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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.
Darwin Awards are (by definition) granted posthumously.
This citation is bestowed upon (the remains of) that individual,
who through single-minded self-sacrifice, has done the most to
remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool.
[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.
[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.
[Unknown, 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 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. Mitigating
factors: The man died with a smile on his face.
[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 foul play is
suspected."
[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 thefirm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper
that Hoy was"one of the best and brightest" members
of the 200-man association.
[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.
More intelligence-challenged people" 45 year-old
Amy Brasher was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, after a mechanic
reported to police that 18 packages of marijuana were packed in
the engine compartment of the car which she had brought to the
mechanic for an oil change. According to police, Brasher later
said that she didn't realize that the mechanic would have to raise
the hood to change the oil.
[Times of London] A thief who sneaked into a hospital
was scarred for life when he tried to get a suntan. After evading
security staff at Odstock Hospital in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and
helping himself to doctor's paging devices, the thief spotted
a vertical sunbed. He walked into the unit and removed his clothes
for a 45-minute tan. However, the high-voltage UV machine at the
hospital, which is renowned for its treatment of burns victims,
has a maximum dosage of 10seconds. After lying on the bed for
almost 300 times the recommended maximum time, the man was covered
in blisters.Hours later, when the pain of the burns became unbearable,
he went to Southampton General Hospital, 20 miles away, in Hampshire.
Staff became suspicious because he was wearing a doctor's coat.
After tending his wounds they called the police. Southampton police
said: "This man broke into Odstock and decided he fancied
a quick suntan. Doctors say he is going to be scarred for life.
"
Portsmouth, R.I.Police charged Gregory Rosa, 25,
with a string of vending machine robberies in January when he:
1. fled from police inexplicably when they spotted him loitering
around a vending machine and 2. later tried to post his $400 bail
in coins.
Karen Lee Joachimi, 20, was arrested in Lake City,
Florida, for robbery of a Howard Johnson's motel. She was armed
with only an electric chainsaw, which was not plugged in.
The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man
walked into Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan at 7:50 am, flashed
a gun and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he
said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order.
When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't
available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.
In case you've forgotten about the 1995 awardees,
some of them are listed below:
* 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."
* Same thing up here in MI. Seems some poor fella
thought it would be a good idea to "move" a downed wire
from his car. Newspaper reports it took a FULL MINUTE of neighbors
whacking away at him with a 2x4 to free their freshly fried former
friend from the fatal flashing.
* Bowling Green, Ohio, student Robert Ricketts, 19,
had his head bloodied when he was struck by a Conrail train. He
told police he was trying to see how close to the moving train
he could place his head without getting hit.
* In Wesley Chapel, Florida, Joseph Aaron, 20, was
hit in the leg with pieces of the bullet he fired at the exhaust
pipe of his car. When repairing the car, he needed to bore a hole
in the pipe. When he couldn't
find a drill, he tried to shoot a hole in it
Larry Walters is among the relatively few who have
actually turned their dreams into reality. His story is true,
as hard as you may find it to believe . . .Larry was a truck driver,
but his lifelong dream was to fly. When he graduated from high
school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot.
Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. So when he finally
left the service, he had to satisfy himself with watching others
fly the fighter jets that crisscrossed the skies over his backyard.
As he sat there in his lawn chair, he dreamed about the magic
of flying.
Then one day, Larry had an idea. He went down to
the local Army-Navy surplus store and bought forty-five weather
balloons, and several tanks of helium. These were not your brightly
colored party balloons, these were heavy-duty spheres measuring
more than four feet across when fully inflated. Back in his yard,
Larry used straps to attach the balloons to his lawn chair, the
kind you might have in your back yard.
He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep,
and inflated the balloons with helium. Then he packed a few sandwiches
and drinks, and a loaded BB gun, figuring he could pop a few balloons
when it was time to return to earth. His preparations complete,
Larry sat in his chair and cut the anchoring cord. His plan was
to lazily float into the sky, and eventually back to terra firma.
But things didn't quite work out that way. When Larry cut the
cord, he didn't float lazily up; he shot up as if fired from a
cannon! Nor did he go up a couple hundred feet. He climbed and
climbed until he finally leveled off at eleven thousand feet!
At that height, he could hardly risk deflating any of the balloons,
lest he unbalance the load and really experience flying. So he
stayed up there, sailing around for fourteen hours, totally at
a loss about how to get down. Eventually, Larry drifted into
the approach corridor for Los Angeles International Airport. A
Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a guy in a lawn chair
at eleven thousand feet, with a gun in his lap-- now there's a
conversation I would have given anything to have heard! LAX is
right on the ocean, and you may know that at nightfall, the winds
on the coast begin to change. So, as dusk fell, Larry began drifting
out to sea. At that point, the Navy dispatched a helicopter to
rescue him, but the rescue team had a hard time getting to him
because the draft from their propeller kept pushing his home-made
contraption farther and farther away. Eventually, they were able
to hover above him and drop a rescue line, with which they gradually
hauled him back to safety. As soon as Larry hit the ground, he
was arrested. But as he was led away in handcuffs, a television
reporter called out, "Sir, why'd you do it?" Larry stopped,
eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just
sit around!"
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Original Content Copyright © 1995-. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.
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Ya'll come back now, ya here...
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