posted to rec.boats
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2006 Darwin Awards
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
In case you haven't received them yet, here are this year's Darwin
Awards-- the annual honor given to the person who improved the "gene
pool" the most by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily
stupid way. As always, competition this year has been keen. And the
candidates this year are............
NUMBER ONE
* 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.
* A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when
he ran,"--accidentally jogged off a 100-foot-high cliff on his daily
run
NUMBER TWO
* 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. Beach-goers 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.
NUMBER FOUR
* 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.
NUMBER FIVE
* Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed 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.
HONORABLE MENTION, REALLY?
* Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover township, NJ, and
his wife Bonnie was also injured, when a quarter-stick of dynamite
blew up in their car. While driving around 2 AM, the bored couple lit the
dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see what would
happen, but apparently failed to notice the window was closed.
THE RUNNER UP IS:
* 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.
AND THE WINNER IS:
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed
his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more
than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up
pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200
pounds of poop!
Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give
the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast
unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected
defecation
knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground, where he struck his head on a
rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his
bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective
Erik Dern. '
With no one there to help him, he lay under all
that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came along, and during
that time he suffocated. It seems to be just one of those freak accidents
that
proves that "S... happens!"
All of these sound great, but this is a perfect example of not believing
any "true stories" that comes in email.
http://www.darwinawards.com/legends/legends1998-09.html
http://www.matthewarnoldstern.com/speeches/ul.html
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