Darwin strikes again

[CAL]

Darwin Awards
>
> As always, competition this year has been keen. The
> candidates this year are....
>
> ****************************************
>
> 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.
>
> ****************************************
>
> 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.
>
> ****************************************
>
> 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.
>
> **********************************************
>
> 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.
>
> **************************************************
>
> 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.
>
> *******************************************
> The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in
> Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last),
> due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and
his
> terminally stupid choices:
>
> 1. His target was H&J Leather & Firearms, A gun shop
> specializing in handguns.
>
> 2. The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
>
> 3 To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked
> police patrol car parked at the front door.
>
> 4. A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having
> coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be
> robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from
> a target
pistol.
>
> The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police
> officer with a9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a .50 DESERT
> EAGLE, assisted by severa customers who also drew their guns
> , several of whom also fired. The
> robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics.
>
> Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge
> cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23
> gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7
> different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of
>
fire.
>
> ************************************************
>
> HONORABLE MENTION:
>
> 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 at 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.
>
> ***********************************************
>
> RUNNER UP: 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 Nar rows
> 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 salt 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:
>
> Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn,
> Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of
> animal laxative and more that 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..."Shit
> happens

[hobbit]

The gun shop robbery gets my vote.

Have any of you guys ever heard of the infamous Sunbelt Arms gun store robbery in Atlanta in 1982? A Vietnam vet of the 101st Abn. Div. owned the store. Four black guys connected to the Black Panthers tried to burglarize the store one night, not knowing the owner was on the premises behind a steel door with a rifle slot. All four were shot dead for their efforts.

[CloakAndDagger]

Annoyingly, this set is a 2002 Darwin Awards email imposter...I got suspicious with the Tacoma Narrows bridge story (I don't recall hearing about anybody jumping off that bridge in a long time...although some suicidal guy threatened to jump from the new bridge construction a couple months back, but was subdued by the work crew), and then the elephant story: I read that one as a debunked story in the 2003(?) Darwin Award book.

For reference...a site with similar goals to Snopes:
http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/darwin.html

Too bad about the stories...the Darwin Awards have plenty of good ones as is.

Edit: fixed some grammar so I actually make sense

[hobbit]

Annoyingly, this set is a 2002 Darwin Awards email imposter...I got suspicious with the Tacoma Narrows bridge story (I don't recall hearing about anybody jumping off that bridge in a long time...although some suicidal guy threatened to jump from the new bridge construction a couple months back, but was subdued by the work crew), and then the elephant story: I read that one as a debunked story in the 2003(?) Darwin Award book.

For reference...a site with similar goals to Snopes:
http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/darwin.html

Too bad about the stories...the Darwin Awards have plenty of good ones as is.

Edit: fixed some grammar so I actually make sense

The media hardly ever publicizes suicides though.

[Invictus]

I knew the list was bogus when there were absolutely ZERO women included on the list...

[Invictus]

Found this one on the Darwin site, thought it was pretty good.

(13 January 2005, Croatia) One fateful afternoon, 55-year-old Marko retreated to his semi-detached workshop to make himself a tool for chimney cleaning. The chimney was too high for a simple broom to work, but if he could attach a brush to a chain and then weigh it down with something, that would do the trick. But what could he use as a weight?
He happened to have the perfect object. It was heavy, yet compact. And best of all, it was made of metal, so he could weld it to the chain. He must have somehow overlooked the fact that it was also a hand grenade and was filled with explosive material.

Marko turned on his welding apparatus and began to create an arc between the chain and the grenade. As the metal heated up, the grenade exploded. The force of the explosion killed poor Marko instantly, blasting shrapnel through the walls of the shed and shattering the windshield of a Mercedes parked outside. Marko's chimney was untouched, however.

[hobbit]

Yes, and what's even sadder is that Marko had just that morning been fired from his job as an ordnance supply depot loader.

[Ranger Ron]

He is not on the forklift, he must have gone home to change his pants!

[EvilCouch]

Yeah, I agree that it's clearly a fake.

Darwin awards aren't ranked with a big winner or anything.

If someone takes themselves out of the gene pool by doing something stupid, they get one. Doesn't matter if they kill themselves or trash their reproductive organs, just as long as they're out of the gene pool and the story is verifyable.

If they only fuck themselves up, they get an honorable mention.

There are no runner ups.