The Darwin Awards are annually bestowed upon (the remains of) individuals who have given their all in an effort to improve our gene pool. The Darwin Awards applaud those who have made the ultimate sacrifice of killing themselves by the most extraordinarily stupid means.
The Awards commemorate those who find innovatively moronic ways of killing themselves, thereby helping to eliminate undesirable weaknesses from the human gene pool.
And so, without further ado, the 1998 Darwin Award Finalists:
MAN DIES IN FREAK ACCIDENT
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (Nov. 13) — A 39-year-old Charlottesville man died Thursday in a freak accident involving his washing machine. According to police reports, Samuel Randolph Strickson was doing laundry when he tried to speed up the process. Strickson apparently tried to stuff approximately 50 pounds of laundry into his washing machine by climbing on top of the washer and attempting to force the clothing into the basin.
Strickson then apparently accidentally kicked the washing machine's ON button. When the machine turned on, Strickson lost his balance and both feet went down into the machine, where they got stuck. The machine started its cycle, and Strickson, unable to free himself, started thrashing around as the machine's agitator went into gear. Strickson's head banged against a nearby shelf in the laundry room, knocking over a bottle of bleach, which poured over Strickson's face, blinding him.
Forensic reports say Strickson apparently also swallowed some of the bleach. He then vomited, but was still unable to free himself. Strickson's dog, then apparently came into the laundry room. At About the same time, according to police, a large box of baking soda fell from the shelf, startling the dog, who then urinated. Urine, like vinegar, is acidic, and the chemical reaction between the urine and the baking soda resulted in "a small explosion," according to police reports. The dog, however, escaped unharmed.
Strickson remained stuck in the washing machine, which eventually went into its high-speed spin cycle, spinning Strickson around at about 70 miles per hour, according to forensic experts. Strickson's head then smashed against a steel beam behind the washing machine, immediately killing him.
A neighbor heard the commotion and called 911, but Strickson was pronounced dead at the scene.
Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears they decided to "moon" the occupants of the other plane, but lost control of the plane and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles.
A young Inuit man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply because he had no money to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited into the fireplace in his house. The resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.
A 27 year-old French woman lost control over her car on a highway near Marseilles and crashed into a tree, seriously injuring her passenger and killing her. 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 attempting to press the correct buttons to save the Tamagotchi's life, the woman lost her own.
1997 Darwin Awards Runner Up
"I'm A Man. I Can Handle It."
Wayne Roth, 38, of Pittston, PA, was bitten by a cobra belonging to his friend, Roger Croteau, after playfully reaching into the tank and picking up the snake. Wayne subsequently refused to go to a hospital, telling Roger, "I'm a man, I can handle it." Falser words have seldom been spoken. Instead of a hospital, Wayne reported to a bar. He had three drinks, and enjoyed bragging that he had just been bitten by a cobra. Cobra venom is a slow-acting central nervous system toxin. He died within a few hours, in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania.November 1997
1997 Darwin Awards Runner Up
Privacy on the Beach
He just wanted some privacy. Daniel Jones suffocated when a sandy 8-foot hole caved in as he relaxed inside it on a beach chair. Observers on the Outer Banks beach in Buxton, NC said he might have dug the hole for privacy and for protection from the wind. Beach-goers used their hands and plastic toy shovels in an unsuccessfulattempt to claw their way to Jones. "You wouldn't believe the outpouring of concern, people digging with their hands, using pails from kids," Dare County Sheriff Bert Austin said. Rescue workers with heavy equipment took nearly an hour to free him from 5 feet of sand, while 200 people looked on. The 21-year-old resident of Woodbridge, VA was pronounced dead on December 4, 1997.
1997 Darwin Award Runner-Up
Bungee Jumper
Eric A. Barcia, a 22-year-old Reston Virginia resident, was found
dead yesterday after he used bungee cords to jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle, police said. The fast food worker taped a number of bungee cords together and strapped one end around his foot. Barcia had the foresight to anchor the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, and he even remembered to measure the length of the bungee cords to make sure that they were a few feet short of the 70 foot drop. He proceeded to fall headfirst from the trestle, and hit the pavement 70 feet below several seconds later.
Fairfax County police said "The stretched length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground." Perhaps the deceased fast food worker should have stuck to the line, "Do you want fries with that?"Adapted from the Washington Post – 13 July 97
1997 Darwin Awards Runner Up
New Dating Technique
A security guard intending to impress female friends took a deadly gamble, losing his game of Russian roulette at a La Paz fast-food restaurant. Police say Victor Alba, 21, died instantly Saturday when he put his .38-caliber revolver to his head and pulled the trigger at a suburban hamburger outlet. Alba was trying to "impress some female friends," according to the newspaper Hoy de La Paz.LA PAZ, 30 December 97 (AFP)
1996 Darwin Award Winner
Macho Men?
Some men will got to extraordinary lengths to prove how macho they are. Witness Frenchman Pierre Pumpille, of Lyon, who recently shunted a stationary car two feet by headbutting it. "Women thought I was a god," he explained from his hospital bed. Deity or not, however, Pumpille is a veritable girl's blouse compared to Polish farmer Krystof Azninski, who staked a strong claim to being Europe's most macho man by cutting off his own head. Azninski, 30, had been drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and play some "men's games".
Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen icicles, but then one man seized a chainsaw and cut off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and crying "Watch this then!" swung at his own head and chopped it off. "It's funny," said one companion, "Cos when he was young he put on his sister's underwear. But he died like a man." Reuters – London
1996 Darwin Award Winner Runner-Up
The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering 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 airplane 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 Paul Queroli had somehow gotten 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, 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 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, soon to be pilot, most likely would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, basically causing him to become insignificant for the remainder of the event.
However, the automobile remained on the straight hi ghway for about 2.5 miles (15-20) seconds before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires 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 driver's 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.
1995 Darwin Award Winner
Count your Chickens
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.AP, Cairo, Egypt, 31 Aug 1995] CAIRO, Egypt
1995 Darwin Awards Runner Up
Repairs on the Road
James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Michigan, 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 thathe 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."Kalamazoo Gazette, April 1, 1995
1994 Darwin Awards Winner
Junk Food Junkie
This year's Darwin Award went to the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine, which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.
1993 Darwin Award Winner
A Last Supper
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. It was just the right combination of foods. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing 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.Unknown, 25 March 1993
1993 Darwin Award Winner Runner-Up
Deadly Reading Habits
A 24-year-old salesman from Hialeah, Fla., was killed near Lantana,Fla., in March when his car smashed into a pole in the median strip of Interstate 95in the middle of the afternoon. Police said that the man was traveling at 80 MPH and, judging by the sales manual that was found open and clutched to his chest, had been busy reading.Universal Press Syndicate
1992 Darwin Award Winner
Midnight Phone Call
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.Hickory Daily Record – 21 December 1992