[2387] in Humor
Darwin Awards 1998
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matt Braun)
Tue Jul 21 14:37:46 1998
From: Matt Braun <matt@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 14:30:43 EDT
I don't think I have seen these on humor@mit.edu yet.
Matt
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Darwin Awards 1998
They have finally been released! For those not familiar
with the Darwin Award - It's an annual honor given to the person who
did the Universal human gene pool the biggest service by getting
killed in the most extraordinarily stupid way. As always, competition
this year has been keen again. Some candidates appear to have trained
their whole lives for this event.
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, 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.
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 HONOURABLE 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 SOME MORE .....
Four people were injured in a string of related bizarre accidents.
Sherry Moeller was admitted with a head wound caused by
flying masonry, Tim Vegas was diagnosed with a mild case of whiplash
and contusions on his chest, arms and face, Bryan Corcoran
suffered torn gum tissue, and Pamela Klesick's first two fingers of her
right hand had been bitten off. Moeller had just dropped her husband
off for his first day of work and, in addition to a good-bye kiss, she
flashed her breasts at him "I'm still not sure why I did it," she said
later.
"I was really close to the car, so I didn't think anyone would see.
Besides,
it couldn't have been for more than two seconds." However, cab driver
Vegas did see and lost control of his cab running over the curb and into
the
corner of the Johnson Medical Building. Inside, Klesick, a dental
technician, was cleaning Corcoran's teeth. The crash of the cab
against the building making her jump, tearing Corcoran's gums with a
cleaning
pick. In shock, he bit down, severing two fingers from Klesick's hand.
Moeller's wound was caused by a falling piece of the medical
building.
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La Grange, GA - Attorney Antonio Mendoza was released from a trauma
center after having a cell phone removed from his rectum.
"My dog drags the thing all over the house," he said later. "He must
have dragged it into the shower. I slipped on the tile, tripped
against the dog and sat down right on the thing." The extraction took
more
than three hours due to the fact that the cover to Mr. Mendoza's phone
had
opened during insertion. "He was a real trooper during the entire
episode," said Dr.Dennis Crobe. "Tony just cracked jokes and really
seemed to be enjoying himself. Three times during the extraction his
phone rang and each time, he made jokes about it that just had us
rolling on the floor. By the time we finished, we really did
expect to find an answering machine in there"
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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 Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the middle of traffic.
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 tore his foot off at the ankle.
He miraculously survived his fall into the icy river water and was
rescued by two nearby fishermen. "All I can say," said Bingham, "is that
God
was watching out over me on that night. There's just no other explanation
for it." Bingham's foot was never located.
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