God Bless America!
For those not familiar with the Darwin Award - it's an annual honor
given to the person who did the universal human gene pool the biggest
service by getting killed in the most extraordinarily stupid way.
DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES
1. In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in
two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-
wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
2. In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who totally
zoned when he ran, according to his wife, accidentally jogged off a
200-foot-high cliff on his daily run.
3. Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had
dug in the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beach go-ers said
Daniel Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the
wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom when it
collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand.
4. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he
fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was
burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had
placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base
of his skull as he hit the floor.
5. According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20,
was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman,
23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the
flak vest Berrena was wearing.
6. Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville,
Delaware, as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a
revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the
trigger.
7. In February, according to police in Windsor, Ontario, Daniel Kolta,
27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning
themselves a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with
their snowmobiles.
8. In September, a 7-year-old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near
Ozark, Arkansas, after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that
marked the spot where another person had fallen to his death a few
years earlier.
DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTIONS - For those whose only failure to
qualify for the full award was that they somehow have managed to
survive their own stupidity:
1. In Guthrie, Oklahoma, in October, Jason Rickford tried to kill a
millipede with a shot from his .22-caliber rifle, but the bullet
ricocheted off a rock near the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in
the head, fracturing his skull.
2. In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out
cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a
propane torch and caused a fire that burned the first and second
floors of his house.
3. Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, in
September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick
of dynamite that blew up in their car. While driving around at 2am,
the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the
window to see what would happen, but they apparently failed to
notice that the window was closed.
4. Taking Amateur Night too far: In Betulia, Colombia, an annual
festival in November includes five days of amateur bullfighting.
This year, no bull was killed, but dozens of matadors were injured,
including one gored in the head and one Bobbittized. Said one
participant, "It's just one bull against [a town of] a thousand
morons."
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