From davep@hons.cs.usyd.edu.au Fri Jun 20 15:44:26 1997
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 15:39:07 +1000 (EST)
Subject: (Fwd) Darwin Awards (fwd)
>
> FWD>Fwd: More Darwin Award nominees 6/16/97
> 8:34 PM
>
> The Darwin award is an annual award by some bioogist is USA who have
> assisted the human race the most by removing themselves from the human
> gene
> pool.
>
> You may recall last year's Darwin Award winner: The man
> who found out moments before making a 300 MPH dent in an Arizona
> cliff that the JATO (jet assist take off ) unit he'd strapped to his car
> could not be turned off once it was turned on.
>
> And 1994's winner was 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.
>
> The 1996 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]
>
> 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
> fowl 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
>
> 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 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
> ethane 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 [Bloomburg News Service] withdrawn
> --------------------------------------------
>
> NOMINEE #9 [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 #10 [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
> homemade earphones as he watched his small TV while sitting on his metal
> toilet.
>
> --------------------------------------------
> NOMINEE #11["The Indianapolis Star", Wed., Dec. 4, 1996].
> 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 muzzle loader that had not been firing properly. He
> was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder
> ignited.
>
> --------------------------------------------
> NOMINEE #12 [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 #13 [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 PAP news agency
> quoted a police official in Wloclawekas 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 #14 [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 15 [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 16 [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 #17 [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.
>
>
> **********************************************************************
> Here are some people that may be future nominees/winners, but still
> haven't made it to the "Big Leagues"
> [UPI, Portland, OR]
>
> Doctors at Portland's University Hospital said
> Wednesday an Oregon man shot through the skull by a hunting
> arrow is lucky to be alive, and will be released soon from the
> hospital.
>
> Tony Roberts, 25, lost his right eye last weekend
> during an initiation into a men's rafting club, Mountain Men
> Anonymous, in Grants Pass, Ore.
>
> A friend tried to shoot a beer can off his head, but
> the arrow entered Roberts' right eye. Doctors said had the
> arrow gone 1 millimeter to the left, a major blood vessel would have cut
> and Roberts would have died instantly.
>
> Neurosurgeon Dr. Johnny Delashaw at the University
> Hospital in Portland said the arrow went through 8 to 10 inches
> of brain, with the tip protruding at the rear of his skull, yet
> somehow managed to miss all major blood vessels. Delashaw also said had
> Roberts tried to pull the arrow out on his own he surely would
> have killed himself.
> Roberts admitted afterwards he and his friends had
> been drinking that afternoon. Said Roberts, ``I feel so dumb
> about this.''
> No charges have been filed but the Josephine County
> district attorney's office said the initiation stunt is under
> investigation.
>
> --------------------------------------------
> Arkansas Democrat Gazette, July 25, 1996:
> Two Local Men Injured in Freak Truck Accident, Cotton Patch, Ark.
>
> Two local men were seriously injured when their
> pick-up truck left the road and struck a tree near Cotton Patch
> on State Highway 38 early Monday morning.
>
> Woodruff County deputy Dovey Snyder reported the accident shortly
> after midnight Monday.
>
> Thurston Poole, 33, of Des Arc and Billy Ray Wallis,
> 38, of Little Rock are listed in serious condition at Baptist
> Medical Center. The accident occurred as the two men were
> returning to Des Arc after a frog gigging trip. On an overcast Sunday
> night, Poole's pick-up truck headlights malfunctioned.The two men
> out.
> As a replacement fuse was not available,Wallis noticed
> that the .22 caliber bullet from his pistol fit perfectly into
> the fuse box next to the steering wheel column. Upon inserting the
> bullet, the headlights again began to operate properly and the two men
> proceeded on east-bound toward the WhiteRiver bridge.
>
> After traveling approximately twenty miles and just
> before crossing the river, the bullet apparently overheated,
> discharged and struck Poole in the right testicle. The vehicle
> swerved sharply to the right exiting the pavement and striking a tree.
>
> Poole suffered only minor cuts and abrasions from the
> accident, but will require surgery to repair the other wound.
> Wallis sustained a broken clavicle and was treated and
> released.
> "Thank God we weren't on that bridge when Thurston shot his
> nuts off or we might both be dead" stated Wallis.
>
> "I've been a trooper for ten years in this part of the
> world, but this is a first for me. I can't believe that those
> two would admit how this accident happened", said Snyder.
>
> Upon being notified of the wreck, Lavinia, Poole's
> wife asked how many frogs the boys had caught and did anyone
> get them from the truck.
*dave
__________________________________________________________
web: http://www.cs.su.oz.au/~davep/ * dave
email: davep@caffeine.cs.su.oz.au phillips
( coffee: white, no sugar
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