The latest nominees for the Darwin awards:
A recent suicide was found as follows: 34 yr. old white male found in
the basement of his home died of suffocation. He was approximately
6'2" and 225 lb.
He was wearing a pleated skirt, wig, white bra, black and white saddle
shoes and a woman's wig. It appeared that he was trying to create a
school girls uniform look. He was also wearing a military gas mask
that had the filter canister removed and a rubber hose attached in its
place. The other end of the hose was connected to a hollow wooden
piece of a bedpost approximately 12 inches long and 3 inches in
diameter. This bedpost was inserted into his rear end for reasons
unknown, and was the cause of his suffocation. It was difficult to
explain the circumstances of his death to his family members.
Apparently, in Brazil, 3 people were flying in a plane at low
altitude, when another plane approached. For a lark, they decided to
"moon" the other plane. Somehow, in the execution of this maneuver,
they lost control of the plane and crashed. They were all found dead
with their pants around their ankles.
A police officer in Ohio responded to a call that was made to 911. She
had no details before arriving except that someone was reporting that
his father was not breathing. Upon arrival, the officer found this man
face down on the couch, naked. When she rolled him over to check for a
pulse and to start CPR if necessary she noticed burn marks around his
genitals. After the ambulance arrived and removed the man (who was
dead) the police made a closer inspection of the couch and noticed
that the man had made a hole between the cushions. After flipping the
couch over they discovered what caused his death. Apparently the man
would put his penis between the cushions, down into the hole and
between 2 ELECTRIC SANDERS (with out the sand paper obviously).
According to the story, after he had his orgasm the, ahem, discharge
shorted out the sander electrocuting him to death.
(AP) LOS ANGELES - Police officials would not release the name of a
Pacoima man who was found dead yesterday after responding to
complaints from neighbors that a bad smell was coming from his
apartment. Upon entering the apartment, officers were surprised to see
that every square inch of the apartment, including appliances and even
the inside of the toilet, were covered with pornographic images cut
from magazines.
"The visual effect was very unsettling," said Officer Hradj of the
Pacoima Police. "Because everything looked the same, You could not
tell where one wall ended and a doorway began."
The surprises did not end there, however. Police described the man as
having "concocted a wire-frame around his head" upon which the man had
taped various pornographic images, apparently so he could freely move
about his apartment without ever losing his close up view of nude
bodies. Small slits had been cut into the paper so he could find his
way, but according to Hradj, "he had almost no peripheral vision. He
could barely see a thing." The man was found nude with this wire frame
entangled in a hanging lamp "We think he had been dusting," said
another police officer, "because a feather duster was lying nearby,
and his headgear had somehow become caught in the lamp, which was
chained to the ceiling."
The man allegedly choked to death trying to extricate himself from his
predicament. According to his apartment manager, the white male in his
mid-30's never left his apartment, and had food delivered weekly.
Funeral services are planned for next week. His next of kin requested
that his name be withheld.
In an Inuit village, a young man was searching for a way of getting
drunk for free because he had no money to buy alcohol. So he mixed
gasoline with milk to get his buzz. After he drank it he became ill
and vomited on the fireplace in his house which in turn ignited his
vomit and burned his house down killing him and his sister.
A 27 year old woman from France lost control of her car on a highway
near Marseille and crashed into a tree seriously injuring her co-
driver and killing herself. Accidents like this occur quite often and
usually don't qualify for a Darwin Award nomination. This accident is
special because the drivers attention for the road was distracted by
her Tamagotchi which hang on the car keys and beeped for food. Wanting
to save the Tamagotchis life the French woman ignored the road and
killed herself.
PADERBORN, GERMANY - Overzealous zoo keeper Friedrich Riesfeldt fed
his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more
than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up
pachyderm finally let fly - and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds
of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to
give the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema when the relieved beast
unloaded on him like a dump truck full of mud. "The sheer force of the
elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground,
where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant
continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him," said flabbergasted
Paderborn police detective Erik Dern. "With no one there to help him,
he lay under all that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came
along, and during that time he suffocated. It seems to be just one of
those freak accidents that happen sometimes - a billion-to-one shot,
at least." The heartbreaking tale of constipation and tragedy began
April 23 when the conscientious zoo keeper noticed that his prize,
8,000-pound African elephant didn't seem to be producing his usual
poop aplenty. "Friedrich had actually been concerned for several days
because he knew that severe constipation can kill an elephant,"
assistant zoo keeper Kurt Herrman recalled. "He told me he was going
to stay late that Thursday night to treat Stefan with laxatives and
possibly give him an enema. I offered to help, but he sent me on
home, saying he had everything under control." But two hours later,
horrified night watchman Walter Pleuger found Friedrich lying lifeless
under a mound of muck, his body visible only from the knees down. "I
had never really thought about it before," Det. Dern said. "But
obviously, giving an elephant an enema can be a very dangerous
activity - and not something that should be attempted alone."
The Darwin Award (as you know) honours the person who did the greatest
service to the gene pool by killing themselves in the most stupid
manner imaginable before they have a chance to pass on their stupid
genes to another generation.
To give you an idea of the calibre of person who wins the annual
Darwin Award, the 1994 winner died when he was crushed by the Coke
machine he was tilting towards himself in an attempt to obtain a free
drink from it. The 1995 winner was, if we are using the term loosely,
a driver.
When the Arizona Highway Patrol spotted a mashed pile of smouldering
wreckage embedded in the side of a cliff, the damage was so great that
the vehicle was completely unrecognisable. But from the scale of
destruction, they thought it had to have been a plane crash. They were
wrong: it was a car.
It took a long time to work out how a car had been so thoroughly
destroyed, but investigators eventually pieced together the story.
The driver had somehow managed to obtain a Jet-Assisted Take-Off unit,
known to the US Air Force as a JATO. JATOs are used to give heavy
military transport planes an extra 'push' to assist them in taking-off
from short runways. They are very simple devices: they're just solid
fuel rockets which, once ignited, provide a great deal of thrust for
around 30 seconds before burning themselves out. (The solid-fuel
boosters used to launch the Space Shuttle are essentially just very
large JATO units.)
Having obtained the JATO, the driver drove out into the Arizona
Desert, found himself a long straight road and attached it to his
Chevy. He then jumped in, got up to speed and pressed the ignition
switch. What happened next is a mixture of accident investigation,
forensic analysis and speculation. But it went something like this.
The driver ignited the unit approximately 3.9 miles from the crash
site. This much is known, as the rocket melted the asphalt on the
road. Assuming that the JATO unit functioned according to
specifications, it would have reached maximum thrust within
approximately five seconds. At this point, the car would have been
travelling at a conservative 350 mph. The Chevy would have maintained
this speed for a further 20-25 seconds. The G-forces experienced by
the driver would have been roughly equivalent to those experienced by
fighter-pilots using full after-burners.
The car remained on the road for 2.5 miles. At this point, the driver
applied the brakes. Modern car brakes are extremely efficient, but
they are not generally designed to slow a vehicle travelling at 350mph
against the continuing thrust of a solid-fuel rocket. The brakes
melted and the tyres shredded, leaving investigators a handy marker
for the point at which the brakes were applied.
The braking was not entirely without effect, however, for it is at
this point police believe the car became airborne. The car climbed
gently through the air for a further 1.4 miles. We know this because
the impact point was in a cliff face at a height of 125 feet above
ground level. The cliff-face was solid rock, but the wreckage still
managed to produce a blackened crater three feet deep.
Very little of the wreckage or driver were recognisable, but
investigators did manage to isolate a few items. Fragments of bone,
teeth and hair were found in the crater, and both fingernail and bone
silvers were extracted from a piece of plastic believed to have once
been a steering wheel.
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