- They have finally been released...the
1998 DARWIN AWARDS! For those not familiar with the Darwin Award, it's
an annual honor given to the person who provided the universal human gene
pool the biggest service by getting killed in the most extraordinarily
stupid way. As always, competition this year has been keen again. Some
candidates appear to have trained their whole lives for this event. Entries
this year have not had the elan of some previous ones, but are a worthy
catalogue of stupidity, incompetence and bad luck.
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- DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES
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- 1. In September 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.
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- 2. In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco
stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran," according to his
wife, accidentally jogged off a 100-foot-high cliff on his daily run.
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- 3. 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.
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- 4. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24,
was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell face-first through the ceiling of
a bicycle shop he was robbing. 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.
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- 5. 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.
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- 6. 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.
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- 7. In February, according to police in
Windsor, Ontario, 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.
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- 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.
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- DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTIONS
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 3. Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized
in Andover Township, NJ, 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 AM, 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.
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- 4. Taking "Amateur Night" Too
Far In Betulia, Colombia, an annual festival in November includes five
days of amateur bull fighting. 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."
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- AND THE 1998 WINNER IS...
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- PADERBORN, GERMANY - Overzealous zoo
keeper Friedrich Riesfeldt fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses
of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before
the plugged-up pachyderm finally let fly-and suffocated the keeper under
200 pounds of excrement. Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was
attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema when the relieved
beast unloaded on him like a dump truck full of mud. "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 happen."
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