1997 Darwin Awards [humor/off-topic]
From: ufobfmuseum@value.net
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 19:53:32 -0800
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Via: EB <logger@california.com>
The Darwin Award(s) THE DARWIN AWARD(s) are bestowed every year
upon (the remains of) an individual(s), who through single-minded
self-sacrifice, has done the most to remove undesirable elements
from the human gene pool. Last year's (1996) winner was the
fellow who was killed when he attached a JATO (Jet Assisted Take
Off) unit to his Chevy Impala and promptly shot himself at 300
mph into the side of a desert cliff. And one of my all time
favorites the 1994 winner, the fellow who was killed by a Coke
machine which toppled on top of him as he was attempting to tip a
free soda out of it. It is once again time to vote for the Darwin
Award nominees for 1997 you know these nominees will not be
contributing to the gene pool, thankfully. The winner is listed
at the end. The 1997 nominees are:
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, 4-1-95] 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] 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 12/21/92] 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, 31 Aug 1995 CAIRO, Egypt (AP)] 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, 25 March] A terrible diet and
a room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a
man who was killed by his own gas. There was 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 [18 May 93, 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 [1/29/96 The News of the weird.] JOINT NOMINEE Michael
Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously 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 home-made earphones as he watched his small TV while
sitting on his metal toilet.
NOMINEE #10 ["The Indianapolis Star", Wed., Dec. 4, 1996] A Jay
County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a
muzzleloader 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 up 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, 5 May 1995] 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 and the
other to a high-voltage electricity supply line, the PAPnews
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] The 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 [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
And now, for this year's illustrious winner(s):
... drum roll ...please
This years Darwin Award is issued to John Pernicky and friend Sal
Hawkins, of the great state of Washington, who decided to attend
a local Metallica concert at the Amphitheater at Gorge,
Washington. Having no tickets (but 18 beers among them) they sat
in the parking lot, and after finishing the beer, decided that it
would be easy enough to hop over the nine-foot high fence and
sneak into the show. The two friends pulled their pickup truck
over to the fence and the plan for John--100 pounds heavier than
Sal-to hop over, and then assist his friend over the fence.
Unfortunately for John, there was a 30 foot drop on the other
side of the fence. Having heaved himself over, he found himself
crashing through a tree. His fall was abruptly halted by a large
branch which snagged him by his shorts. Dangling from the tree,
with one arm broken, John looked down and saw a group of bushes
below him. Figuring the bushes would break his fall, John removed
his pocket knife and proceeded to cut away his shorts to free
himself from the tree. When finally free, John crashed below into
Holley bushes. The sharp leaves scratched his entire body and now
being without his shorts, he was the unwilling victim of a holley
branch penetrating his rectal cavity. To make matters worse, his
pocket knife proceeded to fall with him and landed three inches
into his left thigh. Seeing his friend in considerable pain and
agony, Sal decided to throw him a rope and pull him to safety.
However, weighing about 100 pounds less, he decided the best
course of action would be to tie the rope to the pickup truck.
This is when things went from bad to worse. In his drunken state,
Sal put the truck into the wrong gear, pressed on the gas, and
crashed through the fence, landing on and killing his friend. Sal
was thrown from the truck, suffered massive internal injuries and
also died at the scene. Police arrived to find a pickup truck
with its driver thrown 100 feet from the vehicle and upon moving
the truck, a half naked man, with numerous scratches, a holly
stick up his rectum, a knife in his thigh, and a pair of shorts
dangling from the tree branches 25 feet in the air.
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Created: Jan 27, 1998
