Some of you may be familiar with the "Darwin" awards, an annual honor given to the person who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing him- or her- self in the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year's winner was a fellow who was killed by a Coke machine that toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.
This year's contender: 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 boys back at the lab finally figured out what it was and what had happened. It seems that a guy had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket), which 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. He then attached the unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed, and fired off the JATO!
It was determined that he was doing somewhere between 250 and 300 mph when he came to that curve. The brakes were completely burned away, apparently from trying to slow the car. Note: solid fuel rockets don't have an "off" switch; once started, they burn at full thrust until the fuel is all gone.
Presenting the . . . 1998 DARWIN AWARDS
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 200-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 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 a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. 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.
8. In September, a 7-year-old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near Ozark, Ark, after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked the spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990.
DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTIONS
1. In Guthrie, Okla , in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede with a shot from his 22-caliber 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 hospitalized 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.
4. Taking "Amateur Night" Too Far: In Betulia, Colombia, an annual festival in November includes five days of amateur bullfighting. This year, no bull was killed, but dozens of matadors were injured, including one gored in the head and one Bobbittized. Said one participant, "It's just one bull against a town of a thousand Morons."
AND THE WINNER:
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 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.
Just a few stories from our nation's Emergency Rooms to prove that truth is stranger than fiction. . . .
A 28-year old male was brought into the ER after an attempted suicide. The man had swallowed several nitroglycerin pills and a fifth of vodka. When asked about the bruises about his head and chest he said that they were from him ramming himself into the wall in an attempt to make the nitroglycerin explode.
A man in his mid-fifties did a Loraina Bobbit on himself in a drunken rage and ended up in the ER. The urologist thought that he could reattach the man's genitalia if it could be recovered and if it was in good condition. The police were dispatched to the man's house and the search was on. During the search one of the officers heard a choking sound coming from the man's poodle that was sitting in the corner. After a brief fight the officer was able to retrieve the man's jewels from the dog's mouth. After inspection of the parts by the urologist, it was decided that the man would need to be taught to pee while sitting. The officer was given a commendation from his precinct for medical assistance.
A doctor who spoke limited Spanish was rushed to a car in the ER parking lot to find a Spanish woman in the process of giving birth. Wanting to tell the woman to push he started yelling "Puta! Puta! Puta!" At this, the woman's grandmother started to cry and the baby's father had to be restrained. What the doctor should have been saying was "Puja!" (Push!) Instead he was saying "Whore! Whore!"
HEAVEN IS WHERE ... the chefs are French, the mechanics are German, the police are British, the lovers are Italian, and it's all organized by the Swiss. HELL IS WHERE ... the chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the police are German, the lovers are Swiss, and it's all organized by the Italians.