For the uninitiated, the Darwin Awards are given are given each year
 to the person who does the genepool a big favor by getting himself
 killed in a creative way. These are the latest nominees:

 * BUXTON, N.C. 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. Beachgoers 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. "You just wouldn't believe the outpouring of concern, people
 digging with their hands, using pails from kids," Dare County Sheriff
 Bert Austin said.

 * In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, Calif.,
 he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was
 burglarizing. Death was caused when the large flashlight he had
 placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) crammed against the base
 of his skull as he hit the floor.

 * According to police in Dahlonega, Ga., ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20,
 was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23,
 who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flak
 vest Berrena was wearing.

 * Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February 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.

 * In February, according to police in Windsor, Ont., Daniel Kolta,
 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a
 tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.

 * In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally
 zoned when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged off a
 200-foot-high cliff on his daily run.

 * In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in
 two feet of water after squeezing headfirst through an 18-inch-wide
 sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.

 * In September, a 7-year- old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near
 Ozark, Ark., after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked
 the spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990.

 DARWIN AWARD WANNA-BE'S

 * In Guthrie, Okla., in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede
 with a shot from his .22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off
 a rock near the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in the head,
 fracturing his skull.

 * In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out
 cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a
 propane torch and caused a fire that burned the first and second
 floors of his house.

 * Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, N. J., in
 September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick
 of dynamite that blew up in their car. While driving around at 2 a.m.,
 the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window
 to see what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that
 the  window was closed.