Darwin Awards

“Darwin Awards celebrate Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by commemorating the remains of those who contributed to the Improvement of our gene pool by removing themselves from it. We select the finest examples of evolution in action.

What a great year 2000 was! Lots of ludicrous tales of misadventure. Plus readers confirm two old favorites: The failed robbery of a Washington gun shop with a police car in front, a policeman (and gun shop patrons) inside...

Confirmed! The prisoner escaping from a Pittsburgh jail cell using a rope of torn bedsheets that the broken glass cut through... Confirmed! (Plus the end of the rope was 80 feet short of the ground.)

Now, on to the Darwin Award Winners of the
Millennium...


THE DAILY GRIND
2000 Darwin Award Winner--Confirmed True by Darwin
The owner of a chipping company in Maine was rent asunder by his own wood chipper when he stumbled into the intake chute
while trying to break up a bark jam without disconnecting> the power supply ? THE most important rule!

DO IT YOURSELF, DO YOURSELF IN
2000 Darwin Award Winner--Confirmed True by Darwin A 34-year-old Colorado contractor wired his garden fence with> Household current in an attempt to keep his dog confined to the yard. He electrocuted himself when he brushed against the fence while reaching for a ripe tomato.

STONED SLEEP
2000 Darwin Award Runner-Up--Confirmed True by Darwin
A North Carolina marijuana smoker learned a hard lesson about drugs when she decided to bed down on the roof of the King Charles Inn. Fast asleep, she slid off the roof and fell to her death before dawn. Police found her stoned boyfriend still sleeping on the roof.

HUMAN POPSICLE
2000 Darwin Award Runner-Up--Confirmed True by Darwin
Ohio police located the body of a missing truck driver in January After his employer reported him missing in action. The man was found frozen head down among his broccoli pallets, where he had apparently slipped while trying to retrieve a hidden stash of cocaine.

PERILOUS POSE
2000 Darwin Award--Confirmed True by Darwin
A 53-year-old tourist posing nude for his camera in picturesque Rothemberg, Germany, slipped from castle?s high stone wall while Preparing for the shot, and fell sixteen feet to his death. The roll of film was seized as evidence.

BABY YOU DRIVE ME CRAZY
2000 Darwin Award--Confirmed True by Darwin
The bodies of a young couple were discovered naked in the wreckage of a freak car accident in Italy in May. Investigators assume that prior to the accident, the couple was having sex in their small Italian vehicle while it raced along windy roads at upwards of 80mph.

HORNET CHALLENGE
2000 Darwin Award--Confirmed True by Darwin
A 53-year-old man with a reputation as a 'strong man' accepted a dare to stand beneath a hornet nest in Phnom Penh while two men pelted it with stones. He endured the pain of countless stinging hornets before expiring from the toxic injections, and his own machismo.

RUNNING OF THE BULLS
2000 Darwin Award--Confirmed True by Darwin
A Berlin woman attempting to capture a memorable photograph of the Running of the Bulls in Nimes, France paid for her stupidity with her life when she removed a metal safety barricade and strode into the street, camera to her eye, only to be trampled by an oncoming horse and six rampaging bulls.


ONE LAST PROPHETIC NOTE?.

"Come the millenium, month 12
in the home of greatest power,
the village idiot will come forth,
to be acclaimed the leader."
-Nostradamus, 1555”

“As it was stated in the Six Sense, and I quote the little kid in that movie ?I see dumb people? they?re everywhere. They walk around like everyone else. They don?t even know that they?re dumb.?”

“Uh-oh, Buddur--you mentioned Darwin! =:-0

Get ready for the fecal matter to interact with the ventilation system....
;-)”

“Is W the sequel to Dumb and Dumber? (According to Nostradamus.)”

“Darwin always hesitated using "evolution" as the word to simply explain his ideas. His expression was "dissent with modification". This means that species not only evolve to a higher state, but also can de-volve to a lower state...they just change with time whether for the good or bad of the species.

From what I've seen so far in my life...we sure aren't evolving!”

“Anyone can read all the Darwin awards, past and present, as well as honorable mentions, at www.darwinawards.com/ There are some incredibly stupid on the planet.
Re Nostradamus: This quatrain was circulating in December. Having far too much time on my hands, I researched Nostradamus sites and ended up reading everything he ever wrote, in French and English. As much as this sounds like something he could have written, and perhaps should have written, he did not write it.
Happy new year to all from snowy - at last - New England.”

“Buddur:

Actually, in its most straightforward form there is no "higher" or "lower" to evolution - just ability to survive and reproduce in current circumstances. The cockroach, for example is one of the all time great success stories of evolution, but that does not make it "higher" in any meaningful sense.”

“Yeah Ped, that's the point I was trying to make.



"Changes aren't permanent...but change is!" -RUSH: Tom Sawyer”

“Well, I already used it, but this brings to mind one of my favorite Pogo cartoons, which goes something like this:

"Wow, this Darwin fella's sooo insultin' sayin' Mankind done descended from us animals"

"Hey, its true. Long, long ago, Man done descended from us animals an' he been ah descendin' ever since."”

“LOL, pedxing! Good to see a fellow Walt Kelly fan, too. :-)”

“some prediction...

It would have been equally accurate regardless of who won.”

“Yes, the old Social Darwinism or linear evolution question. "If I can make a bigger mess out of things faster, I must be better." Which leads to the missing link, maybe a whole chain. See there is room on in the evolutionary ladder for all of us, even WC.”

“If they gave Darwin awards for corporate PR...

This is from Lewis Dolinsky's column in today's SF Chronicle:

The Guardian Diary award for most amusing press release of last year went to the Maxima Group in London for this passage: "In just two years, Maxima has investigated corporate frauds for an impressive list of clients worldwide and has helped recover assets totaling $1 billion (made-up figure -- could we conjure up a more authentic one? Journalists are impressed by such nonsense.)" Ain't it the truth?

”

“Actually I think the press release may be accurate. Just think how broad and vague the word "helped" is.”

“The press release is honest, if not accurate. That parenthetical remark was in the release--nobody edited it out before sending. ;-)”

“Just got this in the mail. So strange, it's gotta be true.

ARKANSAS CITY (EAP) -- A Little Rock woman was killed yesterday afte leaping through her moving car's sun roof during an incident best described as "a mistaken rapture" by dozens of eye witnesses.

Thirteen other people were injured after a twenty-car pile up resulted from people trying to avoid hitting the woman who was apparently convinced that the rapture was occurring when she saw twelve people floating up into the air,and then passed a man on the side of the road who she claimed was Jesus.

"She started screaming "He's back, He's back" and climbed right out of the sunroof and jumped off the roof of the car," said Everet Williams, husband of 28-year-old Georgann Williams who was pronounced dead at the scene.

"I was slowing down but she wouldn't wait till I stopped," Williams said.

"She thought the rapture was happening and was convinced that Jesus was gonna lift her up into the sky," he went on to say.

"This is the strangest thing I've seen since I've been on the force," said Paul Madison, first officer on the scene.

Madison questioned the man who looked like Jesus and discovered that he was dressed up as Jesus and was on his way to a toga costume party when the tarp covering the bed of his pickup truck came loose and released twelve blow up sex dolls filled with helium which floated up into the air.

Ernie Jenkins, 32, of Fort Smith, who's been told by several of his friends that he looks like Jesus, pulled over and lifted his arms into the air in frustration, and said "Come back here," just as the Williams' car passed> him, and Mrs. Williams was sure that it was Jesus lifting people up into the sky as they passed by him, according to her husband, who says his wife loved Jesus more than anything else.

When asked for comments about the twelve sex dolls, Jenkins replied "This is all just too weird for me. I never expected anything like this to happen."”

“That is so bad! I couldn't stop laughing. Now I have to go pray for forgiveness.”

“she died a believer!”

“damn. A new world record.


"It is not the strongest of the species that
survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

~ Charles Darwin”

“That is UNBELIEVABLE! Then again, anything can happen.”

“

Italy insurance scam's chainsaw horror

from: BBC News

It looked like a violent attack on an innocent man.

When Andreas Plack, a 23-year-old ex-bouncer from the northern Italian town of Merano, was found lying in a pool of blood near a country lay-by, police initially thought him the victim of a sadistic attack.

His left leg was almost severed, seemingly by a chainsaw. Copious bleeding had virtually drained the body of blood.

Emergency call

Plack had tried to call the emergency services on his mobile phone in the wake of the attack, but was so weakened by rapid blood loss that operators heard only a death rattle.

However, the incredible truth of the case was soon to emerge.

Plack's 29-year-old cousin, Christian Kleon, has confessed to police that he was the assailant, and that the younger man died in an attempted insurance fraud that went badly wrong.

Numerous policies

The pair allegedly hatched a plan which was meant to net them over half-a-million dollars in insurance payouts.

Plack is said to have taken out policies with several companies, under which he would receive substantial sums in case of injury leading to permanent disability.

On the evening in question, according to Kleon, the two went to an isolated spot near the Bolzano-Merano highway.

Kleon sawed at his cousin's leg below the knee - with an electric saw that Plack himself had purchased - causing severe injury.

The two had been confident that they could stem the bloodflow from the wound, that Plack would be able to call the emergency services in time, and would then be able to convince police that he had been the victim of a violent mugging.

Cheated by death

But an over-enthusiastic Kleon, who quickly made his exit from the scene and disposed of the chainsaw in the nearby River Adige, had severed a major artery in Plack's leg.

Plack was left bleeding profusely and was too weak to properly make the vital call that might have saved his life.

His body was found the next morning. The alleged fraudster had himself been cheated by death.

Kleon, who confessed the whole episode to police the following day, is now languishing in a cell in Bolzano awating trial on charges of homicide and aggravated fraud.”

“Violin, that's so sad, dumb and funny!!!

A friend of mine who works in the ER, told me once they had to remove a chainsaw from some poor fool's forehead.

Apparently, the chainsaw was stuck and he tugged too strongly upwards, and the saw cut into his head. Not a pretty sight.”

“my personal favorite was about the guy who strapped the JATO rocket to his pickup. What a moron.”

“Not far from here, less than a year ago, a guy was doing wordworking of some sort in his basement. He accidentally cut off one of his fingers, and the pain was so bad that he attempted to commit suicide by shooting nails, from a nail-gun, into his head. Needless to say, he survived...after losing a finger and shooting six nails into his own head.”

“Wow, we could have a whole thread about nail-guns...


A man playing around with a nail gun shot himself in the head at a New Year's Eve party but didn't go to a hospital until the next day when his boss noticed the injury, police said.



Builder Tony Smart walked around with a three-inch nail buried in his skull for a week - without realising it.
”

“9. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheap,
mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill,
and he vomited into the fireplace in his house. The resulting explosion and
fire burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

8. A 34-year-old white male found dead in the basement of his home died
of suffocation, according to police. He was approximately 6'2" tall and
weighed 225 pounds. He was wearing a pleated skirt, white bra, black and
white saddle shoes, and a woman's wig. It appeared that he was trying to
create a schoolgirl's uniform look. However, he was also wearing a military
gas mask that had the filter canister removed and a rubber hose attached in
its place. The other end of the hose was connected to one end of a hollow
wooden tube approx. 12" long and 3" in diameter. The tube's other end was
inserted into his rectum for reasons unknown, and was the cause of his
suffocation.

7. Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude
when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the
occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and
crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around
their ankles.

6. A police officer in Ohio responded to a 911 call. She had no details
before arriving, except that someone had reported that his father was not
breathing. Upon arrival, the officer found the man face down on the couch
naked. When she rolled him over to check for a pulse and to start CPR, she
noticed burn marks around his genitals. After the ambulance arrived and
removed the man - who was declared dead on arrival at the hospital - the
police made a closer inspection of the couch, and noticed that the man had
made a hole between the cushions. Upon flipping the couch over, they
discovered what had caused his death. Apparently, the man had inserted his
#&%!$ between the cushions, down into the hole and between two electrical
sanders (with the sandpaper removed, for obvious reasons). Evidently, his
ejaculation shorted out one of the sanders, electrocuting him.

5. A 27-year-old French woman lost control of her car on a highway
near Marseilles and crashed into a tree, seriously injuring her passenger
and killing herself. As a commonplace road accident, this would not have
qualified for a Darwin nomination, were it not for the fact that the
driver's attention had been distracted by her Tamagotchi key ring, which
had started urgently beeping for food as she drove along. In an attempt to
press the correct buttons to save the Tamagotchi's life, the woman lost her
own.

4. A 22-year-old Reston, VA, man was found dead after he tried to use
octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle.Fairfax
County police said Eric Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of
these straps together, wrapped one end around one foot, anchored the other
end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement.
Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was
alone because his car was found nearby. "The length of the cord that he had
assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the
ground,"Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was "Major
trauma".
NOTE: What the hell are 'octopus straps'???

3. A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and
a friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball.
The friend - no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate - was hospitalised.

2. Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the
smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building
extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc. After
the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were
dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty
navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked.
Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into
his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter.
Upon operation of the lighter like object, the gas in the warehouse
exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of
the technicians, but the
lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician
suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of as 'bright' by his
peers.


And the number one nominee for this year's Darwin Award did not die,
but probably wishes he had....

1.Spurred on by a bet from the other members of his threesome, Everett
Sanchez tried to wash his own "balls" in a ball washer at the local
golf course. Proving once again that beer and testosterone are a bad
mix, Sanchez managed to straddle the ball washer and dangle his scrotum in
the machine. Much to his dismay, one of his buddies upped the ante by
spinning the crank on the machine with Sanchez's scrotum in place, thus
wedging it solidly in the mechanism. Sanchez, who immediately passed his
threshold of pain, collapsed and tumbled from his perch. Unfortunately for
Sanchez, the height of the ball washer was more than a foot higher off the
ground than his testicles are in a normal stance, and the scrotum was the
weakest link. Sanchez's scrotum was ripped open during the fall, and one
testicle was plucked from him forever and remained in the ball washer,
while the other testicle was compressed and flattened as it was pulled
between the housing of the washer, and the rotating machinery inside. To
add insult to injury, Sanchez broke the new $300.00 driver that he had just
purchased from the pro shop, which he was using to balance himself. Sanchez
was rushed to the
hospital for surgery, and the remaining threesome were asked to leave
the course.”

“ok the ballwasher wins my vote”

“But he didn't die, so he can't win...”

“but he dosen't sound like he'll be reproducing any time soon..”

“i'm female and this story made me cry!”

“He may have already reproduced. The article doesn't say.”

“The ballwasher gets my vote for creativity, if nothing else.”

“not to mention he broke his new driver...maybe the Darwin Award is a cash prize?”

“I wonder if his putter survived!”

“Actually, the testicle left in the ball washer could probably be reattached and made to function again. Ain't modern medicine great?”

“Depends on how long the nut stayed in the washer, lol! If it was several hours, they probably couldn't save it. And honestly, would YOU stick your hand in there to rescue someone else's testicle?! Now there's an image!”

“if your last words were....."Hey guys! Watch this!"”

“Yep, that's my husband's family. They may be electrical enginneers , teachers and computer geeks, but jeez, you should have seen them trying to install 2 satellite dishes on top of a 25' pole!”

“thump”

“The 5th runner-up this year went to a San Angelo man who died when he hit a lift tower at the Mammoth
Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a foam pad.

The 22-year old, David Hubbell, was pronounced dead at the Central
Mammoth Hospital. The accident occurred about 3 a.m. according to
the Mono County Sheriff's Department. Hubbell and his friends had apparently hiked up a ski run called Stump Alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from lift towers. The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit towers. The group apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope. It has since been investigated and determined the tower he hit was the one with its pad removed.”

“Note to future idiots: Remove the pads from the towers above where you plan to slide...”

“And who says there is no symmetry in the universe? Karma, karma, karma chameleon...”

“Ah, the balance of life.



Given enough time the gene pool will clean its self....25/35 million years is a good guess.”

“You know some SOB is going to sue the ski park for making the pads removable.......”

“.”

“My all-time favorite was the one where the guy took a bunch of blow-up dolls and filled them with helium. He was driving them to a party (or Something) and they got away from him in the middle of traffic.

THEN some wacky broad thought it was The Rapture... the 'saved' people floating up to Heaven, donchaknow... drove off the road into a tree, killing herself instantly.

How do we know? Her boyfriend (who survived) was in the car with her. She started shouting "The Rapture Has Begun!! I'm Coming Jesus!" and tried to climb out of the sunroof.”

“my all time favorite was the Thai guy.

Apparently inserting the tube of a bicycle pump in the rectum and pumping was giving some guys a charge.

This idiot went to the local gas station and used the compressor tube. Did an instant Michelin man then exploded sending pieces of himself all over the street.”