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DARWIN AWARDS NEWSLETTER – 23 February 2003

Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool
by removing themselves from it in really stupid ways.
This honor is usually awarded posthumously.

2002 DARWIN AWARDS: THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT APPROACHES!
In a few weeks, the 2002 Darwin Award Winners will be decided.
This newsletter contains synopses of twelve top contenders,
and another dozen will be summarized in the next newsletter.
Enjoy the abbreviated versions below, or visit the website
to read the full text and record your votes.
-Webmaster Wendy

FIR KILLS TREE TRIMMER
England | A tree trimmer decided to save time, and throw
the pruned branches directly into a fire he built near
the base of the tree. Predictably, the tree caught fire,
putting an end to further timesaving innovations.

WHAT'S THAT SOUND?
Kansas | A man whose vehicle broke down on I-35 was struck
and killed by a train while calling for help. The train
engineer spotted him standing on the tracks, holding a
cell phone to one ear and cupping his hand to the other ear
to block the noise of the train.

WOUNDED WIRE BITES BACK
Pennsylvania | Daniel was practicing his marksmanship by
shooting at electrical insulators, whose function is to hold
electrical wires aloft. Eventually the shattered targets were
no longer able to do their job, and a high-voltage wire fell
to the ground, sending Daniel to his shocking demise.

WRONG AND WRONGER
Ukraine | A man was walking his dog, when a Police Academy
cadet pointed out that dogs on a public street must be leashed
and muzzled. The men began to argue, until the dog owner
pulled out a military hand grenade and threw it to the cadet's
feet. His well-trained dog immediately fetched it back,
and man and dog met the same messy fate.

BEES 1, HUMANS 0
Brazil | A farmer decided to burn a beehive out of his
orange tree. He protected his head from bee stings by sealing
a plastic bag tightly around his neck. His worried wife found
him dead a few hours later. He had forgotten to put breathing
holes in the bag.

CABLE CAR STAR
Italy | A 53-year-old Glasgow tourist used a mountain climber's
snap hook to attach himself to an unused cable car cable, and
attempted to slide down a mountain. Unable to defeat the force
of gravity, the man accelerated out of control and proceeded to
bash his way 200 meters down the cable before impacting a pylon.

ELECTRIFIED WORMS
Norway | If you need worms for fishing, just put a 12-volt
electric current through ground, and up they come. A 23-year-old
man withdrew his genes form the pool when he tried to speed up
the process by using 220V household current. Alas, he did so
squatting on a steel bucket, holding an electrode in one hand
while pushing the other in the ground...

GUN OWNER SHOOTS BACK 72%
New Mexico | 18-year-old Carlos tried to rob a man who had
placed a newspaper ad to sell a gun. Surprise! The gun seller
was also a gun owner. He fired it in self-defense,
and the robber died before rescue crews arrived.

SLICK SHIT SLIP
Arizona | Had he been eating too many banana peels?
A 49-year-old Mohave County Jail inmate defecated on his
cell floor, slipped in his own feces, struck his head
on the ground, and died.

FOOLISH COURAGE
Brazil | On New Year’s Eve, some friends were befogged by Pinga,
a traditional Brazilian liquor, when they began competing to see
who could hold a lit firework in his mouth the longest. Antonio
was the winner, biting a firework a bit too long, and thereby
earning praise for his "courage" at his funeral.

BOOBY TRAPS TRAP BOOB
The Netherlands | A retired engineer booby-trapped his home
with twenty deadly devices, with the intention of killing his
estranged family. Anyone with common sense could predict the
inevitable outcome. He inadvertently triggered one of his own
hidden traps, and removed himself from the planet.

WELL-TRAINED
Kentucky | A 20-year-old demonstrating train-hopping to his
friends tried to hop a southbound train, but failed to notice
the simultaneous approach of a northbound train. He was struck
and killed.

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7 NEW DARWIN AWARDS on the website!

BEES 1, HUMANS 0
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-30.html
ELECTRIFIED WORMS
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-32.html
CABLE CAR STAR
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-31.html
TRAIN OF THOUGHT
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1994-14.html
WRONG AND WRONGER
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-34.html
HUMAN CATAPULT
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-33.html
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1994-13.html

4 NEW PERSONAL ACCOUNTS on the website!

ACETYLENE FUN? NOT!
http://www.darwinawards.com/personal/pe ... 02-29.html
RECTUM NEARLY KILLED'M
http://www.darwinawards.com/personal/pe ... 02-28.html
THE BARBEQUED CHEF
http://www.darwinawards.com/personal/pe ... 02-27.html
ELECTRIC ECCENTRIC
http://www.darwinawards.com/personal/pe ... 02-26.html

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* Copyright (c) 2003 www.DarwinAwards.com *
* Please share this newsletter with your friends! *

...Lighter fluid and water do not, in fact, mix...

[....]

And now to share with you an important safety tip I learned during this experience: When you do catch on fire, don't yell, "Oh, darn!" Instead, yell, "Fire!!! HOLY S**T I'm f**king on fire!!!” This sends a clear message to your wife that all is not well.

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:Actually I think this takes the cake:

Bridge over Frozen Water

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi wrote:I still think that Kansas man takes the cake. It's bad enough that he was on train tracks, it's even worse that he hard the train coming and didn't expect anything bad to happen to him.

I'd say the Ukraine guy with the dog was funny too. The owner was stupid because he had the grenade, and the dog was stupid because he took it back to the owner.

Kansas | A man whose vehicle broke down on I-35 was struck
and killed by a train while calling for help. The train
engineer spotted him standing on the tracks, holding a
cell phone to one ear and cupping his hand to the other ear
to block the noise of the train.

fgalkin wrote:

Kansas | A man whose vehicle broke down on I-35 was struck
and killed by a train while calling for help. The train
engineer spotted him standing on the tracks, holding a
cell phone to one ear and cupping his hand to the other ear
to block the noise of the train.

This one takes it.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Frank Hipper wrote:

fgalkin wrote:

Kansas | A man whose vehicle broke down on I-35 was struck
and killed by a train while calling for help. The train
engineer spotted him standing on the tracks, holding a
cell phone to one ear and cupping his hand to the other ear
to block the noise of the train.

This one takes it.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

I've driven I-35 from Oklahoma City to Kansas City several times and cannot recall railroad tracks being close enough to give a reason for a person who's broke down to be standing on them.

(October 1982) In the New Zealand Army, the staff was having a discipline problem with four cadets posted at Waiouru Camp. One day, the group had been confined to barracks as punishment while the rest of the unit participated in a training activity.
The four cadets decided to abscond, and set out on a jaunt into the training area, heedless of the consequences. How bad could another day of rest be? After walking some distance, they found themselves on the range used as the training grounds of the M203 Grenade Launcher. As they sauntered around the range, they came across several unexploded rounds.

From Day One, Army recruits are told to never touch anything even remotely resembling unexploded ordinance. Indeed, there are signs surrounding every range the Army uses, stating the rule again. It is incessantly drummed into every brain in the Army. But not everyone learns...

The ringleader of this group picked up two grenades and held them at arm's length, while his mates egged him on. According to the survivors, he uttered the famous last words, "Hey fellas, look at this!" Those are words to make seasoned men duck and cover. He cracked the two grenades together, causing one or both to explode in his hands. The M203 grenade has a lethal blast area of five meters, and left little for the medics to recover. The other three miscreants were injured by shrapnel, but survived to be disciplined in far more lenient a fashion.

Frank Hipper wrote:I've driven I-35 from Oklahoma City to Kansas City several times and cannot recall railroad tracks being close enough to give a reason for a person who's broke down to be standing on them.