The "Darwin" Awards - good chuckle...

Subject: THE LONG-AWAITED 2002 DARWIN AWARDS!



They are finally out. The Darwin Awards: the annual honour given
to the person who did the gene pool the biggest service
by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.

Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine
which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free
soda out of it. And this years nominees are:

Semi-finalist #1
A young Canadian man, searching for a way of
getting drunk cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy
alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction
made him ill, and he vomited into the fireplace in his house. This
resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him
and his sister.

Semi-finalist #2
Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft
at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears that they
decided to moon the occupants of the other plane, but lost control
of their own aircraft and crashed. They were all found dead in the
wreckage with their pants around their ankles.

Semi-finalist #3
A 22-year-old Reston, VA, man was found dead after
he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad
trestle. Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast-food worker,
taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one
foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park,
jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman,
said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found
nearby. "The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater
than the distance between the trestle and the ground," Carmichael
said Police say the apparent cause of death was "major trauma."

Semi-finalist #4
A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It
seems that he and a friend were playing a game of catch, using the
rattlesnake as a ball. The friend-no doubt a future Darwin Awards
candidate - was hospitalized.

Semi-finalist #5
Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas
noticed the smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the
building extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights,
power, etc. After the building had been evacuated, two technicians
from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building,
they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their
frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described
the sight of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and
retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon
operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse
exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was
found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by
the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the blast had
never been thought of as 'bright' by his peers.

AND THE WINNER IS.....

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 car was unidentifiable at the scene. The
lab finally figured out 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 could be determined, are that the operator
of the 1967 Impala hit the 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 0-25 seconds. The driver,
and soon to be pilot, most likely would have experienced G-forces
usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full
afterburners, 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 the brakes and
completely melted them - blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber
marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional
1.4 miles and impacting the face of the cliff 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.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron nearly reached
Mach 1, attaining a ground speed of approximately 420 mph.