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 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 100-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 into  the  sand  caved in as he sat inside it.  Beachgoers 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  of  the hole Thursday afternoon when it collapsed,  burying  him beneath 5 feet of sand.  People on the beach, on the outer banks, used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to Jones, a  resident  of  Woodbridge,  VA,  but  could  not reach him.  It took rescue workers using heavy  equipment  almost  an hour to free him while about 200 people looked on.  Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.

4.   In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell face  first  through  the  ceiling  of the bicycle shop he was burglar-izing.  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 flakvest Berrena was wearing.

6.  Sylvester Briddell, Jr, 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, Del, 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 a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.

1.   In  Guthrie,  Oklahoma, in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede with  a  shot from his 22-calibre 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 hospitalised 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 2 AM, 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.

TACOMA,  WA  - Kerry Bingham, had been drinking with several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the  middle of traffic.  The conversation grew more heated and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30am.  Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought a bungee  rope.   Bingham,  who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out  that  a  coil  of  lineman's cable lay nearby.  One end of the cable was secured  around  Bingham's leg and the other end was tied to the bridge.  His fall  lasted  40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle.   He  miraculously  survived his fall into the icy river water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen.  "All I can say," said Bingham, "is that God was watching out for me on that night.  There's just no other explanation for it."  Bingham's foot was never located.

PADERBORN,  GERMANY  - Overzealous zookeeper 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 elephant dung !   Investigators  say  the  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 every now and then," said Dern.