I just received this year's Darwin Awards, forwarded to me by a friend. He said "This is as close to biology as I get." It was close enough, I thought I'd post them up here.
I have to warn you - the first few I couldn't decide if I should laugh or feel sorry for the families. But by then end I was definietly laughing.
And I guess you only qualify for honorable mentions if you actually survive your own stupidity.
DARWIN AWARDS: Natural Selection in Action!!!
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 human 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..
MICHIGAN... 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.
CALIFORNIA... 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.
NORTH CAROLINA... 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.
CALIFORNIA... 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.
DELAWARE... 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 MENTIONS:
NEW JERSEY... 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.
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:
GERMANY... 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**T happens!"
<img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />
