of a sewer blockage, he neglected to set orange warning cones. Upon exiting the manhole, he was struck by the undercarriage of an oncoming car, and was killed.
Silenced by the Lambs
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 January 1999, England) A flock of sheep charged a well-meaning British farmer's wife and pushed her over a cliff to her death. Betty, 67, was charged by dozens of sheep after she brought them a bale of hay on the back of a power bike. The sheep rushed forward and rammed the vehicle, knocking Betty and her bike over the edge of a vacant quarry near Durham. "I saw the sheep surround the bike. The next thing she was tumbling down the incline," a neighbor told reporters. Her husband is being comforted by friends.
Dum Dum Boutique
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(10 April 1999, New York) Perhaps, as people get older, some folks really should retire from their careers, or so it would seem for one 55-year old burglar. You see, Terrence found new meaning in the term "Hanging around late at the bar" when he never returned home one night. It turned out that he was actually trying to break through the roof's window of a shop, called the Dum Dum Boutique -- a catchy name for a clothing shop -- by bending back bars on the window. From this vantage point, he made a commanding move, and jumped into the store through this hole. Unfortunately, his sweater apparently didn't like all that fashion, and, refusing to join him, caught on one of the bent bars, which subsequently strangled him to death. He was found dead at the scene on Saturday morning.
Rob Your Neighbor
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(25 April 1999, Craigie Australia) Darren John Cowley was trying to break into a neighbor's house as safely and unobtrusively as possible when he wrapped his jacket around his arm and bashed in the window. But the jagged shards tore through the protective cloth and severed an artery in his arm. The 32-year-old stumbled away from the house and through a park and collapsed 800 meters away from the crime scene.
The home owner returned from a nightclub early that morning to find a broken window, a bloody jacket, and a trail of blood. He searched the jacket and found that it belonged to an acquaintance who he recalled seeing at a tavern on Friday. He telephoned a friend and they drove to the perpetrator's house to give him a stern reprimand.
When they arrived, they spotted him sleeping in the park nearby. As they approached him, they recognized with alarm noted a trail of blood and his nearly-severed arm, and realized that it was too late to lecture him. He had bled to death.
Next time try wrapping your arm in a Kevlar bullet-proof vest, Darren!
Up In Smoke
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(5 March 1999, England) Christopher Piper arrived at his Fleet, Hampshire home on Friday night with a case of beer. "He drank a quantity of the beer," his wife Jaqueline, said, "and then started smoking." Was he suicidal or simply stupid?
His drinking binge progressed. At some stage of inebriation, Jaqueline observed him clumsily attempting to fill his butane lighter, spilling the flammable liquid on his jumper. She warned him that he was being silly, and she didn't mean amusing. He paid her little heed.
The 35-year-old man flicked his lighter experimentally, then gave in to his pyromaniac tendencies, and began trying to burn his trousers. As a side effect, he set his fuel-soaked jumper ablaze, turning into a fireball in his own living room!
If you should be so unfortunate as to find yourself ablaze, remember to drop and roll to suffocate the flames.
Christopher did not drop and roll. He flailed in terror and dove from the window into the street, setting fire to curtains and a BMW parked nearby as he attempted to beat out the flames with his hands. His efforts added more oxygen to the combustion, and the flames grew higher.
A neighbor mistook the blaze for a bonfire, but quickly realized that it was a burning man. He rushed from his home and attempted to suffocate the fire with bath towels, to no avail.
The fuel-fed fire was so hot that it burnt virtually every inch of Christopher's body, all save the soles of his feet. He died shortly after arriving at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey. The verdict at the Hampshire inquest was accidental death.
Couple Dies in Hearse
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(21 March 1999, Bucharest) First division Romanian soccer midfielder Mario Bugeanu, 24, and Mirela Iancu, 23, couldn't wait to make love on Sunday. As soon as the car was parked, they consummated their passion. They died from carbon monoxide poisoning shortly thereafter, inside the vehicle they left running in the garage during their liaison.
The couple was discovered by Mario's father Monday morning. "They appeared to be unaware of the dangers of carbon monoxide," police colonel Dumitru Secrieru said.
(9 May 1999, Mexico) A young Mexican couple were found dead in the back of a hearse. Jose, 23, employed by the Perez Diaz funeral home in Campeche, met Ana Maria on Saturday for a romantic tryst in his hearse. He parked in a warehouse and left the engine running to provide air conditioning.
In the enclosed location, the carbon monoxide-laden exhaust fumes seeped into the vehicle, fatally poisoning the couple. Their bodies were found when Ana Maria's mother initiated a search for her missing daughter.
The Bumbershoot
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(18 April 1999, Germany) A sword swallower died in Bonn after he put an umbrella down his throat - and accidentally pushed the button that opened it.
(15 July 1999, San Francisco) A drunken 20-year old woman was standing next to the railroad tracks intending to flash her breasts at the engineer. As the train swept past, the draft swept her off her feet and under the train, breaking her elbows. She was charged with a misdemeanor, and died several days later in the hospital.
Gone Fishin'
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(25 May 1999, Ukraine) A fisherman in Kiev electrocuted himself while fishing in the river Tereblya. The 43-year-old man connected cables to the main power supply of his home, and trailed the end into the river. The electric shock killed the fish, which floated belly-up to the top of the water. The man waded in to collect his catch, neglecting to remove the live wire, and tragically suffered the same fate as the fish.
In an ironic twist, the man was fishing for a mourning meal to commemorate the first anniversary of his mother-in-law's death.
In a related story, on January 9 the China Post reported that a 23-year-old Pingtung man died after eating fish he poisoned in a nearby ditch. Three days of diarrhea and vomiting led to his demise after he ate fish he caught by pouring toxic chemicals in the water at the suggestion of friends.
Laughing Gas
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 April 1999, Washington D.C.) We can thank our lucky stars that there are two fewer paramedics around. Carol and Mark were found dead in their suburban home by Mark's 14-year-old son. The couple were wearing respiratory masks attached to an empty canister of nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, produces a short-lived high, and is often used as a relaxant in dental offices and outpatient clinics. Like every other pure gas, it must be mixed with air or oxygen, lest it cause suffocation. Needless to say, Carol and Mark did not mix the nitrous oxide with air.
What makes this story a true Darwin Award candidate is that both of the deceased had enough medical training to have known better. Mark was a 10-year veteran paramedic with the District of Columbia Fire Department. Carol was studying to become an emergency medical technician in a suburban fire department.
Even more amusing is a quote from the Washington D.C. Fire Department's public information officer, who said that Mark was "one of the most educated and highly trained people we had." That must alleviate the concerns of thousands of D.C. residents!
Snake Charmer?
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(May 1999, Thailand) A man known for his snake catching and charming skills was called to a neighbor's home. They needed an emergency exorcism of a python, which had invaded their dwelling. Hie, 55, rushed into the house in the northern provoke of Uttaradit, and emerged victorious with the snake held aloft in a burlap sack.
He was walking home with the snake, when villagers ran into him and asked to see the python. He pulled the snake from the sack and boldly wrapped it around his neck. The wild python, a five-foot-long coil of solid muscle, constricted around him and began to strangle him.
He screamed for help vainly, for the petrified villagers were afraid to approach the serpent. Within minutes, Hie fell to the ground dead. Local policemen forcibly unwrapped the snake from his neck and placed it in captivity.
What's New Pussycat?
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(May 1999, Spain) Two German tourists were enjoying the last day of vacation at Safari Park, a wild game park in Alacant. Safari Park is a controlled reserve hosting a variety of wild animals living in natural habitats. Visitors driving through the park are cautioned not to open the windows, and to remain within their vehicle at all times. Frequent warning signs were posted in many languages, including German.
While driving through a tiger grotto, Willhelm and his companion parked the car, emerged from it for reasons that are unclear, and locked the doors behind them. They were set upon by three Bengal tigers lurking in the brush nearby. The big cats, two males and a female 10 to 12 years old, pounced on the unfortunate couple, breaking their necks and quickly silencing their screams.
Security guards rushed to the scene, arriving to find the woman beheaded and the man disemboweled.
Sleepfalling
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 June 1999) It was a warm summer night in Amsterdam. An Italian resident was in the habit of sleeping in the open air during sweltering summer nights. This hot night, he climbed onto the roof of his apartment and arranged a comfortable bed. He fell asleep on his blanket, and then he fell to his death. Lucky we are, says a native Amsterdam resident, that our summers are often cold and rainy.
Smarter Animals
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 August 1999, Germany) A hunter from Bad Urach was shot dead by his own dog on Monday. The 51-year-old man was found sprawled next to his car in the Black Forest. A gun barrel was pointing out the window, and his bereaved dog was howling inside the car. The animal is presumed to have pressed the trigger with its paw. Police have ruled out foul play. Since it happened in a hunting preserve, does the dog get the head mounted on a wall in its doghouse?
(1991, Nicosia, Cyprus) Under similar circumstances, an Iranian hunter was shot to death near Tehran by a snake that coiled around his shotgun as he pinned the reptile to the ground. Another hunter reported that that the victim, named Ali, tried to catch the snake alive by pressing the butt of his shotgun behind its head. The snake coiled around the butt and pulled the trigger, shooting Ali in the head.
1999 Darwin Award Winner(5 September 1999, Jerusalem) In most parts of the world, the switch away from Daylight Saving Time proceeds smoothly. But the time change raised havoc with Palestinian terrorists this year.
Israel insisted on a premature switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time to accommodate a week of pre-sunrise prayers. Palestinians refused to live on "Zionist Time." Two weeks of scheduling havoc ensued. Nobody knew the "correct" time.
At precisely 5:30pm on Sunday, two coordinated car bombs exploded in different cities, killing three terrorists who were transporting the bombs. It was initially believed that the devices had been detonated prematurely by klutzy amateurs. A closer look revealed the truth behind the explosions.
The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to detonate on Daylight Saving Time. But the confused drivers had already switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists to their untimely demises.
Fatal Footsie
1999 Darwin Award Runner-Up(22 March 1999, Phnom Penh) Decades of armed strife have littered Cambodia with unexploded munitions and ordnance. Authorities warn citizens not to tamper with the devices.
Three friends recently spent an evening sharing drinks and exchanging insults at a local cafe in the southeastern province of Svay Rieng. Their companionable arguing continued for hours, until one man pulled out a 25-year-old unexploded anti-tank mine found in his backyard.
He tossed it under the table, and the three men began playing Russian roulette, each tossing down a drink and then stamping on the mine. The other villagers fled in terror.
Minutes later, the explosive detonated with a tremendous boom, killing the three men in the bar. "Their wives could not even find their flesh because the blast destroyed everything," the Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper reported.
Good Trumps Evil at Church
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(08 March 1999, Kenya) A middle-aged thief sat quietly through the Sunday service at All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi. But when the offering basket was passed, fellow worshippers were astonished to see him stashing handfuls of the money in his pockets.
Realizing he had been spotted, the thief fled from the church and onto a busy highway, where a speeding bus killed him. The cause of death? An act of God. The moral? Don't annoy the ruler of the universe, or you just may wind up a Darwin Award.
Hard Work Rewards
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(8 February 1999, Georgia) Fred Brooks of Forest Park, a 46 year old plumber seeking employment, used shovels to remove a manhole cover on a street and entered the aperture. In Fred's haste to identify the source of a sewer blockage, he neglected to set orange warning cones. Upon exiting the manhole, he was struck by the undercarriage of an oncoming car, and was killed.
Silenced by the Lambs
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 January 1999, England) A flock of sheep charged a well-meaning British farmer's wife and pushed her over a cliff to her death. Betty, 67, was charged by dozens of sheep after she brought them a bale of hay on the back of a power bike. The sheep rushed forward and rammed the vehicle, knocking Betty and her bike over the edge of a vacant quarry near Durham. "I saw the sheep surround the bike. The next thing she was tumbling down the incline," a neighbor told reporters. Her husband is being comforted by friends.
Dum Dum Boutique
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(10 April 1999, New York) Perhaps, as people get older, some folks really should retire from their careers, or so it would seem for one 55-year old burglar. You see, Terrence found new meaning in the term "Hanging around late at the bar" when he never returned home one night. It turned out that he was actually trying to break through the roof's window of a shop, called the Dum Dum Boutique -- a catchy name for a clothing shop -- by bending back bars on the window. From this vantage point, he made a commanding move, and jumped into the store through this hole. Unfortunately, his sweater apparently didn't like all that fashion, and, refusing to join him, caught on one of the bent bars, which subsequently strangled him to death. He was found dead at the scene on Saturday morning.
Rob Your Neighbor
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(25 April 1999, Craigie Australia) Darren John Cowley was trying to break into a neighbor's house as safely and unobtrusively as possible when he wrapped his jacket around his arm and bashed in the window. But the jagged shards tore through the protective cloth and severed an artery in his arm. The 32-year-old stumbled away from the house and through a park and collapsed 800 meters away from the crime scene.
The home owner returned from a nightclub early that morning to find a broken window, a bloody jacket, and a trail of blood. He searched the jacket and found that it belonged to an acquaintance who he recalled seeing at a tavern on Friday. He telephoned a friend and they drove to the perpetrator's house to give him a stern reprimand.
When they arrived, they spotted him sleeping in the park nearby. As they approached him, they recognized with alarm noted a trail of blood and his nearly-severed arm, and realized that it was too late to lecture him. He had bled to death.
Next time try wrapping your arm in a Kevlar bullet-proof vest, Darren!
Up In Smoke
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(5 March 1999, England) Christopher Piper arrived at his Fleet, Hampshire home on Friday night with a case of beer. "He drank a quantity of the beer," his wife Jaqueline, said, "and then started smoking." Was he suicidal or simply stupid?
His drinking binge progressed. At some stage of inebriation, Jaqueline observed him clumsily attempting to fill his butane lighter, spilling the flammable liquid on his jumper. She warned him that he was being silly, and she didn't mean amusing. He paid her little heed.
The 35-year-old man flicked his lighter experimentally, then gave in to his pyromaniac tendencies, and began trying to burn his trousers. As a side effect, he set his fuel-soaked jumper ablaze, turning into a fireball in his own living room!
If you should be so unfortunate as to find yourself ablaze, remember to drop and roll to suffocate the flames.
Christopher did not drop and roll. He flailed in terror and dove from the window into the street, setting fire to curtains and a BMW parked nearby as he attempted to beat out the flames with his hands. His efforts added more oxygen to the combustion, and the flames grew higher.
A neighbor mistook the blaze for a bonfire, but quickly realized that it was a burning man. He rushed from his home and attempted to suffocate the fire with bath towels, to no avail.
The fuel-fed fire was so hot that it burnt virtually every inch of Christopher's body, all save the soles of his feet. He died shortly after arriving at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey. The verdict at the Hampshire inquest was accidental death.
Couple Dies in Hearse
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(21 March 1999, Bucharest) First division Romanian soccer midfielder Mario Bugeanu, 24, and Mirela Iancu, 23, couldn't wait to make love on Sunday. As soon as the car was parked, they consummated their passion. They died from carbon monoxide poisoning shortly thereafter, inside the vehicle they left running in the garage during their liaison.
The couple was discovered by Mario's father Monday morning. "They appeared to be unaware of the dangers of carbon monoxide," police colonel Dumitru Secrieru said.
(9 May 1999, Mexico) A young Mexican couple were found dead in the back of a hearse. Jose, 23, employed by the Perez Diaz funeral home in Campeche, met Ana Maria on Saturday for a romantic tryst in his hearse. He parked in a warehouse and left the engine running to provide air conditioning.
In the enclosed location, the carbon monoxide-laden exhaust fumes seeped into the vehicle, fatally poisoning the couple. Their bodies were found when Ana Maria's mother initiated a search for her missing daughter.
The Bumbershoot
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(18 April 1999, Germany) A sword swallower died in Bonn after he put an umbrella down his throat - and accidentally pushed the button that opened it.
(15 July 1999, San Francisco) A drunken 20-year old woman was standing next to the railroad tracks intending to flash her breasts at the engineer. As the train swept past, the draft swept her off her feet and under the train, breaking her elbows. She was charged with a misdemeanor, and died several days later in the hospital.
Gone Fishin'
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(25 May 1999, Ukraine) A fisherman in Kiev electrocuted himself while fishing in the river Tereblya. The 43-year-old man connected cables to the main power supply of his home, and trailed the end into the river. The electric shock killed the fish, which floated belly-up to the top of the water. The man waded in to collect his catch, neglecting to remove the live wire, and tragically suffered the same fate as the fish.
In an ironic twist, the man was fishing for a mourning meal to commemorate the first anniversary of his mother-in-law's death.
In a related story, on January 9 the China Post reported that a 23-year-old Pingtung man died after eating fish he poisoned in a nearby ditch. Three days of diarrhea and vomiting led to his demise after he ate fish he caught by pouring toxic chemicals in the water at the suggestion of friends.
Laughing Gas
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 April 1999, Washington D.C.) We can thank our lucky stars that there are two fewer paramedics around. Carol and Mark were found dead in their suburban home by Mark's 14-year-old son. The couple were wearing respiratory masks attached to an empty canister of nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, produces a short-lived high, and is often used as a relaxant in dental offices and outpatient clinics. Like every other pure gas, it must be mixed with air or oxygen, lest it cause suffocation. Needless to say, Carol and Mark did not mix the nitrous oxide with air.
What makes this story a true Darwin Award candidate is that both of the deceased had enough medical training to have known better. Mark was a 10-year veteran paramedic with the District of Columbia Fire Department. Carol was studying to become an emergency medical technician in a suburban fire department.
Even more amusing is a quote from the Washington D.C. Fire Department's public information officer, who said that Mark was "one of the most educated and highly trained people we had." That must alleviate the concerns of thousands of D.C. residents!
Snake Charmer?
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(May 1999, Thailand) A man known for his snake catching and charming skills was called to a neighbor's home. They needed an emergency exorcism of a python, which had invaded their dwelling. Hie, 55, rushed into the house in the northern provoke of Uttaradit, and emerged victorious with the snake held aloft in a burlap sack.
He was walking home with the snake, when villagers ran into him and asked to see the python. He pulled the snake from the sack and boldly wrapped it around his neck. The wild python, a five-foot-long coil of solid muscle, constricted around him and began to strangle him.
He screamed for help vainly, for the petrified villagers were afraid to approach the serpent. Within minutes, Hie fell to the ground dead. Local policemen forcibly unwrapped the snake from his neck and placed it in captivity.
What's New Pussycat?
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(May 1999, Spain) Two German tourists were enjoying the last day of vacation at Safari Park, a wild game park in Alacant. Safari Park is a controlled reserve hosting a variety of wild animals living in natural habitats. Visitors driving through the park are cautioned not to open the windows, and to remain within their vehicle at all times. Frequent warning signs were posted in many languages, including German.
While driving through a tiger grotto, Willhelm and his companion parked the car, emerged from it for reasons that are unclear, and locked the doors behind them. They were set upon by three Bengal tigers lurking in the brush nearby. The big cats, two males and a female 10 to 12 years old, pounced on the unfortunate couple, breaking their necks and quickly silencing their screams.
Security guards rushed to the scene, arriving to find the woman beheaded and the man disemboweled.
Sleepfalling
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(19 June 1999) It was a warm summer night in Amsterdam. An Italian resident was in the habit of sleeping in the open air during sweltering summer nights. This hot night, he climbed onto the roof of his apartment and arranged a comfortable bed. He fell asleep on his blanket, and then he fell to his death. Lucky we are, says a native Amsterdam resident, that our summers are often cold and rainy.
Smarter Animals
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 August 1999, Germany) A hunter from Bad Urach was shot dead by his own dog on Monday. The 51-year-old man was found sprawled next to his car in the Black Forest. A gun barrel was pointing out the window, and his bereaved dog was howling inside the car. The animal is presumed to have pressed the trigger with its paw. Police have ruled out foul play. Since it happened in a hunting preserve, does the dog get the head mounted on a wall in its doghouse?
(1991, Nicosia, Cyprus) Under similar circumstances, an Iranian hunter was shot to death near Tehran by a snake that coiled around his shotgun as he pinned the reptile to the ground. Another hunter reported that that the victim, named Ali, tried to catch the snake alive by pressing the butt of his shotgun behind its head. The snake coiled around the butt and pulled the trigger, shooting Ali in the head.
1998 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Wife Tossing in Buenos Aires
1998 Darwin Award Winner
(1998, Buenos Aires) Did he win the argument? It happened in February 1998 in a working-class Boedo neighborhood. During a heated marital dispute, a 25-year-old man picked up his 20-year-old wife and threw her off their eighth-floor apartment balcony.
To his dismay, she became tangled in the power lines below. He immediately leapt from the balcony and fell towards his wife. We can only speculate as to his reasons. Was he angrily trying to finish the job, or was he remorsefully hoping to rescue her? He did not accomplish either goal. He missed the power lines completely, and plunged to his death.
The woman managed to swing over to a nearby balcony and was saved.
(18 May 1999, Panama City) In a similar story, a Dominican woman exacted her dying revenge on her boyfriend, who tossed her off their third-floor balcony, by dragging him down with her. Maria Mendez, 32, was killed instantly in the fall. Her boyfriend, Luis Alberto Camargo, was rushed to a nearby hospital in serious condition.
According to neighbors, the confrontation occurred early Tuesday morning after Camargo, 30, discovered Mendez in a local bar. The two returned to their apartment and exchanged harsh words which culminated in the fateful plunge.
Guy Gulps Goldfish
1998 Darwin Award Runner-Up
(29 January 1998, Ohio) Hungry or just plain stupid? Wednesday was a fateful day for Michael. He was shooting the breeze with a group of buddies, watching a friend clean his fish tank, when the friend complained that one specimen in particular had become a fishy menace. It had outgrown the tank, and was eating other denizens of the aquatic community.
Michael volunteered to assist. He seized the five-inch fish and attempted to swallow it. Unfortunately, the fish continued its predatory ways by sticking in his craw. As he gasped futilely for breath, turned blue, and sank to his knees, his three friends realized that something was amiss. They phoned 911 and informed the dispatcher that Michael had eaten some fish, and was having trouble breathing.
Paramedics were quickly dispatched, and they arrived to find the fish tail still protruding from the victim's mouth. Despite their best efforts neither the fish nor the twenty-three-year-old could be resuscitated. The killer fish had claimed one last victim.
"If I dare you to jump off a bridge and you do it, you're stupid," Police Major Mike Matulavich said. Apparently Michael was not a victim, he was just another Darwin Awards contender.
Modus Operandi Misfires
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(01 March 1998) Randy Nestor, 28, was a considerate car thief. When the stolen cars became hot, he didn't just abandon them, he torched them. Setting the cars on fire, he reasoned, helped the owners collect insurance on their vehicles. This criminal habit became his downfall. After a 10-year career of theft, Randy burned to death in Pittsburgh, PA in a van which he had set fire to from the inside. He hadn't realized that the door handle on the driver's side was broken. Friends tried to release him, but the door was locked. His burned body was found inside the van on Sunday.
Igniting Fireworks the Easy Way
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
There are safe methods of lighting fireworks. There are dangerous methods of lighting fireworks. Two residents of villages in East Java were killed when they chose the latter method of ignition.
Firecrackers are illegal in Indonesia. However, they can be purchased from the black market during celebrations such as Eid Al-Fitr, the feast which marks the end of Ramadan. And boys will be boys, the world over.
In January, Isomudin, a 28-year-old resident of Kenongo, and Matkijo, a 20-year-old from Telasih, obtained a large quantity of firecrackers and connected their detonation fuses to a motorcycle battery. The two perpetrators proceeded to start the engine. The resulting explosion could be heard from a distance of two kilometers.
Onlookers attempted to rescue Isomudin and Matkijo, but their burns were too severe. Both men died at the scene. Eight onlookers were treated at a local hospital for their injuries.
Never Too Old for a Darwin Award
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 April 1998) Bob Herschler, 77, of Olympia, WA, died from burns suffered last week after he placed a smoldering pipe in his shirt pocket. The pipe ignited a book of matches and soon Bob's clothing was ablaze.
Family members quickly extinguished the fire, but not before he suffered third-degree burns to his chest and abdomen. The Thurston County resident died at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle of pneumonia brought on by his burns.
(31 March 1998) In a related story, the life of Reiva Nix, a 67-year-old grandmother living in Egdewood, TX, was claimed in a tragic accident on March 31. She was cleaning her tennis shoes with gasoline when a nearby candle ignited the shoes which Reiva was still wearing.
Alone at the time of the accident, she ran next door for help, and her neighbor extinguished the fire with a water hose. She died from burn wounds at 2AM at the Parkland Hospital in Dallas.
Investigators noted that her flammable 65% polyester clothing contributed to the blaze. Chief Corbett said several people have told him they clean their shoes with gasoline. He cautioned others to be careful when using gasoline in any way.
Basketball Player Takes a Dunking
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
A Melbourne, Australia man was playing basketball with his brother and 16-year-old cousin, using a hoop affixed to his garage. After slam-dunking the ball, he hung on the rim for a triumphant moment. The bricks gave way and the wall collapsed on the 20-year-old man, fatally crushing him. His name was withheld by authorities, at the request of his family.
Melbourne, Australia is not the safest place to play basketball. Ryan Maloney, 19, died in 1996 in a public basketball court when the ring collapsed on him after a dunk. The coroner recommended that dunking basketballs be banned. No heed was taken of his words. The tradition is still practiced throughout the world.
Dynamite and Boats Don't Mix
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 June 1998, Illinois) A man drowned in Fox Lake after he and a friend inadvertently blasted a hole in the bottom of their rowboat with a quarter stick of dynamite. Daniel, twenty-nine, and his unidentified friend were relaxing on the lake on Sunday in a fourteen-foot aluminum boat, when they decided to toss the M-250 explosive into the water. They intended to kill fish with the blast, not themselves, said chief deputy coroner Jim Wipper. A sudden gust of wind pushed their boat over the firecracker, and the boat sank about a hundred yards from shore. Daniel drowned; the friend swam safely to land.
Sequined Pastie
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(1998, NJ) An unidentified 29 year old male choked to death on a sequined pastie he had orally removed from an exotic dancer at a Phillipsburg establishment. "I didn't think he was going to eat it," the dancer identified only as "Ginger" said, adding "He was really drunk."
Don't Drink and Fly
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(25 April 1998, Massachusetts) One fateful day in April, a private pilot landed his Piper PA-32-300 at the New Bedford airport. To secure his aircraft against thieves, he inserted a gust lock into the co-pilot's control column, and padlocked it in place. This procedure is fairly common, except that the gust lock is usually placed on the pilot's control column. That way it's hard to forget it when you prepare to depart. Many gust locks have a big red plate that hangs down to cover the ignition and master switch. We will never know why our soon to be dead friend chose to put the gust lock on the co-pilot's side.
The pilot went off to have some drinks and returned to his plane at 10:30 PM. He hopped into the aircraft with 155 mg/dL of ethanol in his blood, and departed without remembering to check that the flight controls were unobstructed. A witness to the accident reported that he departed the runway at a very steep angle, consistent with having a gust lock installed. About this time, our erstwhile friend realized that he forgot to remove the gust lock, and that his plane will soon stall. The real problem is that the key for the padlock is on the same keyring as the key for the ignition. So he had two choices: try to remove the padlock key from the keyring while keeping the plane running, which will take more time than he has, or turn off the engine, which will accelerate the stall, then rush to remove the gust lock and restart the engine. He chose option B.
But he didn't make it in time. The airplane, its course fixed by the gust lock, "went straight up in the air like an acrobat" then appeared to level off, turn northwest, then northeast, followed by "a nose dive" and a rapid descent to the ground.
When the National Transportation Safety Board investigator arrived at the scene he discovered the padlock and gust lock still installed and the keyring with both keys still on it on the floor of the cockpit.
Mummy Says, Don't Smoke
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 October 1998, Canada) For Halloween this year, a Canadian man dressed as a mummy by wrapping himself from head to toe in fluffy cotton batting. The cotton was taped at the wrists and ankles, and white gloves and running shoes completed his ensemble. As the mummy waited for his girlfriend to dress for pictures, he carelessly lit a cigarette... and the fluffy cotton burst into flames.
The reason for flame-retardant costumes became clear.
Firefighters arrived within minutes, yet already the mummy costume was reduced to ashes, right down to the white coveralls underneath. The man kept repeating, "It's my fault." He was taken to Soldier's Memorial Hospital with 2nd and 3rd degree burns, where he died the next morning.
Don't Chute the Messenger
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(21 March 1998, Chicago) Hyatt Regency Hotel workers discovered the remains of an ill-fated co-worker when they noticed that no laundry was reaching the bottom of the 20-story laundry chute on Saturday morning. The man, wrapped in 100 pounds of laundry, was found sliding slowly down the chute by a hotel employee who saw his feet through an opening.
Jian, a 67-year-old housekeeper at the hotel, was familiar with the 2½ foot square opening the East Tower of the hotel, and it is tempting to speculate why he lost his footing and plunged into the waist-high laundry opening in the East Tower. Was he peeking into the chute to drop laundry onto the head of a co-worker below? Was he trying to encourage a recalcitrant bundle of sheets to slide further down the chute? Did his own clothing seem so dirty that he suddenly realized it needed a good cleaning?
The man was pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Saturday.
Dive to Death
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(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.
Ski Theft Backfires
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(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.
Passionate Plunge
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(July 1998) A man with the unlikely ambition to jump off every river bridge in Norwich ended his athletic career with a 70-foot leap into three feet of water. Friends said the 34-year-old man had fulfilled his dream of jumping off every city bridge spanning the River Wensum. Having exhausted the bridge selection, this time he climbed to the top of a multi-story car park, looked down from the parapets and shouted an enquiry to onlookers asking how deep the water was. Then he plunged to his death in the shallow waters below. Emergency workers were unable to resuscitate the man, who was said to possess "a strange and unusual passion for jumping into rivers."
Hanging Around Jail
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(December 1997, Pennsylvania) A prisoner in the new Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh attempted to evade his punishment by engineering an escape from his confinement. Jerome constructed a hundred-foot rope of bedsheets, broke through a supposedly shatter-proof cell window, and began to climb to freedom down his makeshift ladder.
It is not known whether his plan took into account the curiosity of drivers on the busy street and Liberty Bridge below. It certainly did not take into account the sharp edges of the glass, the worn nature of the bedsheet, or the great distance to the pavement. The bottom of the knotted bedsheet was eighty-six feet short of the ground. But our hero did not reach the end of his rope. The windowpane sliced through the weak cloth and dropped him to his untidy demise 150 feet below.
But wait, there's more!
Apparently the jailhouse rumor of the previous death did not reach a prisoner who was awaiting transfer to a federal penitentiary one year later. He tied eight bedsheets together and rappelled from his seventh-floor window, only to find that the rope fell twenty-five feet short of the ground. Luckier than Jerome, he merely fractured his ankle and scraped his face.
1998 Darwin Award Winner(1998, Buenos Aires) Did he win the argument? It happened in February 1998 in a working-class Boedo neighborhood. During a heated marital dispute, a 25-year-old man picked up his 20-year-old wife and threw her off their eighth-floor apartment balcony.
To his dismay, she became tangled in the power lines below. He immediately leapt from the balcony and fell towards his wife. We can only speculate as to his reasons. Was he angrily trying to finish the job, or was he remorsefully hoping to rescue her? He did not accomplish either goal. He missed the power lines completely, and plunged to his death.
The woman managed to swing over to a nearby balcony and was saved.
(18 May 1999, Panama City) In a similar story, a Dominican woman exacted her dying revenge on her boyfriend, who tossed her off their third-floor balcony, by dragging him down with her. Maria Mendez, 32, was killed instantly in the fall. Her boyfriend, Luis Alberto Camargo, was rushed to a nearby hospital in serious condition.
According to neighbors, the confrontation occurred early Tuesday morning after Camargo, 30, discovered Mendez in a local bar. The two returned to their apartment and exchanged harsh words which culminated in the fateful plunge.
Guy Gulps Goldfish
1998 Darwin Award Runner-Up(29 January 1998, Ohio) Hungry or just plain stupid? Wednesday was a fateful day for Michael. He was shooting the breeze with a group of buddies, watching a friend clean his fish tank, when the friend complained that one specimen in particular had become a fishy menace. It had outgrown the tank, and was eating other denizens of the aquatic community.
Michael volunteered to assist. He seized the five-inch fish and attempted to swallow it. Unfortunately, the fish continued its predatory ways by sticking in his craw. As he gasped futilely for breath, turned blue, and sank to his knees, his three friends realized that something was amiss. They phoned 911 and informed the dispatcher that Michael had eaten some fish, and was having trouble breathing.
Paramedics were quickly dispatched, and they arrived to find the fish tail still protruding from the victim's mouth. Despite their best efforts neither the fish nor the twenty-three-year-old could be resuscitated. The killer fish had claimed one last victim.
"If I dare you to jump off a bridge and you do it, you're stupid," Police Major Mike Matulavich said. Apparently Michael was not a victim, he was just another Darwin Awards contender.
Modus Operandi Misfires
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(01 March 1998) Randy Nestor, 28, was a considerate car thief. When the stolen cars became hot, he didn't just abandon them, he torched them. Setting the cars on fire, he reasoned, helped the owners collect insurance on their vehicles. This criminal habit became his downfall. After a 10-year career of theft, Randy burned to death in Pittsburgh, PA in a van which he had set fire to from the inside. He hadn't realized that the door handle on the driver's side was broken. Friends tried to release him, but the door was locked. His burned body was found inside the van on Sunday.
Igniting Fireworks the Easy Way
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
There are safe methods of lighting fireworks. There are dangerous methods of lighting fireworks. Two residents of villages in East Java were killed when they chose the latter method of ignition.
Firecrackers are illegal in Indonesia. However, they can be purchased from the black market during celebrations such as Eid Al-Fitr, the feast which marks the end of Ramadan. And boys will be boys, the world over.
In January, Isomudin, a 28-year-old resident of Kenongo, and Matkijo, a 20-year-old from Telasih, obtained a large quantity of firecrackers and connected their detonation fuses to a motorcycle battery. The two perpetrators proceeded to start the engine. The resulting explosion could be heard from a distance of two kilometers.
Onlookers attempted to rescue Isomudin and Matkijo, but their burns were too severe. Both men died at the scene. Eight onlookers were treated at a local hospital for their injuries.
Never Too Old for a Darwin Award
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(28 April 1998) Bob Herschler, 77, of Olympia, WA, died from burns suffered last week after he placed a smoldering pipe in his shirt pocket. The pipe ignited a book of matches and soon Bob's clothing was ablaze.
Family members quickly extinguished the fire, but not before he suffered third-degree burns to his chest and abdomen. The Thurston County resident died at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle of pneumonia brought on by his burns.
(31 March 1998) In a related story, the life of Reiva Nix, a 67-year-old grandmother living in Egdewood, TX, was claimed in a tragic accident on March 31. She was cleaning her tennis shoes with gasoline when a nearby candle ignited the shoes which Reiva was still wearing.
Alone at the time of the accident, she ran next door for help, and her neighbor extinguished the fire with a water hose. She died from burn wounds at 2AM at the Parkland Hospital in Dallas.
Investigators noted that her flammable 65% polyester clothing contributed to the blaze. Chief Corbett said several people have told him they clean their shoes with gasoline. He cautioned others to be careful when using gasoline in any way.
Basketball Player Takes a Dunking
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
A Melbourne, Australia man was playing basketball with his brother and 16-year-old cousin, using a hoop affixed to his garage. After slam-dunking the ball, he hung on the rim for a triumphant moment. The bricks gave way and the wall collapsed on the 20-year-old man, fatally crushing him. His name was withheld by authorities, at the request of his family.
Melbourne, Australia is not the safest place to play basketball. Ryan Maloney, 19, died in 1996 in a public basketball court when the ring collapsed on him after a dunk. The coroner recommended that dunking basketballs be banned. No heed was taken of his words. The tradition is still practiced throughout the world.
Dynamite and Boats Don't Mix
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(16 June 1998, Illinois) A man drowned in Fox Lake after he and a friend inadvertently blasted a hole in the bottom of their rowboat with a quarter stick of dynamite. Daniel, twenty-nine, and his unidentified friend were relaxing on the lake on Sunday in a fourteen-foot aluminum boat, when they decided to toss the M-250 explosive into the water. They intended to kill fish with the blast, not themselves, said chief deputy coroner Jim Wipper. A sudden gust of wind pushed their boat over the firecracker, and the boat sank about a hundred yards from shore. Daniel drowned; the friend swam safely to land.
Sequined Pastie
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(1998, NJ) An unidentified 29 year old male choked to death on a sequined pastie he had orally removed from an exotic dancer at a Phillipsburg establishment. "I didn't think he was going to eat it," the dancer identified only as "Ginger" said, adding "He was really drunk."
Don't Drink and Fly
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(25 April 1998, Massachusetts) One fateful day in April, a private pilot landed his Piper PA-32-300 at the New Bedford airport. To secure his aircraft against thieves, he inserted a gust lock into the co-pilot's control column, and padlocked it in place. This procedure is fairly common, except that the gust lock is usually placed on the pilot's control column. That way it's hard to forget it when you prepare to depart. Many gust locks have a big red plate that hangs down to cover the ignition and master switch. We will never know why our soon to be dead friend chose to put the gust lock on the co-pilot's side.
The pilot went off to have some drinks and returned to his plane at 10:30 PM. He hopped into the aircraft with 155 mg/dL of ethanol in his blood, and departed without remembering to check that the flight controls were unobstructed. A witness to the accident reported that he departed the runway at a very steep angle, consistent with having a gust lock installed. About this time, our erstwhile friend realized that he forgot to remove the gust lock, and that his plane will soon stall. The real problem is that the key for the padlock is on the same keyring as the key for the ignition. So he had two choices: try to remove the padlock key from the keyring while keeping the plane running, which will take more time than he has, or turn off the engine, which will accelerate the stall, then rush to remove the gust lock and restart the engine. He chose option B.
But he didn't make it in time. The airplane, its course fixed by the gust lock, "went straight up in the air like an acrobat" then appeared to level off, turn northwest, then northeast, followed by "a nose dive" and a rapid descent to the ground.
When the National Transportation Safety Board investigator arrived at the scene he discovered the padlock and gust lock still installed and the keyring with both keys still on it on the floor of the cockpit.
Mummy Says, Don't Smoke
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 October 1998, Canada) For Halloween this year, a Canadian man dressed as a mummy by wrapping himself from head to toe in fluffy cotton batting. The cotton was taped at the wrists and ankles, and white gloves and running shoes completed his ensemble. As the mummy waited for his girlfriend to dress for pictures, he carelessly lit a cigarette... and the fluffy cotton burst into flames.
The reason for flame-retardant costumes became clear.
Firefighters arrived within minutes, yet already the mummy costume was reduced to ashes, right down to the white coveralls underneath. The man kept repeating, "It's my fault." He was taken to Soldier's Memorial Hospital with 2nd and 3rd degree burns, where he died the next morning.
Don't Chute the Messenger
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(21 March 1998, Chicago) Hyatt Regency Hotel workers discovered the remains of an ill-fated co-worker when they noticed that no laundry was reaching the bottom of the 20-story laundry chute on Saturday morning. The man, wrapped in 100 pounds of laundry, was found sliding slowly down the chute by a hotel employee who saw his feet through an opening.
Jian, a 67-year-old housekeeper at the hotel, was familiar with the 2½ foot square opening the East Tower of the hotel, and it is tempting to speculate why he lost his footing and plunged into the waist-high laundry opening in the East Tower. Was he peeking into the chute to drop laundry onto the head of a co-worker below? Was he trying to encourage a recalcitrant bundle of sheets to slide further down the chute? Did his own clothing seem so dirty that he suddenly realized it needed a good cleaning?
The man was pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Saturday.
Dive to Death
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(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.
Ski Theft Backfires
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(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.
Passionate Plunge
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(July 1998) A man with the unlikely ambition to jump off every river bridge in Norwich ended his athletic career with a 70-foot leap into three feet of water. Friends said the 34-year-old man had fulfilled his dream of jumping off every city bridge spanning the River Wensum. Having exhausted the bridge selection, this time he climbed to the top of a multi-story car park, looked down from the parapets and shouted an enquiry to onlookers asking how deep the water was. Then he plunged to his death in the shallow waters below. Emergency workers were unable to resuscitate the man, who was said to possess "a strange and unusual passion for jumping into rivers."
Hanging Around Jail
1998 Darwin Award Nominee
(December 1997, Pennsylvania) A prisoner in the new Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh attempted to evade his punishment by engineering an escape from his confinement. Jerome constructed a hundred-foot rope of bedsheets, broke through a supposedly shatter-proof cell window, and began to climb to freedom down his makeshift ladder.
It is not known whether his plan took into account the curiosity of drivers on the busy street and Liberty Bridge below. It certainly did not take into account the sharp edges of the glass, the worn nature of the bedsheet, or the great distance to the pavement. The bottom of the knotted bedsheet was eighty-six feet short of the ground. But our hero did not reach the end of his rope. The windowpane sliced through the weak cloth and dropped him to his untidy demise 150 feet below.
But wait, there's more!
Apparently the jailhouse rumor of the previous death did not reach a prisoner who was awaiting transfer to a federal penitentiary one year later. He tied eight bedsheets together and rappelled from his seventh-floor window, only to find that the rope fell twenty-five feet short of the ground. Luckier than Jerome, he merely fractured his ankle and scraped his face.
1997 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Man Slices Off Penis
1997 Darwin Award Winner
Alan Hall, 48, was found collapsed on the front lawn of his brother's Fairfield home on December 5, 8 hours after his penis had been cut off at the base. Paramedics rushed Hall to North Bay Medical Center, where surgeons were unsuccessful in their attempts to reattach his severed organ.
Hall blamed the maiming on a woman named Brenda, whom he met at a local gas station the previous night. He brought Brenda to his trailer, parked in the driveway of his brother's Fairfield home, and had sex. Around 3AM, the woman mentioned revenge and cut off his penis with a razor-sharp hobby knife, then fled the trailer on foot. Details of the attack were sketchy, and police were unsure why Hall could not defend himself. Fairfield police Lieutenant William Gresham said Hall may have been using drugs.
A heated manhunt for Brenda ensued. She was described as a 42-year-old white female, 5' 7" and 135 pounds, dressed in a white blouse, navy blue jacket and blue slacks, and possibly driving a brown Ford F350 pickup truck.
Meanwhile, after being discharged from the hospital on Monday, Hall drove off in a pickup hitched to his trailer and disappeared. Detectives were eager to interview him again, but were unable to locate him due to his transient lifestyle.
More intriguing details began to emerge.
Hall was arrested during the 1970's for drug possession and drunk driving. In 1982 he was arrested for taking his young daughter out of state. Psychological tests suggested that he suffered permanent mental trauma while serving with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, causing blackouts and alcoholism. His ex-wife described him as a packrat who enjoyed taking trips in his mobile trailer home.
In 1983 Hall was convicted of voluntary manslaughter of a 23-year-old Suisun City woman found strangled in a car parked at a local Denny's restaurant on 17 February. Hall confessed to the murder, saying that she taunted him about his inability to achieve an erection when he tried to have sex with her. His statement was ruled inadmissible because of improper police interrogation techniques, and prosecutors agreed to let Hall plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter. He served half of a six-year prison term.
Police speculated that the woman who cut off his penis may have been carrying out a 14-year-old vendetta for the slaying of her friend. But the truth was even stranger.
When Hall was finally located and interviewed on Thursday, he admitted that he cut off his own penis. A voice stress analyzer indicated that he was telling the truth. "At this point, there is no evidence that a crime occurred," police Lieutenant William Gresham said in a press release. "The case is being reclassified as an injured person report." Hall may face misdemeanor charges for filing a false police report.
Ironically, Alan Hall works as a pipe-fitter, according to court records.
Bungee Jumper
1997 Darwin Award Runner-Up
(13 July 1997, Virginia) Eric A. Barcia, a 22-year-old Reston, VA resident, was found dead yesterday after he used bungee cords to jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle, police said.
The fast food worker taped a number of bungee cords together and strapped one end around his foot. Barcia had the foresight to anchor the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, and he even remembered to measure the length of the bungee cords to make sure that they were a few feet short of the 70 foot drop. He proceeded to fall headfirst from the trestle, and hit the pavement 70 feet below several seconds later.
Fairfax County police said "The stretched length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground." Perhaps the deceased fast food worker should have stuck to the line, "Do you want fries with that?"
I'm A Man, I Can Handle It
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(November 1997, Pennsylvania) Wayne Roth, 38, of Pittston, was bitten by a cobra belonging to his friend, Roger Croteau, after playfully reaching into the tank and picking up the snake. Wayne subsequently refused to go to a hospital, telling Roger, "I'm a man, I can handle it."
Falser words have seldom been spoken. Instead of a hospital, Wayne reported to a bar. He had three drinks, and enjoyed bragging that he had just been bitten by a cobra. Cobra venom is a slow-acting central nervous system toxin. He died within a few hours, in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania.
Privacy on the Beach
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(4 December 1997, North Carolina) He just wanted some privacy. Daniel Jones suffocated when a sandy 8-foot hole caved in as he relaxed inside it on a beach chair. Observers on the Outer Banks beach in Buxton, NC said he might have dug the hole for privacy and for protection from the wind.
Beach-goers used their hands and plastic toy shovels in an unsuccessful attempt to claw their way to Jones. "You wouldn't believe the outpouring of concern, people digging with their hands, using pails from kids," Dare County Sheriff Bert Austin said.
Rescue workers with heavy equipment took nearly hour to free him from 5 feet of sand, while 200 people looked on. The 21-year-old resident of Woodbridge, VA was pronounced dead on Thursday.
Fatal Flasher
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(21 December 1997, Texas) A Dallas man who was exposing himself to passing traffic died Friday night. Police were alerted by a motorist who had spotted Richard Hollis, 47, standing naked on a railroad trestle. When officers arrived, Hollis was standing under the trestle, still naked. As officers approached, he grabbed his clothes and ran back onto the railroad trestle. He leapt from the trestle, apparently aiming for a concrete support underneath, but missed and fell 35 feet to the ground. He died at Parkland hospital an hour later.
Poor Driving Runs in the Family
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(23 May 1997, Kansas) A Wichita woman who allowed her 10-year-old son to back the family car down the driveway stumbled while directing the boy and was fatally run down when he stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake.
At about 5:30PM the woman's son and a friend wanted to play basketball in the driveway, but the car was in the way. The mother stood behind the car helping guide the maneuver. She stumbled after walking backwards into a bush. The 28-year-old accident victim died at the scene Friday. Her name was withheld by authorities.
The boy was physically unhurt.
Tunnels of Doom
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(18 December 1997, Malaysia) Four teenage boys spent months industriously digging tunnels in a river bank, planning to use them as trenches in an imaginary war game. Three of them were killed at noon today when one of the tunnels caved in on them. One boy, Mohd Suhaimi Saad, 12, was rescued from the tunnel 15 minutes after the incident. Residents of Kampung Bendang Tok Teri took about an hour to pull out the bodies of the remaining three boys, Mohd Suhaimi Md Isa Haron, 18, Mahadir Ahmad, 17, and Nik Kamaruddin Razak, 12.
The four buried teens, together with eight other friends from Kampung Bendang Tok Teri, had gone to the river bank to dig the tunnels, which measured 1.2 meters by three meters. The surviving child, Saad, said all four had used coconut shells to dig the tunnel over the past week. They had dug a hole big enough for four people, but as they continued to excavate, the sides of the tunnel suddenly caved in, burying all four. Saad was able to breathe, as he was only buried up to his chest. "I saw my friends being engulfed by the earth, but I coul not help them. I could not move," he said.
Saad's father, said he was aware that his son had gone to the river with his friends. He said his son would go to dig his tunnel without fail nearly every day, "But I was taken aback when I heard that my son was trapped in a cave-in."The bodies were sent to the Kuala Nerang Hospital mortuary for post-mortems.
Clumsy Canadian Burglar
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(June 1997) A suspected burglar fell to his death from the 12th story balcony early yesterday after being surprised by the Calgary apartment's occupants. Residents of the suite are shaken from the incident and baffled as to how the alleged intruder managed to access the balcony on the top floor of the Royal View Apartments, 1320 16 Ave. SW.
Dean Grabo, 23, was home with his wife about 12:30 a.m. when he heard a noise on his balcony. "We were surprised, but not nearly surprised as he was," said Grabo, whose yell startled the intruder, who fell while scrambling to flee. The body of a man of about 30 years old was found on the ground floor patio directly below Grabo's balcony. He has not been identified and foul play is not suspected. 'We're a little confused how he got up there and a little shaken up," said Grabo. "It's not every day something like this happens and somebody perishes."
Building resident manager Brian Lester was also puzzled by the incident. "I had to let police into the next apartment over and the door was locked, so it doesn't look like he broke in there," said Lester. "It's a weird situation - the police didn't say much."
Police went to the 200-suite apartment in the Beltline area after several residents complained of hearing a loud noise. Unlike most cats this Cat Burglar lost all nine Lives and didn't land on his feet.
Escaping Conviction
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(December 1997, Pennsylvania) A prisoner in the new Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh attempted to evade his punishment by engineering an escape from his confinement. Jerome constructed a hundred-foot rope of bedsheets, broke through a supposedly shatter-proof cell window, began to climb to freedom down his makeshift ladder.
It is not known whether his plan took into account the curiosity of drivers on the busy street and Liberty Bridge below. It certainly did not take into account the sharp edges of the glass, the worn nature of the bedsheet, nor the great distance to the pavement. The bottom of the knotted bedsheet was 86 feet short of the ground. But our hero did not reach the end of the rope. The window pane sliced through the weak cloth and dropped him to his untidy demise 150 feet below.
But wait there's more!
(3 November 1998) Apparently the prison rumor of the previous death did not reach a prisoner who was awating transfer to federal penitentary one year later. He tied eight bedsheets together and rappelled from his seventh-floor window, only to find the rope fell 25 feet short of the ground. Luckier than Jerome, he merely fractured his ankle and scraped his face.
No Bike Lane at the Airport
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(26 December 1997, Brazil) A bicyclist crossing an airport runway in Sorocaba, a city 87 kilometers from Sao Paulo, was killed when he was hit by a landing airplane. Marcelo, 25, could not hear the twin-engine plane because he was listening to his Walkman on headphones, investigators said. The propellor and right wing of the plane were damaged.
Out of their Heads
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(23 August 1997, Holland) A group of employees were happy to escape work and be bussed around on a day tour by their company. It was a sunny day, and some of the more boisterous employees enjoyed sticking their heads out a rooftop window.
I can picture them like puppies enjoying the wind in their ears.
The driver of the speeding bus told them several times to pay attention to the road and stop their foolishness.
And then it happened.
Two men had their heads out of the window, singing as the wind blew across their faces, when the bus entered a viaduct. The cracking of bone was heard throughout the bus. Their heads did not come off cleanly, as you might expect, but the men fell dead into the bus with cracked heads and broken necks.
The chauffeur, asked whether safety regulations were properly observed, replied, "I always lock the damn thing when kids are in the bus, because kids just don't listen. But for God's sake, these were adults."
1997 Darwin Award WinnerAlan Hall, 48, was found collapsed on the front lawn of his brother's Fairfield home on December 5, 8 hours after his penis had been cut off at the base. Paramedics rushed Hall to North Bay Medical Center, where surgeons were unsuccessful in their attempts to reattach his severed organ.
Hall blamed the maiming on a woman named Brenda, whom he met at a local gas station the previous night. He brought Brenda to his trailer, parked in the driveway of his brother's Fairfield home, and had sex. Around 3AM, the woman mentioned revenge and cut off his penis with a razor-sharp hobby knife, then fled the trailer on foot. Details of the attack were sketchy, and police were unsure why Hall could not defend himself. Fairfield police Lieutenant William Gresham said Hall may have been using drugs.
A heated manhunt for Brenda ensued. She was described as a 42-year-old white female, 5' 7" and 135 pounds, dressed in a white blouse, navy blue jacket and blue slacks, and possibly driving a brown Ford F350 pickup truck.
Meanwhile, after being discharged from the hospital on Monday, Hall drove off in a pickup hitched to his trailer and disappeared. Detectives were eager to interview him again, but were unable to locate him due to his transient lifestyle.
More intriguing details began to emerge.
Hall was arrested during the 1970's for drug possession and drunk driving. In 1982 he was arrested for taking his young daughter out of state. Psychological tests suggested that he suffered permanent mental trauma while serving with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, causing blackouts and alcoholism. His ex-wife described him as a packrat who enjoyed taking trips in his mobile trailer home.
In 1983 Hall was convicted of voluntary manslaughter of a 23-year-old Suisun City woman found strangled in a car parked at a local Denny's restaurant on 17 February. Hall confessed to the murder, saying that she taunted him about his inability to achieve an erection when he tried to have sex with her. His statement was ruled inadmissible because of improper police interrogation techniques, and prosecutors agreed to let Hall plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter. He served half of a six-year prison term.
Police speculated that the woman who cut off his penis may have been carrying out a 14-year-old vendetta for the slaying of her friend. But the truth was even stranger.
When Hall was finally located and interviewed on Thursday, he admitted that he cut off his own penis. A voice stress analyzer indicated that he was telling the truth. "At this point, there is no evidence that a crime occurred," police Lieutenant William Gresham said in a press release. "The case is being reclassified as an injured person report." Hall may face misdemeanor charges for filing a false police report.
Ironically, Alan Hall works as a pipe-fitter, according to court records.
Bungee Jumper
1997 Darwin Award Runner-Up(13 July 1997, Virginia) Eric A. Barcia, a 22-year-old Reston, VA resident, was found dead yesterday after he used bungee cords to jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle, police said.
The fast food worker taped a number of bungee cords together and strapped one end around his foot. Barcia had the foresight to anchor the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, and he even remembered to measure the length of the bungee cords to make sure that they were a few feet short of the 70 foot drop. He proceeded to fall headfirst from the trestle, and hit the pavement 70 feet below several seconds later.
Fairfax County police said "The stretched length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground." Perhaps the deceased fast food worker should have stuck to the line, "Do you want fries with that?"
I'm A Man, I Can Handle It
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(November 1997, Pennsylvania) Wayne Roth, 38, of Pittston, was bitten by a cobra belonging to his friend, Roger Croteau, after playfully reaching into the tank and picking up the snake. Wayne subsequently refused to go to a hospital, telling Roger, "I'm a man, I can handle it."
Falser words have seldom been spoken. Instead of a hospital, Wayne reported to a bar. He had three drinks, and enjoyed bragging that he had just been bitten by a cobra. Cobra venom is a slow-acting central nervous system toxin. He died within a few hours, in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania.
Privacy on the Beach
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(4 December 1997, North Carolina) He just wanted some privacy. Daniel Jones suffocated when a sandy 8-foot hole caved in as he relaxed inside it on a beach chair. Observers on the Outer Banks beach in Buxton, NC said he might have dug the hole for privacy and for protection from the wind.
Beach-goers used their hands and plastic toy shovels in an unsuccessful attempt to claw their way to Jones. "You wouldn't believe the outpouring of concern, people digging with their hands, using pails from kids," Dare County Sheriff Bert Austin said.
Rescue workers with heavy equipment took nearly hour to free him from 5 feet of sand, while 200 people looked on. The 21-year-old resident of Woodbridge, VA was pronounced dead on Thursday.
Fatal Flasher
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(21 December 1997, Texas) A Dallas man who was exposing himself to passing traffic died Friday night. Police were alerted by a motorist who had spotted Richard Hollis, 47, standing naked on a railroad trestle. When officers arrived, Hollis was standing under the trestle, still naked. As officers approached, he grabbed his clothes and ran back onto the railroad trestle. He leapt from the trestle, apparently aiming for a concrete support underneath, but missed and fell 35 feet to the ground. He died at Parkland hospital an hour later.
Poor Driving Runs in the Family
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(23 May 1997, Kansas) A Wichita woman who allowed her 10-year-old son to back the family car down the driveway stumbled while directing the boy and was fatally run down when he stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake.
At about 5:30PM the woman's son and a friend wanted to play basketball in the driveway, but the car was in the way. The mother stood behind the car helping guide the maneuver. She stumbled after walking backwards into a bush. The 28-year-old accident victim died at the scene Friday. Her name was withheld by authorities.
The boy was physically unhurt.
Tunnels of Doom
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(18 December 1997, Malaysia) Four teenage boys spent months industriously digging tunnels in a river bank, planning to use them as trenches in an imaginary war game. Three of them were killed at noon today when one of the tunnels caved in on them. One boy, Mohd Suhaimi Saad, 12, was rescued from the tunnel 15 minutes after the incident. Residents of Kampung Bendang Tok Teri took about an hour to pull out the bodies of the remaining three boys, Mohd Suhaimi Md Isa Haron, 18, Mahadir Ahmad, 17, and Nik Kamaruddin Razak, 12.
The four buried teens, together with eight other friends from Kampung Bendang Tok Teri, had gone to the river bank to dig the tunnels, which measured 1.2 meters by three meters. The surviving child, Saad, said all four had used coconut shells to dig the tunnel over the past week. They had dug a hole big enough for four people, but as they continued to excavate, the sides of the tunnel suddenly caved in, burying all four. Saad was able to breathe, as he was only buried up to his chest. "I saw my friends being engulfed by the earth, but I coul not help them. I could not move," he said.
Saad's father, said he was aware that his son had gone to the river with his friends. He said his son would go to dig his tunnel without fail nearly every day, "But I was taken aback when I heard that my son was trapped in a cave-in."The bodies were sent to the Kuala Nerang Hospital mortuary for post-mortems.
Clumsy Canadian Burglar
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(June 1997) A suspected burglar fell to his death from the 12th story balcony early yesterday after being surprised by the Calgary apartment's occupants. Residents of the suite are shaken from the incident and baffled as to how the alleged intruder managed to access the balcony on the top floor of the Royal View Apartments, 1320 16 Ave. SW.
Dean Grabo, 23, was home with his wife about 12:30 a.m. when he heard a noise on his balcony. "We were surprised, but not nearly surprised as he was," said Grabo, whose yell startled the intruder, who fell while scrambling to flee. The body of a man of about 30 years old was found on the ground floor patio directly below Grabo's balcony. He has not been identified and foul play is not suspected. 'We're a little confused how he got up there and a little shaken up," said Grabo. "It's not every day something like this happens and somebody perishes."
Building resident manager Brian Lester was also puzzled by the incident. "I had to let police into the next apartment over and the door was locked, so it doesn't look like he broke in there," said Lester. "It's a weird situation - the police didn't say much."
Police went to the 200-suite apartment in the Beltline area after several residents complained of hearing a loud noise. Unlike most cats this Cat Burglar lost all nine Lives and didn't land on his feet.
Escaping Conviction
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(December 1997, Pennsylvania) A prisoner in the new Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh attempted to evade his punishment by engineering an escape from his confinement. Jerome constructed a hundred-foot rope of bedsheets, broke through a supposedly shatter-proof cell window, began to climb to freedom down his makeshift ladder.
It is not known whether his plan took into account the curiosity of drivers on the busy street and Liberty Bridge below. It certainly did not take into account the sharp edges of the glass, the worn nature of the bedsheet, nor the great distance to the pavement. The bottom of the knotted bedsheet was 86 feet short of the ground. But our hero did not reach the end of the rope. The window pane sliced through the weak cloth and dropped him to his untidy demise 150 feet below.
But wait there's more!
(3 November 1998) Apparently the prison rumor of the previous death did not reach a prisoner who was awating transfer to federal penitentary one year later. He tied eight bedsheets together and rappelled from his seventh-floor window, only to find the rope fell 25 feet short of the ground. Luckier than Jerome, he merely fractured his ankle and scraped his face.
No Bike Lane at the Airport
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(26 December 1997, Brazil) A bicyclist crossing an airport runway in Sorocaba, a city 87 kilometers from Sao Paulo, was killed when he was hit by a landing airplane. Marcelo, 25, could not hear the twin-engine plane because he was listening to his Walkman on headphones, investigators said. The propellor and right wing of the plane were damaged.
Out of their Heads
1997 Darwin Award Nominee
(23 August 1997, Holland) A group of employees were happy to escape work and be bussed around on a day tour by their company. It was a sunny day, and some of the more boisterous employees enjoyed sticking their heads out a rooftop window.
I can picture them like puppies enjoying the wind in their ears.
The driver of the speeding bus told them several times to pay attention to the road and stop their foolishness.
And then it happened.
Two men had their heads out of the window, singing as the wind blew across their faces, when the bus entered a viaduct. The cracking of bone was heard throughout the bus. Their heads did not come off cleanly, as you might expect, but the men fell dead into the bus with cracked heads and broken necks.
The chauffeur, asked whether safety regulations were properly observed, replied, "I always lock the damn thing when kids are in the bus, because kids just don't listen. But for God's sake, these were adults."
1996 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Macho Men?
1996 Darwin Award Winner
Some men will got to extraordinary lengths to prove how macho they are. Frenchman Pierre Pumpille recently shunted a stationary car two feet by headbutting it. "Women thought I was a god," he explained from his hospital bed.
Deity or not, however, Pumpille is a veritable girl's blouse compared to Polish farmer Krystof Azninski, who staked a strong claim to being Europe's most macho man by cutting off his own head in 1995. Azninski, 30, had been drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and play some "men's games". Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen turnips, but then one man upped the ante by seizing a chainsaw and cutting off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and, shouting "Watch this then," he swung at his own head and chopped it off.
"It's funny," said one companion, "when he was young he put on his sister's underwear. But he died like a man."
Playing with Cats
1996 Darwin Award Runner-Up
(2 January 1996, India) A tiger killed one man and mauled another at the Calcutta zoo yesterday when they tried to put a marigold garland around its neck in a New Year's greeting.
Prakesh Tiwari, the dead man, and Suresh Rai had been drinking before they bought the floral garlands and crossed the moat around the tiger's enclosure, authorities said. "I was shocked to see the two young men weaving about in front of a tiger with garlands in their hands, " said Rakesh Banerjee, who witnessed the attack that triggered panic and a near stampede in the zoo.
The men, both in their 20's, were trying to put the garland on a 13-year old male Royal Bengal tiger named "Shiva" after the Hindu god of destruction. When Rai threw the garland around Shiva's neck, the tiger attacked him. His friend Tiwari intervened, kicking the tiger in the face. The tiger released Rai, and attacked and killed Tiwari.
"I saw it all; the tiger turned and jumped on the other young man and put its head on the man's neck, and within moments, the man was apparently dead, his head dangling," Banerjee said.
The two were reportedly devotees of the goddess Durga and had gone to "worship" the tiger. Immediately after the incident, an angry crowd went on a stone-pelting spree in which two children and a woman were injured.
Lawyer Aloft
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
(1996, Toronto) Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane of glass with his shoulder and plunged twenty-four floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry, thirty-nine, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower as he was explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law students. Garry had previously conducted the demonstration of window strength without mishap, according to police reports. The managing partner of the law firm that employed the deceased told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Garry was "one of the best and brightest" members of the two-hundred-man association.
One For the Birds
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
(1996, Mississauga Canada) 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 wheeled chair 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."
Cigarette Lighter Triggers Fatal Explosion
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
(4 December 1996, Indiana) A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzleloader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's investigators said.
Gregory, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber muzzleloader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.
Hungry Python Kills Owner
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
(11 October 1996, New York) A teenager was crushed to death by his pet python after he had failed to keep the snake properly fed, police reported. Grant Williams, 19, was found unconscious in a pool of blood, the life practically squeezed out of him by a 12ft Burmese python named Damien, which was still wrapped over his body. The snake had been given nothing more than a single dead chicken in the past week and may have been crazed by hunger.
Mr Williams was found in the hallway. He may have been trying to escape the flat to summon help. Medical orderlies summoned the strength "of body and of mind" to lift the 45lb, 5in-thick python off Mr Williams and hurl it into an adjacent room, but the snake lover died in hospital. At the time of the attack, Mr Williams was preparing to feed Damien a live chicken. It is possible that the python, peckish, opted for the larger prey. When on the brink of a kill, the Burmese python (Molorus bivattatus) can move with deadly speed, and there are few creatures able to escape its grasp.
Mr Williams may have suspected that his familiarity with Damien placed him above danger, but a hungry python does not quibble about such niceties. Captain Thomas Kelly, from the 46th precinct, said: "It looks accidental." Mr Williams and his brother kept a number of snakes, many uncaged, in their Bronx flat. The dead man's mother, Carmelita Williams, said that she had tried to persuade her son to abandon his hobby. "I begged him to get rid of the python," she said, weeping. "I even threatened to call the police."
Damien was last night caged at an animal control centre, after being fed. Its fate is uncertain.
Set the Parking Brake, Stupid!
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
Remember the tragic death of two small boys who drowned when the car they were in rolled down a boat ramp into a lake? Their mother Susan Smith was convicted of their murder. The lake has become a shrine for visitors. A family visiting the lake drove up to the boat ramp but forgot to set the parking brake. The car rolled into the lake, drowning two adults and two children.
Speed Shunting
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
(30 September 1996, Finland) In a private rail yard, an engineer and two crew members were shunting freight cars to their unloading points. The final task was to dock thirteen loaded timber cars, and one filled with ammonia. The crewmember to watch was riding on the stepboard of the ammonia car, holding a handrail for balance. This common practice is considered safe, since the maximum shunting speed is 5 kph.
However, his next move was anything but safe.
The ammonia car needed to be separated from the timber cars. Following the normal procedure, the train is halted after the switch, and backed to the correct track, where the ammonia car is uncoupled, and then the rest of the train continues on. But the engineer wasn't sure the yard engine could start moving again with the timber, so he decided to leave the ammonia car on the level track after the slope beyond the switch.
He shared this plan with his crew.
The clever crew member riding on the ammonia car realized that the engineer's new plan meant more work for him, so he decided to make it easy on himself, and uncouple the ammonia car while the train was moving -- without informing the others.
To uncouple the car, he performed the following tasks: He moved from the stepboard to the fender and coupler, which have no real foothold, hung from the ammonia car's handrail, and closed its switch valve. Then he hung from the timber car's handrail and closed its switch valve. He disconnected the inter-car brake hose with his foot. Lastly, he disconnected the coupler, uncoupling the cars.
After accomplishing this impressive acrobatic feat, the crewmember still had to stop the ammonia car in the right place. He intended to use the brake valve next to his foot. However, when the inter-car brake hose is disconnected, opening the brake valve results in emergency maximum-strength braking. Although the crewmember was aware of this fact, the strength of the braking apparently surprised him. Since he was clinging precariously to the ammonia car, one foot on the fender and one foot on the brake valve, he was in no position to maintain his balance. He was thrown onto the rail, where the front wheels of the ammonia car ran across his torso, killing him instantly.
The car stopped less than five meters away, 150 meters too early, so his timesaving efforts were for naught.
1996 Darwin Award WinnerSome men will got to extraordinary lengths to prove how macho they are. Frenchman Pierre Pumpille recently shunted a stationary car two feet by headbutting it. "Women thought I was a god," he explained from his hospital bed.
Deity or not, however, Pumpille is a veritable girl's blouse compared to Polish farmer Krystof Azninski, who staked a strong claim to being Europe's most macho man by cutting off his own head in 1995. Azninski, 30, had been drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and play some "men's games". Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen turnips, but then one man upped the ante by seizing a chainsaw and cutting off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and, shouting "Watch this then," he swung at his own head and chopped it off.
"It's funny," said one companion, "when he was young he put on his sister's underwear. But he died like a man."
Playing with Cats
1996 Darwin Award Runner-Up(2 January 1996, India) A tiger killed one man and mauled another at the Calcutta zoo yesterday when they tried to put a marigold garland around its neck in a New Year's greeting.
Prakesh Tiwari, the dead man, and Suresh Rai had been drinking before they bought the floral garlands and crossed the moat around the tiger's enclosure, authorities said. "I was shocked to see the two young men weaving about in front of a tiger with garlands in their hands, " said Rakesh Banerjee, who witnessed the attack that triggered panic and a near stampede in the zoo.
The men, both in their 20's, were trying to put the garland on a 13-year old male Royal Bengal tiger named "Shiva" after the Hindu god of destruction. When Rai threw the garland around Shiva's neck, the tiger attacked him. His friend Tiwari intervened, kicking the tiger in the face. The tiger released Rai, and attacked and killed Tiwari.
"I saw it all; the tiger turned and jumped on the other young man and put its head on the man's neck, and within moments, the man was apparently dead, his head dangling," Banerjee said.
The two were reportedly devotees of the goddess Durga and had gone to "worship" the tiger. Immediately after the incident, an angry crowd went on a stone-pelting spree in which two children and a woman were injured.
Lawyer Aloft
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
(1996, Toronto) Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane of glass with his shoulder and plunged twenty-four floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry, thirty-nine, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower as he was explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law students. Garry had previously conducted the demonstration of window strength without mishap, according to police reports. The managing partner of the law firm that employed the deceased told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Garry was "one of the best and brightest" members of the two-hundred-man association.
One For the Birds
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
(1996, Mississauga Canada) 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 wheeled chair 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."
Cigarette Lighter Triggers Fatal Explosion
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
(4 December 1996, Indiana) A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzleloader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's investigators said.
Gregory, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber muzzleloader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.
Hungry Python Kills Owner
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
(11 October 1996, New York) A teenager was crushed to death by his pet python after he had failed to keep the snake properly fed, police reported. Grant Williams, 19, was found unconscious in a pool of blood, the life practically squeezed out of him by a 12ft Burmese python named Damien, which was still wrapped over his body. The snake had been given nothing more than a single dead chicken in the past week and may have been crazed by hunger.
Mr Williams was found in the hallway. He may have been trying to escape the flat to summon help. Medical orderlies summoned the strength "of body and of mind" to lift the 45lb, 5in-thick python off Mr Williams and hurl it into an adjacent room, but the snake lover died in hospital. At the time of the attack, Mr Williams was preparing to feed Damien a live chicken. It is possible that the python, peckish, opted for the larger prey. When on the brink of a kill, the Burmese python (Molorus bivattatus) can move with deadly speed, and there are few creatures able to escape its grasp.
Mr Williams may have suspected that his familiarity with Damien placed him above danger, but a hungry python does not quibble about such niceties. Captain Thomas Kelly, from the 46th precinct, said: "It looks accidental." Mr Williams and his brother kept a number of snakes, many uncaged, in their Bronx flat. The dead man's mother, Carmelita Williams, said that she had tried to persuade her son to abandon his hobby. "I begged him to get rid of the python," she said, weeping. "I even threatened to call the police."
Damien was last night caged at an animal control centre, after being fed. Its fate is uncertain.
Set the Parking Brake, Stupid!
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
Remember the tragic death of two small boys who drowned when the car they were in rolled down a boat ramp into a lake? Their mother Susan Smith was convicted of their murder. The lake has become a shrine for visitors. A family visiting the lake drove up to the boat ramp but forgot to set the parking brake. The car rolled into the lake, drowning two adults and two children.
Speed Shunting
1996 Darwin Award Nominee
(30 September 1996, Finland) In a private rail yard, an engineer and two crew members were shunting freight cars to their unloading points. The final task was to dock thirteen loaded timber cars, and one filled with ammonia. The crewmember to watch was riding on the stepboard of the ammonia car, holding a handrail for balance. This common practice is considered safe, since the maximum shunting speed is 5 kph.
However, his next move was anything but safe.
The ammonia car needed to be separated from the timber cars. Following the normal procedure, the train is halted after the switch, and backed to the correct track, where the ammonia car is uncoupled, and then the rest of the train continues on. But the engineer wasn't sure the yard engine could start moving again with the timber, so he decided to leave the ammonia car on the level track after the slope beyond the switch.
He shared this plan with his crew.
The clever crew member riding on the ammonia car realized that the engineer's new plan meant more work for him, so he decided to make it easy on himself, and uncouple the ammonia car while the train was moving -- without informing the others.
To uncouple the car, he performed the following tasks: He moved from the stepboard to the fender and coupler, which have no real foothold, hung from the ammonia car's handrail, and closed its switch valve. Then he hung from the timber car's handrail and closed its switch valve. He disconnected the inter-car brake hose with his foot. Lastly, he disconnected the coupler, uncoupling the cars.
After accomplishing this impressive acrobatic feat, the crewmember still had to stop the ammonia car in the right place. He intended to use the brake valve next to his foot. However, when the inter-car brake hose is disconnected, opening the brake valve results in emergency maximum-strength braking. Although the crewmember was aware of this fact, the strength of the braking apparently surprised him. Since he was clinging precariously to the ammonia car, one foot on the fender and one foot on the brake valve, he was in no position to maintain his balance. He was thrown onto the rail, where the front wheels of the ammonia car ran across his torso, killing him instantly.
The car stopped less than five meters away, 150 meters too early, so his timesaving efforts were for naught.
1995 Darwin Awards
Posted on Fri, 24 Apr 2009
Jet Assisted Take-Off
1995 Darwin Award Winner
URBAN LEGEND! The Arizona Highway Patrol were mystified when they came upon a pile of smoldering wreckage embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The metal debris resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it turned out to be the vaporized remains of an automobile. The make of the vehicle was unidentifiable at the scene.
The folks in the lab finally figured out what it was, and pieced together the events that led up to its demise.
It seems that a former Air Force sergeant had somehow got hold of a JATO (Jet Assisted Take-Off) unit. JATO units are solid fuel rockets used to give heavy military transport airplanes an extra push for take-off from short airfields.
Dried desert lakebeds are the location of choice for breaking the world ground vehicle speed record. The sergeant took the JATO unit into the Arizona desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, accelerated to a high speed, and fired off the rocket.
The facts, as best as could be determined, are as follows:
The operator was driving a 1967 Chevy Impala. He ignited the JATO unit approximately 3.9 miles from the crash site. This was established by the location of a prominently scorched and melted strip of asphalt. The vehicle quickly reached a speed of between 250 and 300 mph and continued at that speed, under full power, for an additional 20-25 seconds. The soon-to-be pilot experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners.
The Chevy remained on the straight highway for approximately 2.6 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied the brakes, completely melting them, blowing the tires, and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface. The vehicle then became airborne for an additional 1.3 miles, impacted the cliff face at a height of 125 feet, and left a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.
Most of the driver's remains were not recovered; 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.
Ironically a still-legible bumper sticker was found, reading
"How do you like my driving? Dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT."
Count Your Chickens
1995 Darwin Award Runner-Up
(31 August 1995, Egypt) 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 in 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.
Repairs on the Road
1995 Darwin Award Nominee
(March 1995, Michigan) 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."
Electrifying Stunt
1995 Darwin Award Nominee
(1995, Michigan) 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.
FishMan
1995 Darwin Award Nominee
(29 November 1995, Australia) The badly decomposed remains of Neil of Melbourne were discovered in a paddock near Toolondo Reservoir Neil's death was shrouded in mystery, tragedy, and a fish suit.
Local law enforcement officials said the 49-year-old man was wearing a "heavy green plastic bodysuit," constructed from old waterbed material. The suit, from which one could only be extricated painstakingly after unfastening a full-length zipper along the spine, constricted his legs into one mermaid-esque tail. The only openings, aside from the zipper, were two eyeholes.
Neil's garb, enclosing his entire body like a maritime mummy costume, restricted his breathing as well as his movement. He was discovered in this attire, which the Melbourne Fish Costume Bureau stresses was "not approved," less than a kilometer from Toolondo Lake. He apparently had attempted to swim home.
A second yellow-colored suit was found in his garage.
The psychological motivation for Neil's fatal excursion remains unclear. Police have learned that he was taking medications for epilepsy and diabetes at the time, and speculate that his behavior may have had a chemical basis, but locals have their own theories about the aquatic abberation.
"He wanted to be a fish," disclosed one unnamed resident, recalling incidents in which Wilson would swing from a rope while wearing the suit at the lake. Other comments from the Australian community included "bollocks" and "criminey."
Wilson's death brings the Melbourne fish impersonation fatality toll to one, up infinity percent from zero in the previous year.
Caught in the Auger
1995 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 July 1995, Christchurch, New Zealand) An ice-maker may seem innocuous, but when it's big enough to walk into -- for example, one that supplies ice to fishing boats -- it can be so dangerous that safety procedures and fail-safe devices are required. So it was a bit of a surprise when employees at afish processing plant heard screams emanating from inside the giant ice-maker.
An employee had been running the machine when the flow of ice jammed. Access to the machine's auger chamber was restricted, and employees are trained never to enter the chamber while the auger is running. It would be easy enough to ignore the warning signs, but it is hard to get around another safety feature: the auger will not run unless the operator holds down a foot pedal outside the chamber. Take your foot off the pedal and the machine shuts down.
There was no way the operator could run the auger and also enter the chamber. Or so it seemed, but one enterprising employee found a way. He laid a heavy piece of metal on the foot pedal to keep the auger running while he entered the chamber to clear the ice jam. He was caught by the swirling auger and drawn inevitably, and fatally, into the ice machine.
Ironically, the employee had helped negotiate a labor contract stipulating that workers should scrupulously follow all safety procedures and abide by the company's operating rules.
Whitewater Floaters
1995 Darwin Award Nominee
(5 November 1995, Arkansas) Tenacity is often advantageous to an organism. But combine tenacity with a lack of common sense and an excess of bravado, and the trait may prove deleterious.
An unprecedented ten inches of rainfall had flooded rivers over their banks. Stephan, 27, thought that this was the perfect time to tackle Big Piney Creek, a challenging whitewater run even at normal water levels. Dressed in overalls and a sweatsuit, and notably lacking a life vest, Stephan set out with three friends and two rafts "of the type obtained by sending in Marlboro cigarette packs."
Only a dose of common sense stood between Stephan and glory.
Enroute to the Big Piney put-in, the four men were stalled at a bridge over Indian Creek. The water was flowing 3 feet over the bridge, and they could not drive any further. A crowd of experienced whitewater paddlers had gathered there to pay respectful homage to the freakishly high water. This benevolent group implored the foolhardy party to desist. They warned the men that Indian Creek courses through two miles of dangerous willow jungle before joining Big Piney.
But the men would not listen to reason. They climbed into their lightweight rafts, put-in, and immediately capsized. Undeterred by continuing pleas from experienced paddlers, undaunted by the dunking, the men launched again. They managed to stay on the surface for 200 yards before capsizing downstream.
At this point, one man realized he was fighting a losing battle. He bowed out, and hiked back to the bridge. Two other men climbed back into their raft, and Stephan decided to venture onward solo in his raft. A half mile later, the flotilla had a close encounter with a tree across the stream, and both rafts capsized.
A search party located Stephan's body later that day.
In the final analysis, "these inexperienced and ill-prepared paddlers ignored warnings from a group of obviously knowledgeable paddlers. The absence of a life vest was probably the (second most) significant error." Despite warnings, despite seeing the cold water flowing menacingly over a bridge, and despite capsizing--Stephan chose to tackle this hazardous river. His tenacity was selected against, removing him from the gene pool.
In conclusion,"Warning unprepared floaters can be unproductive, but it is worth a try."
1995 Darwin Award WinnerURBAN LEGEND! The Arizona Highway Patrol were mystified when they came upon a pile of smoldering wreckage embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The metal debris resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it turned out to be the vaporized remains of an automobile. The make of the vehicle was unidentifiable at the scene.
The folks in the lab finally figured out what it was, and pieced together the events that led up to its demise.
It seems that a former Air Force sergeant had somehow got hold of a JATO (Jet Assisted Take-Off) unit. JATO units are solid fuel rockets used to give heavy military transport airplanes an extra push for take-off from short airfields.
Dried desert lakebeds are the location of choice for breaking the world ground vehicle speed record. The sergeant took the JATO unit into the Arizona desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, accelerated to a high speed, and fired off the rocket.
The facts, as best as could be determined, are as follows:
The operator was driving a 1967 Chevy Impala. He ignited the JATO unit approximately 3.9 miles from the crash site. This was established by the location of a prominently scorched and melted strip of asphalt. The vehicle quickly reached a speed of between 250 and 300 mph and continued at that speed, under full power, for an additional 20-25 seconds. The soon-to-be pilot experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners.
The Chevy remained on the straight highway for approximately 2.6 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied the brakes, completely melting them, blowing the tires, and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface. The vehicle then became airborne for an additional 1.3 miles, impacted the cliff face at a height of 125 feet, and left a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.
Most of the driver's remains were not recovered; 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.
Ironically a still-legible bumper sticker was found, reading
"How do you like my driving? Dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT."
Count Your Chickens
1995 Darwin Award Runner-Up(31 August 1995, Egypt) 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 in 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.
Repairs on the Road
1995 Darwin Award Nominee
(March 1995, Michigan) 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."
Electrifying Stunt
1995 Darwin Award Nominee
(1995, Michigan) 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.
FishMan
1995 Darwin Award Nominee
(29 November 1995, Australia) The badly decomposed remains of Neil of Melbourne were discovered in a paddock near Toolondo Reservoir Neil's death was shrouded in mystery, tragedy, and a fish suit.
Local law enforcement officials said the 49-year-old man was wearing a "heavy green plastic bodysuit," constructed from old waterbed material. The suit, from which one could only be extricated painstakingly after unfastening a full-length zipper along the spine, constricted his legs into one mermaid-esque tail. The only openings, aside from the zipper, were two eyeholes.
Neil's garb, enclosing his entire body like a maritime mummy costume, restricted his breathing as well as his movement. He was discovered in this attire, which the Melbourne Fish Costume Bureau stresses was "not approved," less than a kilometer from Toolondo Lake. He apparently had attempted to swim home.
A second yellow-colored suit was found in his garage.
The psychological motivation for Neil's fatal excursion remains unclear. Police have learned that he was taking medications for epilepsy and diabetes at the time, and speculate that his behavior may have had a chemical basis, but locals have their own theories about the aquatic abberation.
"He wanted to be a fish," disclosed one unnamed resident, recalling incidents in which Wilson would swing from a rope while wearing the suit at the lake. Other comments from the Australian community included "bollocks" and "criminey."
Wilson's death brings the Melbourne fish impersonation fatality toll to one, up infinity percent from zero in the previous year.
Caught in the Auger
1995 Darwin Award Nominee
(31 July 1995, Christchurch, New Zealand) An ice-maker may seem innocuous, but when it's big enough to walk into -- for example, one that supplies ice to fishing boats -- it can be so dangerous that safety procedures and fail-safe devices are required. So it was a bit of a surprise when employees at afish processing plant heard screams emanating from inside the giant ice-maker.
An employee had been running the machine when the flow of ice jammed. Access to the machine's auger chamber was restricted, and employees are trained never to enter the chamber while the auger is running. It would be easy enough to ignore the warning signs, but it is hard to get around another safety feature: the auger will not run unless the operator holds down a foot pedal outside the chamber. Take your foot off the pedal and the machine shuts down.
There was no way the operator could run the auger and also enter the chamber. Or so it seemed, but one enterprising employee found a way. He laid a heavy piece of metal on the foot pedal to keep the auger running while he entered the chamber to clear the ice jam. He was caught by the swirling auger and drawn inevitably, and fatally, into the ice machine.
Ironically, the employee had helped negotiate a labor contract stipulating that workers should scrupulously follow all safety procedures and abide by the company's operating rules.
Whitewater Floaters
1995 Darwin Award Nominee
(5 November 1995, Arkansas) Tenacity is often advantageous to an organism. But combine tenacity with a lack of common sense and an excess of bravado, and the trait may prove deleterious.
An unprecedented ten inches of rainfall had flooded rivers over their banks. Stephan, 27, thought that this was the perfect time to tackle Big Piney Creek, a challenging whitewater run even at normal water levels. Dressed in overalls and a sweatsuit, and notably lacking a life vest, Stephan set out with three friends and two rafts "of the type obtained by sending in Marlboro cigarette packs."
Only a dose of common sense stood between Stephan and glory.
Enroute to the Big Piney put-in, the four men were stalled at a bridge over Indian Creek. The water was flowing 3 feet over the bridge, and they could not drive any further. A crowd of experienced whitewater paddlers had gathered there to pay respectful homage to the freakishly high water. This benevolent group implored the foolhardy party to desist. They warned the men that Indian Creek courses through two miles of dangerous willow jungle before joining Big Piney.
But the men would not listen to reason. They climbed into their lightweight rafts, put-in, and immediately capsized. Undeterred by continuing pleas from experienced paddlers, undaunted by the dunking, the men launched again. They managed to stay on the surface for 200 yards before capsizing downstream.
At this point, one man realized he was fighting a losing battle. He bowed out, and hiked back to the bridge. Two other men climbed back into their raft, and Stephan decided to venture onward solo in his raft. A half mile later, the flotilla had a close encounter with a tree across the stream, and both rafts capsized.
A search party located Stephan's body later that day.
In the final analysis, "these inexperienced and ill-prepared paddlers ignored warnings from a group of obviously knowledgeable paddlers. The absence of a life vest was probably the (second most) significant error." Despite warnings, despite seeing the cold water flowing menacingly over a bridge, and despite capsizing--Stephan chose to tackle this hazardous river. His tenacity was selected against, removing him from the gene pool.
In conclusion,"Warning unprepared floaters can be unproductive, but it is worth a try."
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