And the nominees are:
9. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk
cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed
gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill,
and he vomited into the fireplace in his house. This 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. 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.
Police found the task of explaining the circumstances of his death to
his family very awkward.
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 a habit
of putting his penis between the cushions, down into the hole and between two
electrical sanders (with the sandpaper removed, for obvious reasons). According
to the story, after his orgasm the discharge 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 an 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."
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
hospitalized.
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 winner . . . The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of
smouldering metal embedded into the side of a cliff rising above the
road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an
airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the
scene.
The lab finally figured out what it was and what had happened. It
seems that a guy had somehow gotten ahold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted
Take Off - actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy
military transport planes an extra "push" for taking off from short
airfields.
He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long
and straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car,
jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO! The facts as best as
could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO
ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site.
This was established by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that
location.
The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust
within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of
350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds. The
driver, and soon to be pilot, normally would have experienced G-forces usually
reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing
him to become insignificant for the remainder of the event. However,
the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20
seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes,
blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then
becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height
of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of
the driver's remains were not recoverable; 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.
Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron nearly
reached Mach I, attaining a ground speed of approximately 420 mph.
Index