OT: The 2004 Darwin Award Nominees

Hard to believe, but another year has passed. Once again, it's time for the Darwin Award Nominees. The Darwin's are awarded every year to the persons who died in the most stupid manner, thereby removing themselves from the gene pool. This year's nine 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, (a mechanic) of Alamo, MI, was killed in March as he was trying to repair what police describe 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 driveshaft."

Nominee No. 3: [Hickory Daily Record]:

Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, NC. 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. (For whatever reason, residents of Southern states always seem to figure prominently among the Darwin nominees.)

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 4 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 has conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports. Peter Lawson, managing partner of the firm Holden Day, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was "one of the best and brightest" members of the

200-man association. (Nice to see another Canadian province getting into the awards.... The Maritimes always have been heavily involved.)

Nominee No. 5: [Bloomberg News Service]:

A terrible diet and a room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by his own gas emissions. There was no mark on his body, and an 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 nearly-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. While sitting on a metal toilet in his cell attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted. (South Carolina entrants are always perennial favorites.)

Nominee No. 7: [The Indianapolis Star]:

A cigarette lighter may have triggered a fatal explosion in Dunkirk, IN. 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 at about 11:30 PM. Investigators said Pryor >was cleaning a 54-caliber muzzle-loader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.

Nominee No. 8: [Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario]:

A man cleaning a bird feeder on the balcony of his condominium apartment in this Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death. Stefan Macko, 55,was standing on a wheeled chair when the accident occurred, said Inspector D'Arcy Honer of the Peel Regional Police. "It appears that the chair moved, and he went over the balcony," Honer said. Another Ontario entry.... I wonder if people are moving there from the Maritime Provinces.)

Finally, THE WINNER!!!: [Arkansas Democrat Gazette]:

Two local men were injured when their pickup truck left the road and struck a tree near Cotton Patch on State Highway 38 early Monday. 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, were returning to Des Arc after a frog gigging trip on an overcast Sunday night when Poole's pickup 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 eastbound toward the White River Bridge. After traveling approximately 20 miles, and just before crossing the river, the bullet apparently overheated, discharged, and struck Poole in the testicles. The vehicle swerved sharply right, exiting the pavement, and striking a tree. Poole suffered only minor cuts and abrasions from the accident, but will require extensive surgery to repair the damage to his testicles, which will never operate as intended. Wallis sustained a broken clavicle and was treated and released. "Thank God we weren't on that bridge when Thurston shot his balls off, or we might both be dead," stated Wallis. "I've been a trooper for 10 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???

(Though Poole and Wallis did not die as a result of their misadventure as normally required by Darwin Award Official Rules, it can be argued that Poole DID, in fact, effectively remove himself from the gene pool. -- Remember: Every silver lining has a cloud. ----

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Comprehensive Website Development

Reply to
Larry Jaques
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On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 15:03:22 -0800, Larry Jaques vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Ooooh! Some embarrassment for those guy's relatives.

Of all the possible stupidest ways to die, nearly half of these had one cause. Well, two, but they all had stupidity.

I have a gun. But advocates of complete freedom of gun ownership should look at the _ease_ with which a gun can get ya. I think that's the main trouble. Whether it's deliberate or accidental.

When I first had the gun, I pulled the trigger semi-accidentally (thought the safety was on) and dead-fired it at the ceiling. It was a stupid thing to do, but very easy.

What was NOT stupid was that:

- I had made damn sure the thing was unloaded before I started inspecting it and playing "around". It's easy to check. Just c*ck it and pull the trigger.

- I was very careful to keep it pointed away from anybody else at all times.

But I did make the mistake.

gun

gun

gun

guns etc.

Reply to
Old Nick

|Hard to believe, but another year has passed. Once again, it's time |for the Darwin Award Nominees. The Darwin's are awarded every year to |the persons who died in the most stupid manner, thereby removing |themselves from the gene pool. This year's nine nominees are: [snip]

[sigh] Will this never die?

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Reply to
Wes Stewart

it does extend some hope that the chlorine in the gene pool is doing some good. sigh, jo4hn

Reply to
jo4hn

And

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(lawyer story, apparently true but from 1993)
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(1996 Darwin Awards, false)

Whole document posted January 5, 2003:

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out
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for the "real" Darwin Awards...

Clint

Reply to
Clint

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 15:43:40 -0700, Clint wrote (in article ):

It's only a true Darwin when the winners have not reproduced. If it is still in the gene pool they don't win...

-Bruce

Reply to
Bruce

Clint responds:

Where you can find: "2004 Reader Submission Pending Acceptance As a devoted follower of the Darwin Awards and a biologist myself, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to share with everyone this little gem that demonstrates multiple levels of stupidity. After drinking 15 pints of good British beer(which is quite a bit stronger than the watered-down brew familiar to us Americans), 28 year old David walker became mad at a friend at a local pub. (Error in judgement #1)

Not wanting to lose face, our young hero decided to stagger home to retrieve his illegal sawed-off shotgun and thus end the argument. (Error in judgement #2)

To compound his first two mistakes, he then proceeded to load his gun, disengage the safety and stuff the gun into his pants to carry it back to the pub. (Errors in judgement numbers 3, 4 and 5.)

His final and biggest error in judgment was in thinking that testicles are bulletproof, because somewhere along they way back to the pub, the shotgun discharged and did extensive damage to his reproductive organs.

What the pellets failed to remove, doctors completed in a surgery referred to as an orchiectomy, a term which sounds quite a bit more gentile than having your testicles blown off by a shotgun."

Gentile? Is this something new, instead of the Jewish practice of circumcision?

Charlie Self "One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise above that which is expected." George W. Bush

Reply to
Charlie Self

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