DOKAN 6/Dokan 06.iso/Webs/128.120.24.39/tidbits/darwin3.txt

Text File | 1998-09-05 | 9KB | 232 lines

DARWIN AWARDS

It is once again time to vote for the Darwin Award
nominees for 1997.  As you may already know, the
Darwin Awards are for those nominees who will not
be contributing to the gene pool due to their timely
deaths.


The 1997 nominees are:

NOMINEE No.1 [San Jose Mercury News]:

An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to
break a former girlfriend's windshield, accidentally
shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing
a hole in his gut.


NOMINEE No.2 [Kalamazoo Gazette]

James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Mich., 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 that
he 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."


NOMINEE No.3 [Hickory Daily Record]

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.


NOMINEE No.4 [UPI, Toronto]

Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows
in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane
with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A
police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the
courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday
evening as he was explaining the strength of the building's
windows to visiting law students.

Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of window
strength according to police reports. Peter Lawyers,
managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the
Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was "one of the best and
brightest" members of the 200-man association.


NOMINEE No.5 [Bloomburg News Service]

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 (and a couple of
other things).  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. According to the article, "He was
a big man with a huge capacity for creating "this deadly
gas."  Three of the rescuers got sick and one was
hospitalized.


NOMINEE No..6 [The News of the Weird.]

Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird
posthumously.  He had spent several years awaiting South
Carolina's electric chair on a murder conviction before
having his sentence reduced to life in prison.

Whilst sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and
attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire
and was electrocuted.


NOMINEE NO.7["The Indianapolis Star"].

A cigarette lighter may have triggered fatal explosion -
Dunkirk, Indiana.  A Jay County man using a cigarette
lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader was killed
Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face,
sheriff's investigators said.  Gregory David Pryor, 19,
died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m.

Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber
muzzleloader that had not been firing properly.  He was
using the lighter to look into the barrel when the
gunpowder ignited.


NOMINEE No.8 [AP, St. Louis]

Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a
St. Louis market.  When the clerk threatened to call
police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it in his mouth,
and walked out without paying for it.

Police found him unconscious in front of the store;
paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat,
where it had choked him to death.


NOMINEE No.9 [Unknown]

To poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above
him on an overhanging rock-and was killed instantly when
it fell on him.


NOMINEE No.10 [Associated Press, Kincaid, W. VA]

Blasting Cap Explodes in Man's Mouth at Party.  A man at
a party popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down,
triggering an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth and
tongue, state police said Wednesday.

Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a
prank during a party late Tuesday night, said
Cpl. M.D.Payne. 'Another man had it in an aquarium,hooked
to a battery, and was trying to explode it," Payne said.
"It wouldn't go off and this guy said, 'I'll show you how
to set it off."


AND FINALLY, NOMINEE No.11!!! [Arkansas Democrat Gazette]

Two local men were seriously injured when their pick-up
truck left the road and struck a tree near Cotton Patch
on State  Highway 38 early Monday morning.Woodruff County
deputy Dovey Snyder reported the accident shortly after
midnight Monday. Thurston Poole, 33, of Des Arc and
Billy Ray Wallis, 38, of Little Rock are listed in serious
condition at Baptist Medical Center. The accident occurred
as the two men were returning to Des Arc after a frog
gigging trip.

On an overcast Sunday night, Poole's pick-up truck
headlights malfunctioned.  The two men concluded that the
headlight fuse on the older model truck had burned out.
As a replacement fuse was not available, Wallis noticed
that the .22 caliber  bullet from his pistol fit perfectly
into the fuse box next to the steering wheel column. Upon
inserting the bullet, the headlights again began to operate
properly and the two men proceeded on east-bound toward the
White River bridge.  After traveling approximately twenty
miles and just before crossing the river, the bullet
apparently overheated, discharged and struck Poole in the
right testicle. The vehicle swerved sharply to the right
exiting the pavement and striking a tree.

Poole suffered only minor cuts and abrasions from the
accident, but will require surgery to repair the other
wound. Wallis sustained a broken clavicle and was treated
and released.  "Thank God we weren't on that bridge when
Thurston shot his _____ off or we might both be dead"
stated Wallis.   "I've been a trooper for ten years in
this part of the world, but this is a first for me. I
can't believe that those two would admit how this accident
happened", said Snyder.  Upon being notified of the wreck,
Lavinia, Poole's wife asked how many frogs the boys had
caught and did anyone get them from the truck.


AND THE WINNER IS...

John Pernicky and friend Sal Hawkins, of Washington,
decided to attend a local Metallica concert at the
Amphitheater at Gorge, Washington.  Having no tickets,
but 18 beers among them they sat in the parking lot and
after finishing the beer, decided that it would be easy
enough to hop over the nine foot high fence and sneak
into the show.  The two friends pulled their pickup truck
over to the fence and the plan was for John, 100 pounds
heavier than Sal, to hop over, and then assist his friend
over the fence.

Unfortunately for John, the fence was a 30 foot drop on
the other side.  Having heaved himself over he found
himself crashing through a tree, falling to the ground.
His fall was abruptly stopped by a large branch which had
been snagged by his shorts.  Dangling from the tree, with
one arm broken, John looked down and saw a group of bushes
below him. Figuring the bushes would break his fall, John
removed his pocket knife and proceed to cut away his shorts
to free himself from the tree.

When finally free, John crashed below into, Holly Bushes.
The sharp leaves scratched his whole body, and now being
without his shorts he was the unwilling victim of a holly
branch penetrating his rectal cavity.  To make matters
worse, his pocket knife proceeded to fall with him and
landed three inches into his left thigh.  Seeing his friend
in considerable pain and agony, Sal decided to throw him a
rope and pull him to safety.  However, weighing about 100
pounds less, he decided the best course of action would be
to tie the rope to the pickup truck.

This is when things went bad.  Sal in his drunken state,
put the truck into the wrong gear, and proceeded to press
on the gas and crash through the fence, landing on and
killing his friend.  Sal was thrown from the truck,
suffered massive internal injuries and died at the scene.

Police arrived to find, a pickup truck with its driver 100
feet from the vehicle and, upon moving the truck, a half
naked man with numerous scratches, a holly stick up his butt,
a knife in his thigh and a pair of shorts dangling from the
trees 25 feet in the air.

------------------------------------------------------------

The Darwin award is presented every year - last year to a
man who thought he would fly around his garden in a garden
chair attached to four weather balloons.  He was eventually
spotted by the pilots of a 747, entering the restricted
airspace of a local airport.