The Darwin Awards - Thanking those who die in effort to clean out the geanpool of their own stupidity - Miscellaneous - http://maxpages.com/makeoneup/Darwin

First, a display of pure stupidity from Grand Rapids, MI:

A local man had just bought a new Ford Explorer and, in one of those male-bonding rituals, decided to do a winter duck hunting expedition with his buddies. So they loaded the dog, the guns, the decoys, the beer, etc. into the vehicle and headed out to a nearby lake. It is common practice in Michigan to drive your vehicle out onto the frozen lake. Further, it is common (if slightly illegal) to make a hole in the ice for your decoys by using dynamite. The young man had a stick of dynamite, but it had a short fuse - 20 seconds. Since it is not a good idea to light the fuse, then drop the dynamite and run (after all, you could slip and fall on the ice), he decided to throw it instead. Sounds like the thing to do. Trouble is, after he tosses the stick of dynamite, the dog chases after it, picks it up and starts to bring it back, just like hes been taught. The men screamed at the dog to drop the (lit) dynamite, to no avail. Finally in desperation, one of the men grabs his shotgun and fires at the dog. Since the gun was loaded with bird shot, the dog was not so much hurt as confused, so he ran and crawled under the vehicle with the dynamite in his mouth. Needless to say, the new Explorer is at the bottom of the lake; the insurance company refuses to pay because it was an illegal use of explosives; and the first payment is due at the end of the month and there are 47 more to follow.

There's More!

And now, this years runner-up: An insurance company asked for more

information regarding a work related accident claim. This was the response:

I put poor planning as the cause for my accident. I am an amateur radio operator, and was working on the top section of my new 80 foot tower. When I had completed my work, I discovered that I had brought up about 300 pounds of tools and spare hardware. Rather than carry the materials down by hand, I decided to lower the items using a pulley. Securing the rope at ground level, I went to the top of the tower and loaded the tools into a small barrel. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow descent of the 300 pounds of tools. You will note in Block 11 of the accident report that I weigh 155 pounds. Due to my surprise of being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. I proceeded at a rather rapid rate of speed up the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the 40 foot level, I met the barrel coming down. This explains my fractured skull and broken collarbone. Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley. I regained my presence of mind, and was able to hold onto the rope in spite of my pain. At the same time, however, the barrel of tools hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Devoid of the weight of the tools, the barrel now weighed approximately 20 pounds. I refer you again to my weight in Block 11. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the 40 foot level, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles, and the lacerations on my legs and lower body. The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of tools, so only three vertebra were cracked. I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay on the tools, in pain, unable to stand and watch the empty barrel 80 feet above me, I again lost my presence of mind, and let go of the rope...

Drum roll please for the winner of this years Darwin award:

Larry Walters

He is among the relatively few who have actually turned their dreams into reality.

His story is true, as hard as you may find it to believe...

Larry was a truck driver, but his life long dream was to fly. When he graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. So when he finally left the service, he had to satisfy himself with watching others fly the fighter jets that crisscrossed the skies over his backyard. As he sat there in his lawn chair, he dreamed about the magic of flying. Then one day, Larry had an idea. He went down to the local Army-Navy surplus store and bought 45 weather balloons, and several tanks of helium.These were not your brightly colored party balloons, these were heavy-duty spheres measuring more than four feet across when fully inflated. Back in his yard, Larry used straps to attach the balloons to his lawn chair, the kind you might have in your backyard. He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep, and inflated the balloons with helium. Then he packed a few sandwiches and drinks, and a loaded BB gun, figuring he could pop a few balloons when it was time to return to earth. His preparations complete, Larry sat in his chair and cut the anchoring cord. His plan was to lazily float into the sky, and eventually back to terra firma. But things didn't quite work out that way. When Larry cut the cord, he didn't float lazily up, he shot up as if fired from a cannon! Nor did he go up a couple hundred feet. He climbed and climbed until he finally leveled off at eleven thousand feet! At that height, he could hardly risk deflating any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really experience flying. So he stayed up there, sailing around for fourteen hours, totally at a loss about how to get down. Eventually, Larry drifted into the approach corridor for Los AngelesInternational Airport. A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a guy in a lawn chair at eleven thousand feet, with a gun in his lap now there's a conversation I would have given anything to have heard! LAX is right on the ocean, and you may know, at nightfall, the winds on the coast begin to change. So as dusk fell, Larry began drifting out to sea. At that point, the Navy dispatched a helicopter to rescue him, but the rescue team had a hard time getting to him because the draft from their propeller kept pushing his home-made contraption father and farther away. Eventually, they were able to hover above him and drop a rescue line, with which they gradually hauled him back to safety. As soon as Larry hit the ground, he was arrested. But as he was led away in handcuffs, a television reporter called out, "Sir, why'd you do it?" Larry stopped, eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around." Yea, if you sit around too much you usually balloon-up.

You all know about the Darwin Awards - It's an annual honor given to the person who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.

And this year's second runner up is: Mr. Paul Queroli

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering 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 Paul Queroli had somehow gotten hold 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, 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 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, soon to be pilot, most likely would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, basically 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.

Never did like the French...

Witness Frenchman Pierre Pumpille, of Lyon, who recently shunted a stationary car two feet by headbutting it. "Women thought I was a god," he explained from his hospital bed. Deity or not, however, Pumpille is nothing compared to Polish farmer Krystof Azninski, who staked a strong claim to being Europe's most macho man by cutting off his own head. Azninski, 30, had been drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and play some "men's games". Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen swedes, but then one man seized a chainsaw and cut off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and crying "Watch this then!" swung at his own head and chopped it off. "It's funny," said one companion, "Cos when he was young he put on his sister's underwear. But he died like a man."

1998 Nominees for the Darwin Award

NOMINEE #1 - San Jose Mercury News: An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former girlfriend's windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.

NOMINEE #2 - Kalamazoo Gazette: James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Mich., was killed in March as he was trying to repair what police described as a "farm-type truck." Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise. Burns' clothes caught on something, however, and the other man found Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft."

NOMINEE #3 - Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario: Man Slips, Falls 23 Stories to His Death. A man cleaning a bird feeder on his balcony of his condominium apartment in this Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death,police said Monday. Stefan Macko, 55, was standing on a wheeled chair Sunday when the accident occurred, said Inspector D'Arcy Honer of the Peel regional police. "It appears the chair moved and he went over the balcony," Honer said." It's one of those freak accidents. No foul play is suspected."

NOMINEE #4 - Hickory Daily Record:Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, N.C., when, awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith Wesson .38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.

NOMINEE #5 - UPI, Toronto: Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law students. Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports. Peter Lauwers,managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was "one of the best and brightest" members of the 200-man association.

NOMINEE #6 - AP, Cairo, Egypt: Six people drowned Monday while trying to rescue a chicken that had fallen into a well in southern Egypt. An 18-year-old farmer was the first to descend into the 60-foot well. He drowned, apparently after an undercurrent in the water pulled him down, police said. His sister and two brothers, none of whom could swim well, went in one by one to help him, but also drowned. Two elderly farmers then came to help, but they apparently were pulled by the same undercurrent. The bodies of the six were later pulled out of the well in the village of Nazlat Imara, 240 miles south of Cairo. The chicken was also pulled out. It survived.

NOMINEE #7 - Bloomburg News Service: A terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by his own gas. Therewas no mark on his body but autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage (and a couple of other things). It was just the right combination of foods. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing from the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows been opened, it wouldn't have been fatal. But the man was shut up in his near airtight bedroom. He was "...a big man with a huge capacity for creating [this deadly gas]." Three of the rescuers got sick and one was hospitalized.

NOMINEE #8 - San Jose Mercury News: A 24-year-old salesman from Hialeah, Fla., was killed near Lantana, Fla., in March when his car smashed into a pole in the median strip of Interstate 95 in the middle of the afternoon. Police said that the man was traveling at 80 MPH and, judging by the sales manual that was found open and clutched to his chest, had been busy reading.

NOMINEE #9 - The News of the Weird; JOINT NOMINEE: Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weirdposthumously in 1989. He had spent several years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison. In March 1989, sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted. On Jan. 1, 1997, Laurence Baker, also a convicted murderer once on death row, but later serving a life sentence at the state prison in Pittsburgh, Pa., was electrocuted by his homemade earphones as he watched his small TV while sitting on his metal toilet.

NOMINEE #10 - The Indianapolis Star: Cigarette lighter may have triggered fatal explosion Dunkirk, Indiana. A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's investigators said. Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber muzzleloader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.

NOMINEE #11 - AP, Mammoth Lakes: A San Anselmo man died yesterday when he hit a lift tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a foam pad, authorities said. Matthew David Hubal, 22, was pronounced dead at Centinela Mammoth Hospital. The accident occurred about 3 a.m., the Mono County Sheriff's Department said. Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked a ski run called Stump Alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from the lift towers, said Lieutenant Mike Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department. The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit the towers. The group apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal crashed into a tower. It was not clear if the tower he hit was one with its pad removed. "With the cold temperatures, the snow was probably pretty fast," said Donnelly.

NOMINEE #12 - Reuters, Warsaw, Poland: A poacher electrocuting fish in a lake in central Poland fell into the water and suffered the same fate as his quarry, police said Thursday. The 24-year-old man was one of four who went fishing with a cable, one end of which they attached to a net. A news agency quoted a police official in Wloclawek as saying. "For a while everything went according to the poachers' plan and they had fish in their bags. But at a certain moment the man holding the net tripped and fell into the water," the agency said. The other poachers tried in vain to revive him, it said.

NOMINEE #13 - AP, St. Louis: Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it in his mouth, and walked out without paying for it. Police found him unconscious in front of the store. Paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat, where it had choked him to death.

NOMINEE 14 - Unknown: A poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock -- and was killed instantly when it fell on him.

NOMINEE 15 - Associated Press, Kincaid, W. VA: Blasting Cap Explodes in Man's Mouth at Party. A man at a party popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down, triggering an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth and tongue, state police said Wednesday. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during a party late Tuesday night, said Cpl. M.D. Payne. "Another man had it in an aquarium, hooked to a battery, and was trying to explode it," Payne said. "It wouldn't go off and this guy said, 'I'll show you how to set it off.' I just can't imagine anyone doing something like that," Payne said.

AND FINALLY, NOMINEE #16 - Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 1-1- 93: In December near Mineral Wells, Tex., three men who were attempting to steal copper wire off live electrical lines for resale were electrocuted. Copper wiring is a valuable scrap metal in Texas but is usually stolen from electric cables that are not being used.

Thanks to Andrew at pacohell for the source of these

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