BIZARRE EVENTS
DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES------------------------
1. BUXTON, N.C. A man died on a beach when
an 8-foot-deep hole he haddug 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 hadbeen 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.
*****
2. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was
killed in Lompoc, Calif., as 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.
*****
3. 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.
*****
4. 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.
*****
5. 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.
*****
6. 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.
*****
7. 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.
*****
8. 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
(1) 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.
*****
(2) 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.
*****
(3) 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 2a.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.
*****
(4) Taking "Amateur Night" Too Far:
In Betulia, Colombia, annual festival in November includes five days of
amateur bullfighting. This year, no
bull was killed, but dozens of matadors were injured, including one gored
in
the head and one Bobbittized. Said one
participant, "It's just one bull against [a town of] a thousand morons."
*****
And a special Darwin Award candidate--------------------
"In retrospect, I admit it was unwise to try
to gain access to my house via the cat flap," Gunther Burpus
admitted to reporters in Bremen, Germany.
"I suppose that the reason they're called cat flaps, rather than
human flaps, is because they're too small
for people, and perhaps I should have realized that." Burpus, a
forty-one year old gardener from Bremen,
was relating how he had become trapped in his own front door
for two days, after losing his house keys.
"I got my head and shoulders through the flap, but became trapped
fast around the waist. At first, it
all seemed rather amusing. I sang songs and told myself jokes.
But then
I wanted to go to the lavatory. I began
shouting for help, but my head was in the hallway so my screams were
muffled. After a few hours, a group
of students approached me but, instead of helping, they removed my trousers
and pants, painted my buttocks bright blue,
and stuck a daffodil between my cheeks. Then they placed a sign next
to me which said 'Germany resurgent, an essay
in street art. Please give generously' and left me there." "People
were passing by and, when I asked for help,
they just said 'very good! Very clever!' and threw coins into my trousers.
No one tried to free me. In fact, I
only got free after two days because a dog started licking my private parts
and an
old woman complained to the police.
They came and cut me out, but arrested me as soon as I was freed. Luckily
they've now dropped the charges, but I collected
over DM3,000 in my underpants, so the time wasn't entirely wasted."
++++++++++++++++++++
45 year-old Amy Brasher was arrested in San
Antonio, Texas, after a mechanic reported to police that 18 packages of
marijuana were packed in the engine compartment
of the car which she had brought to the mechanic for an oil change.
According to police, Brasher later said that
she didn't realize that the mechanic would have to
raise the hood to change the oil.
*****
Portsmouth, R.I.Police charged Gregory Rosa,
25, with a string of vending machine robberies in January when he:
1. fled from police inexplicably when they
spotted him loitering around a vending machine and
2. later tried to post his $400 bail in coins.
*****
Karen Lee Joachimi, 20, was arrested in Lake
City, Florida, for robbery of a Howard
Johnson's motel. She was armed with only an
electric chainsaw, which was not plugged in.
*****
The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that
a man walked into Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan at 7:50 am,
flashed a gun and demanded cash. The clerk
turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without
a food order. When the man ordered onion rings,
the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated,
walked away.
*****
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." [Kalamazoo
Gazette, 4-1-95]
*****
Same thing up here in MI. Seems some
poor fella thought it would be a good idea to "move" a downed wire from
his car. Newspaper reports it took a FULL
MINUTE of neighbors whacking away at him with a 2x4 to free their
freshly fried former friend from the fatal
flashing. Bowling Green, Ohio, student Robert Ricketts, 19, had his head
bloodied when he was struck by a Conrail train.
He told police he was trying to see how close to the moving train
he could place his head without getting hit.
*****
In Wesley Chapel, Florida, Joseph Aaron, 20,
was hit in the leg with pieces of the bullet he fired at the exhaust
pipe of his car. When repairing the car, he
needed to bore a hole in the pipe. When he couldn't find a drill, he
tried to shoot a hole in it.
*****
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 [apparantly a kind of turnip], 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."
*****
1995 Darwin Winner (JATO) 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 figuredout what it was and what had happened.
*****
It seems that a guy 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 coould 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.
***
Silly Stupid People Stories
Not really Darwin Award nominee's,
but interestingly stupid stories.
Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old
man at an
airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit)
$16 bills.
=====
A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot
his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two
practiced shooting beer cans off each other's
head.
=====
A company trying to continue its five-year
perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the
use
of safety goggles on the job. According to
Industrial Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory industrial accidents
was
so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered
minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others
fainted, and one man required seven stitches
after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.
=====
The Chico, California, City Council enacted
a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating
one within city limits.
===
A bus carrying five passengers was hit by
a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen
pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun
to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.
===
Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle
labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the
250-page manuscript to be copied, only to
have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused
the copier with the shredder.
===
A convict broke out of jail in Washington
D.C., then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for
robbery. At
lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed
to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name
and
arrested him as he returned to the courthouse
in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
===
Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated
a suspect by placinga metal colander on his head and connecting it with
wires
to a photocopy machine. The message "He's
lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each
time
they thought the suspect wasn't telling the
truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.
===
When two service station attendants in Ionia,
Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber,
the man threatened to call the police. They
still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.
===
A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired
of walking," stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase
until an officer stepped aboard and brought
the vehicle to a stop.
***************
At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by
the American Association for Forensic Science,
AAFS President Don Harper Mills astounded
his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death.
"On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed
the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun of the
head.
The decedent had jumped from the top of a
ten-story building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating
his despondency.)
As he fell past the ninth floor, his life
was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly.
Neither the
shooter nor the decedent was aware that a
safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window
washers and
that Opus would not have been able to complete
his suicide anyway because of this." "Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued,
"a person
who sets out to commit suicide ultimately
succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended. That
Opus was shot
on the way to certain death nine stories below
probably would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide.
But the
fact that his suicidal intent would not have
been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had homicide
on his hands.
"The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun
blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing
and he was threatening her with the shotgun.
He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed
his wife and the
pellets went through the a window striking
Opus. "When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt,
one is guilty
of the murder of subject B. When confronted
with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither
knew that the
shotgun was loaded. The old man said it was
his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun.
He had no
intention to murder her - therefore, the killing
of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally
loaded.
"The continuing investigation turned up a
witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately
six weeks prior to
the fatal incident. "It transpired that the
old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the
propensity of his
father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded
the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The
case now
becomes one of murder on the part of the son
for the death of Ronald Opus. "There was an exquisite twist. "Further investigation
revealed that the son [Ronald Opus] had become
increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his
mother's
murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story
building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a ninth
story window.
"The medical examiner closed the case as a
suicide."
((((()))))((((()))))((((()))))
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.
Hickory Daily Record 12/21/92
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.
Unknown, 25 March
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 from 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.
Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario
Man slips, falls 23 stories to his death. A man cleaning a bird
feeder on his balcony of his condominium apartment in this
Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death, police
said Monday. Stefan Macko, 55, was standing on a wheeled chair
Sunday when the accident occurred, said Inspector D'Arcy Honer of
the Peel regional police."It appears the chair moved and
he went over the balcony," Honer said."It's one of those freak accidents.
No foul play is suspected."
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 Lauwers,
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. [ed. note - I think
this guy should win, not only because he removed some
incredibly stupid genes from the pool, but he also eliminated a
lawyer in the process... :-]
(best and brightest? whatever does that say about the rest of them?)
AP, Cairo, Egypt, 31 Aug 1995
Calcutta, India - A tiger killed one man and mauled another at the
Calcutta zoo yesterday when they tried to put a marigold
garland around its neck in a New Year's greeting. Prakesh Tiwari,
the dead man, and Suresh Rai had been drinking before
they bought the floral garlands and crossed the moat around the
tiger's enclosure, authorities said. "I was shocked to see
the two young men weaving about in front of a tiger with garlands
in their hands, " said Rakesh Banerjee, who witnessed the
attack that triggered panic and a near stampede in the zoo. The
men, both in their 20's, were trying to put the garland on a
13-year old male Royal Bengal tiger named "Shiva" after the Hindu
god of destruction. When Rai threw the garland around
Shiva's neck, the tiger attacked him. His friend Tiwari intervened,
kicking the tiger in the face. The tiger released Rai, and
attacked and killed Tiwari. "I saw it all; the tiger turned and
jumped on the other young man and put its head on the man's
neck, and within moments, the man was apparently dead, his head
dangling, " Banerjee said.
[31 August 1995, CAIRO, EGYPT (API)] 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 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 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.
[Times of London]
A thief who sneaked into a hospital was scarred for life when he
tried to get a suntan. After evading security staff at Odstock
Hospital in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and helping himself to doctor's
paging devices, the thief spotted a vertical sunbed. He walked
into the unit and removed his clothes for a 45 minute tan. However,
the high voltage UV machine at the hospital, which is
renowned for its treatment of burn victims, has a maximum dosage
of 10 seconds. After lying on the bed for almost 300 times
the recommended maximum time, the man was covered in blisters. Hours
later, when the pain of the burns became unbearable,
he went to Southampton General Hospital, 20 miles away, in Hampshire.
Staff became suspicious because he was wearing a
doctor's coat. After tending his wounds, they called the police.
Southampton police said, "This man broke into Odstock and
decided he fancied a quick suntan. Doctors say he is going to be
scarred for life.
Pure Genius
=--=
A contest was held for people to submit their theories on ANY subject.
Below are the winners:
4th RUNNER-UP (Subject:
Probability Theory)
If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of
pickup trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds
at an infinite number of highway signs, they will eventually produce
all the world's great literary works in Braille.
3rd RUNNER-UP (Subject:
Bio-Mechanics)
Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalize the pressure on
your eardrums. This pressure change outside
your eardrums unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they then
yawn to even it out.
2nd RUNNER-UP (Subject:
Symbolic Logic)
Communist China is technologically underdeveloped because they have
no alphabet and therefore cannot use
acronyms to communicate technical ideas at a faster rate.
1st RUNNER-UP (Subject:
Newtonian Mechanics)
The earth may spin faster on its axis due to deforestation.
Just as a figure skater's rate of spin increases when the
arms are brought in close to the body, the cutting of tall trees
may cause our planet to spin dangerously fast.
HONORABLE MENTION (Subject:
Linguistics)
The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant.
If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian
"pahks his cah," the lost R's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to "warsh"
his car and invest in"erl" wells.
GRAND PRIZE WINNER (Subject:
Perpetual Motion)
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast
is dropped, it always lands buttered side down. It was
proposed to strap giant slabs of hot buttered toast to the back
of a hundred tethered cats;the two opposing forces will
cause the cats to hover, spinning inches above the ground. Using
the giant buttered toast/cat array, a high-speed monorail
could easily link New York with Chicago.
