Darwin Awards

[madmattg]

Robert, 37, shot himself while explaining gun safety to his wife in Glendale, California, when he placed a .45-caliber pistol he thought was unloaded under his chin and pulled the trigger. Shovestall's wife told police that the incident occurred after her complaints about her husband's 70 guns prompted him to demonstrate their safety.
A 23-year-old bar-brawler who had been escorted out of the Turtle Club in Florida by a bouncer, sneaked back in and leaped off a staircase, aiming a kick at another man, but was killed when he landed on his head.

Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet, didn't put enough postage on a letter bomb, and it came back marked "return to sender." He opened the package and was blown away.

Two animal rights activists were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn by freeing a captive herd. Suddenly all two thousand of pigs stampeded through the gate they were opening, and trampled the hapless protesters to death.

News of the Weird reports that in September 1996 a man was crushed to death on a stairway at the Sammis Real Estate and Insurance office in Huntington, N.Y., while he was stealing the office's 600-pound safe. He apparently violated that cardinal rule of hauling massive objects: Never stand on a step lower than the one the safe is on. The safe was empty at the time of the incident.

In San Jose, California, Herman, an avid hunter, used the butt of his shotgun to bash his girlfriend's windshield during an argument. But his loaded gun accidentally discharged into his stomach, killing him and ending the argument.

"I cannot help but notice that there is no problem between us that cannot be solved by your departure."

 

[madmattg]

Did he win the argument? It happened in February 1998 in a working-class Boedo neighborhood. During a heated marital dispute, a 25-year-old man picked up his 20-year-old wife and threw her off their eighth-floor apartment balcony.
To his dismay, she became tangled in the power lines below. He immediately leapt from the balcony and fell towards his wife. We can only speculate as to his reasons. Was he angrily trying to finish the job, or was he remorsefully hoping to rescue her? He did not accomplish either goal. He missed the power lines completely, and plunged to his death.

The woman managed to swing over to a nearby balcony and was saved.
(18 May 1999, Panama City) In a similar story, a Dominican woman exacted her dying revenge on her boyfriend, who tossed her off their third-floor balcony, by dragging him down with her. Maria Mendez, 32, was killed instantly in the fall. Her boyfriend, Luis Alberto Camargo, was rushed to a nearby hospital in serious condition.
According to neighbors, the confrontation occurred early Tuesday morning after Camargo, 30, discovered Mendez in a local bar. The two returned to their apartment and exchanged harsh words which culminated in the fateful plunge

 

[madmattg]

Some men will got to extraordinary lengths to prove how macho they are. Frenchman Pierre Pumpille recently shunted a stationary car two feet by headbutting it. "Women thought I was a god," he explained from his hospital bed.
Deity or not, however, Pumpille is a veritable girl's blouse compared to Polish farmer Krystof Azninski, who staked a strong claim to being Europe's most macho man by cutting off his own head in 1995. 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 turnips, but then one man upped the ante by seizing a chainsaw and cutting off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and, shouting "Watch this then," je swung at his own head and chopped it off.

"It's funny," said one companion, "when he was young he put on his sister's underwear. But he died like a man."

 

[madmattg]

The Arizona Highway Patrol were mystified when they came upon a pile of smoldering wreckage embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The metal debris resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it turned out to be the vaporized remains of an automobile. The make of the vehicle was unidentifiable at the scene.

The folks in the lab finally figured out what it was, and pieced together the events that led up to its demise.

It seems that a former Air Force sergeant had somehow got hold of a JATO (Jet Assisted Take-Off) unit. JATO units are solid fuel rockets used to give heavy military transport airplanes an extra push for take-off from short airfields.

Dried desert lakebeds are the location of choice for breaking the world ground vehicle speed record. The sergeant took the JATO unit into the Arizona desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, accelerated to a high speed, and fired off the rocket.

The facts, as best as could be determined, are as follows:

The operator was driving a 1967 Chevy Impala. He ignited the JATO unit approximately 3.9 miles from the crash site. This was established by the location of a prominently scorched and melted strip of asphalt. The vehicle quickly reached a speed of between 250 and 300 mph and continued at that speed, under full power, for an additional 20-25 seconds. The soon-to-be pilot experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners.

The Chevy remained on the straight highway for approximately 2.6 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied the brakes, completely melting them, blowing the tires, and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface. The vehicle then became airborne for an additional 1.3 miles, impacted the cliff face at a height of 125 feet, and left a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.

Most of the driver's remains were not recovered; 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.

Ironically a still-legible bumper sticker was found, reading
"How do you like my driving? Dial 1-800-EAT-****."

 

[madmattg]

Late 1989s, Australia) A rather impressionable student of kung fu listened with rapt attention when his instructor dramatically informed the class, "Now that you have reached this level in your training, you can kill wild animals with your bare hands!"

The martial arts trainee took the statement as gospel, and headed to the Melbourne zoo to test his mettle with the wildest animal of all: the lion. In the dead of night, he slipped into the zoo, leapt into the lion enclosure, and engaged a suitable king of the jungle in combat.

He would probably have lost a one-on-one fight, but he never got to try. His naive fight plan didn't account for the enthusiasm of the lion's pride for a tender intruder; nor did it give sufficient weight to the possibility that his instructor didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

Zoo employees found his remains -- two arms and hands -- the following morning, with shreds of red fur grasped tightly in his fingers.

 

[madmattg]

(1970s, Northern Ireland) Back in the late 70s, intelligence units in Northern Ireland were issued exploding briefcases to carry sensitive documents. These briefcases were lined with oxygen bricks. To arm the case, one simply removed a small pin next to the handle of the case. Thus armed, an opened case would instantly combust, destroying everything within a meter of it.
Because there was a half-second delay before the bricks ignited, the lids were designed to stop on a spring catch, so that no document could be rescued or photographed before it was destroyed.

To open the case safely, therefore, the sequence was:

1. Make sure the arming pin is in place.
2. Open the case.
3. Using a thin object such as a ruler, push back the spring catch.
4. The case will now open.

I won't embarrass the unit or the blonde female Lance Corporal involved by naming names, but in this particular case, the sequence went as follows:

1. Make sure the arming pin is in place.
2. Open the case.
3. Look for a small thin object to push back the catch.
4. Find none immediately available.
5. Notice that the arming pin is a small thin object.
6. Use the arming pin to push back the catch.
6. Kiss one "intelligence" unit goodbye.

 

[madmattg]

Near the top of one of the Windy City's mighty skyscrapers, a twenty-nine-year-old attorney named Reginald was locked in a heated dispute with one of his colleagues. "They were arguing about the Olympics," remarked the firm's controller. Determined to settle the aspect under discussion, the two friends decided to have a race down a long hallway on the thirty-ninth floor of the building.

On the way down the hall, Reginald, who was not wearing his contacts due to a scratched cornea, lost his perspective and crashed through a plate-glass window. He fell thirty-eight* stories before striking the pavement, at which point his velocity was zero. A moment before he terminated his 6-second freefall, however, his velocity was approximately 94 miles per hour in a vertical direction. The abrupt velocity change proved too much for Reginald to withstand, and he promptly died.

This fatality marks the first recorded manifestation of so-called "Olympic Fever," previously believed to be a mythical creation of the National Broadcasting Company.