98 DARWIN AWARDS
Here are this year's Darwin Awards...
* THE DARWIN AWARDS are given
every year to bestow upon (the remains of those individuals, who through
single-minded self-sacrifice, have done the most to remove undesirable elements
from the human gene pool.
1997 DARWIN NOMINEES:
1) Los Angeles, CA. Ani Saduki, 33, and his
brother decided to remove a bee's nest from
a shed on their property with
the aid of a
pineapple. A pineapple is an illegal
firecracker
which is the explosive equivalent of
one-half stick of
dynamite. They ignited the fuse and
retreated to watch
from inside their home, behind a window some
10 feet away
from the hive/shed. The
concussion of the explosion
shattered the window inwards, seriously
lacerating
Ani. Deciding Mr. Saduki need stitches, the
brothers
headed out to go to a nearby
hospital. While walking towards their
car, Ani was stung three times by the
surviving bees.
Unbeknownst to either brother, Ani was
allergic to bee
venom, and died of suffocation
enroute to the hospital.
2) Derrick L. Richards, 28, was charged in April
in Minneapolis with third-degree murder in
the death of his beloved cousin, Kenneth E.
Richards.
According to police, Derrick
suggested a game of Russian
roulette and put a semiautomatic pistol
(instead of the
more traditional revolver) to Ken's head and
fired.
3) Phillipsburg, NJ. An unidentified 29 year old
male choked to death on a sequined pastie he
had orally
removed from an exotic dancer at a local
establishment. "I didn't
think he was going to eat
it," the dancer identified
only as "Ginger" said, adding
"He was really drunk."
4) In February, according to police in Windsor,Ont.,
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.
5) MOSCOW, Russia- A drunk security man asked a colleague
at the Moscow bank they were guarding to
stab his bulletproof
vest to see if it would protected him
against a knife attack.
It didn't, and the 25-year-old guard died of
a heart wound.
(It's good to see the Russians
getting into the spirit of the Darwin
Awards.)
6) In France, Jacques LeFevrier
left nothing to chance when he
decided to commit
suicide. He stood at the top of a tall cliff
and
tied a noose around his neck. He tied the
other end
of the rope to a large rock. He drank some
poison
and set fire to his clothes. He even tried
to shoot
himself at the last moment. He
jumped and fired the pistol.
The bullet missed him completely and cut through
the rope
above him. Free of the threat of hanging, he
plunged
into the sea. The sudden dunking extinguished the flames and
made him vomit the poison. He was dragged
out of the water by
a kind fisherman and was taken to a
hospital, where he
died of hypothermia.
7) RENTON, Washington, USA. On February 3, 1990,
a Renton, Washington man tried to commit a
robbery. This was
probably his first attempt, as suggested by
the fact that he
had no previous record of violent crime, and
by his terminally
stupid choices as listed
below:
1.
The target was H&J
Leather & Firearms, a gun shop.
2.
The shop was full of
customers, in a state where a substantial portion of the adult population is
licensed to carry concealed handguns in public places.
3.
To enter the shop, he
had to step around a marked Police patrol car parked at the front door.
4.
An officer in uniform
was standing next to the counter, having coffee before reporting to duty. Upon
seeing the officer, the would-be
robber announced a holdup and fired a few wild
shots. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, removing him from the
gene pool.
Several other customers also drew their
guns, but didn't fire.
No one else was hurt.
1997 DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTIONS (I.E.Non-fatalities)
Gulf Breeze, Florida, three unidentified teenage
males were using a home video camera to film an action/adventure
"movie" one of the boys had written. In a scene that called for each
character to be ignited by fire, the "special effects coordinator,"
age 15, prepared the "stunt" youth by dousing lighter fluid onto his
clothes. The intentional fire, which proved unexpectedly difficult to
extinguish, left the young man with third degree burns on his left arm, torso,
and both legs. It was all captured on film.
In Bradford, PA, J. Cruwe, 28, caught a small snake in a container which
he handed to his wife. She
opened the container and, startled to see
the snake, dropped it. The excited and
poisonous snake immediately bit Mr. Cruwe on the shin. Mr Cruwe survived the
wound and recovered after a short visit to the local emergency room.
In rural Carbon County, PA, a group of men were drinking beer and
discharging firearms
from the rear deck of a home owned by Irving Michaels, age 27. The men
were firing at a raccoon that was wandering by, but the beer apparently
impaired their aim and, despite of the estimated 35 shots the group fired, the
animal escaped into a 3 foot
diameter drainage pipe some 100 feet away from Mr.Michaels' deck.
Determined to terminate the animal, Mr. Michaels retrieved a can of
gasoline and poured some down the pipe, intending to smoke the animal out.
After several unsuccessful attempts to ignite the fuel, Michaels emptied the
entire 5 gallon
fuel can down the pipe and tried to ignite it again, to no avail. Not one
to
admit defeat by wildlife, the determined Mr. Michaels proceeded to slide
feet-first
approximately 15 feet down the sloping pipe to toss the match. The
subsequent rapidly
expanding fireball propelled Mr. Michaels back the way he had come,
though at a much higher rate of speed. He exited the angled pipe
"like a Polaris missile Leaves a
submarine," according to witness Joseph McFadden,
31. Mr. Michaels was launched directly over his own home, right over the
heads of his
astonished friends, onto his front lawn.In all, he traveled over 200 feet
through the air. "There was a Doppler Effect to his scream as he flew over
us," McFadden reported, "followed by a loud thud." Amazingly, he
suffered only minor injuries. "It was actually pretty cool," Michaels
said, "Like when they shoot someone out of a cannon at the circus. I'd do
it again if I was sure I wouldn't get hurt."
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
middle of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The conversation grew more heated
and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 a.m. Upon
arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought
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 pulled his foot off at the ankle. He
miraculously survived his fall into the frigid waters of the Tacoma Narrows and
Puget Sound 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 severed foot was never
located.
Earlier this year, the dazed crew of a Japanese trawler were plucked out
of the Sea of Japan clinging to the wreckage of their sunken ship.
Their rescue, however, was followed by immediate imprisonment once
authorities
questioned the sailors on their ship's loss. To a man they claimed that a
cow, falling out of a clear blue sky, had struck the trawler amidships,
shattering its hull and sinking the vessel within minutes. They remained in
prison for several weeks, until the Russian Air Force reluctantly informed
Japanese authorities that the crew of one of its cargo planes had apparently
stolen a cow wandering at the edge of a Siberian airfield, forced the cow into
the plane's hold and hastily taken off for home. Unprepared for live cargo, the
Russian crew was ill-equipped to manage a now
rampaging cow within its hold. To save the aircraft and themselves, they
shoved the animal out of the cargo hold as they crossed the Sea of Japan at an altitude of 30,000 feet.