DARWIN AWARDS

The Darwin Awards are annual honours given to the person who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.

And the nominees are:
Number 8:
A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited into the fireplace in his house.

This resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

Number 7:
A 34-year-old white male found dead in the basement of his home died of suffocation, according to police. He was approximately 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 225 pounds. He was wearing a pleated skirt, white bra, black and white saddle shoes, and a woman's wig. It appeared that he was trying to create a schoolgirls uniform look. He was also wearing a military gas mask that had the filter canister removed and a rubber hose attached in its place. The other end of the hose was connected to a one end of a hollow wooden tube approx. 12 inches long and 3inches in diameter. The tubes other end was inserted into his rectum for reasons unknown, and was the cause of his suffocation.

Police found the task of explaining the circumstances of his death to his family very awkward.

Number 6:
Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles.

Number 5:
A 27-year-old French woman lost control of her car on a highway near Marseilles and crashed into a tree, seriously injuring her passenger and killing herself. As a commonplace road accident, this would not have qualified for a Darwin nomination, were it not for the fact that the driver's attention had been distracted by her Tamagotchi key ring, which had started urgently beeping for food as she drove along. In an attempt to press the correct buttons to save the Tamagotchis life, the woman lost her own.

Number 4:
A 22-year-old Reston, VA, man was found dead after he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle.

Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement.

Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground, Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was Major trauma.

Number 3:
A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend - no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate - was hospitalised.

Number 2:
Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc. After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the Gas Company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked.

Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon operation of the lighter like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the blast, had never been thought of as bright by his peers.

And the winner...
The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smouldering 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 aeroplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The lab finally figured out what it was and what had happened. It seems that a guy had somehow got hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off - actually a solid fuel rocket) that 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 and straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO! The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that location. The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds. The driver, and soon to be pilot, most likely would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to become insignificant for the remainder of the event.

However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tyres and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the drivers remains were not recoverable; however, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron nearly reached Mach I, attaining a ground speed of approximately 420 mph.


Official winner 2006 Darwin award

Crazy stunt wins Darwin Award

Two students who died after climbing into a huge helium-filled balloon for the 'buzz' of inhaling the gas have been named the winners of the 2006 Darwin Awards. Jason Ackerman and Sara Rydman, both 21, were discovered with their feet sticking out of a deflated balloon used to advertise property in LakeView, South Florida. The two apparently pulled the balloon out of the sky and squeezed themselves inside, where they died of oxygen starvation. The awards are named in honour of Charles Darwin and given out every year to people 'who have improved the gene pool by removing themselves from it'. This year's runner-up was a man who flew his copper wire-bound kite during a thunder storm. The 26-year-old, from Belize, died after the kite sent a fatal bolt of lightning through his body. He was an electrician. In third place was a Brazilian who tried to dismantle a rocket-propelled grenade by driving back and forth over it with his car. When the weapon failed to break up, he attacked it with a sledgehammer. The explosion killed him and destroyed six cars and his workplace.

RUNNER UP:

WASHINGTON...

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 AM.

Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought a 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 for me on that night. There's just no other explanation for it."

Bingham's foot was never located.


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