Darwinisms:

The Darwin award is given to those people who have helped improve the human gene-pool by removing themselves from it in some amusing and deadly manner. The following are a selection of recent winners and runners-up, some are definitely true, some are probably true ... all are eminently believable!

San Jose, CA. March 26, 1999: 1923hrs. Police, Fire and ambulance respond on a call for unknown medical emergency -turns out to be a DOA. Further investigation reveals it to be a suicide. Quite successful. Further investigation reveals thissequence of events:

27 yr old male gets a circular saw blade, cuts holes in the side to fit the lug nuts on his car. He mounts the saw blade to oneof the front wheels in place of the tire.
Jacks the car up with a hydraulic jack.
Starts the motor and puts something on the accelerator to spin the front wheels.
Lays down below the spinning saw blade, which is above his neck.
Reaches out and unlocks the hydraulic jack.
And you can guess the rest.

A local man had just bought a new Ford Explorer and, in one of those male-bonding rituals, decided to do a winter duck hunting expedition with his buddies. So they loaded the dog, the guns, the decoys, the beer, etc. into the vehicle and headed out to a nearby lake. It is common practice in Michigan to drive your vehicle out onto the frozen lake. Further, it is common (if slightly illegal) to make a hole in the ice for your decoys by using dynamite. The young man had a stick of dynamite, but it had a short fuse - 20 seconds. Since it is not a good idea to light the fuse, then drop the dynamite and run (after all, you could slip and fall on the ice), he decided to throw it instead. Sounds like the thing to do. Trouble is, after he tosses the stick of dynamite, the dog chases after it, picks it up and starts to bring it back, just like hes been taught. The men screamed at the dog to drop the (lit) dynamite, to no avail. Finally in desperation, one of the men grabs his shotgun and fires at the dog. Since the gun was loaded with bird shot, the dog was not so much hurt as confused, so he ran and crawled under the vehicle with the dynamite in his mouth. Needless to say, the new Explorer is at the bottom of the lake; the insurance company refuses to pay because it was an illegal use of explosives; and the first payment is due at the end of the month and there are 47 more to follow.

An Iraqi terrorist , Khay Rahnajet, didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender"stamped on it.
Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was killed in the resulting explosion.

Police in George, WA issued a report on the events leading up to the deaths of Robert Uhlenake (24) and his friend, Ormond D. Young (27) at the Metallica concert last Friday. Uhlenake and Young were found dead at the Gorge Amphitheater after the show. Uhlenake was in pickup that was on top of Young at the bottom of a 20 ft drop. Young was found with severe lacerations, numerous fractures, contusions, and a branch in his anal cavity.
He also had been stabbed and his pants were in a tree above him, some 15 ft off the ground; adding to the mystery of the heretofore unexplained scene. According to Commissioner-In-Charge Inoye Appleton, Uhlenake and Young had tried to get tickets for the sold-out concert. When they were unable to get any tickets, the two decided to stay in the lot and drink. Once the show began, and after the two had consumed 18 beers between the two of them, they hit upon the idea of scaling the 7 foot wooden security fence around the perimeter of the site and sneak in. They apparently moved the truck up to the edge of the fence and decided that Young would go over first and assist Uhlenake later. They had not counted on the fact that while it was a 7 foot fence on the parking lot side, there was a 23 foot drop on the other side. Young, who weighed 255 lbs and was quite inebriated, had jumped up and over the fence and promptly fell about half the 23 foot distance before a large tree branch broke his fall AND his left forearm; unfortunately, he also managed to get his shorts caught on the branch. Since he was now in a
lot of pain and with no way to extricate himself and his shorts from the tree, he decided, seeing bushes down below, to cut his shorts off and fall to the ground. Upon cutting the last bit of fabric from himself, he suddenly plummeted to earth, losing grip of the knife. The "soft" bushes were actually holly bushes and landing in them caused a massive number of cuts. He also had the misfortune of landing squarely on a holly bush branch; effectively impaling himself. The knife, which he had accidentally released 15 ft up, now landed and stabbed him in his left thigh. Apparently, he was in a lot of pain. Enter his friend Robert. Uhlenake had apparently observed the last bit of this and, despite his inebriated state, realized that Young was in trouble. He hit upon the idea of lowering a rope to his friend and pull him up and over the fence. This was complicated by the fact that Uhlenake was outweighed by his friend by a good 100 lbs. Again, despite his state he realized he could use their truck to pull Young out. Unfortunately, because of his state, Uhlenake put the truck in reverse, rather than drive, broke through the fence, landed on Young (killing him), was thrown out of the truck and subsequently died of internal injuries.

"So that's how a dead 255 lb man with no pants on, with a truck on top of him and a stick up his ass came to be" said Commissioner Appleton.

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 highway 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.

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.

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 nothing 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 swedes, 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."

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