Subject: 1998 Darwin Award Nominees!
From: Michael Nelson <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 14:48:37 -0800 (PST)

THE DARWIN AWARDS are given every year to bestow upon (the remains of) 
those individuals, who through single-minded self-sacrifice, have done the 
most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool.

1997
 DARWIN NOMINEES:

 (# 1) Los Angeles, CA. Ani Saduki, 33, and his brother decided to remove a 
bees nest from a shed on their property with the aid of a pineapple. A 
pineapple is an illegal firecracker which is the explosive equivalent of 
one-half stick of dynamite. They ignited the fuse and retreated to watch 
from inside their home, behind a window some 10 feet away from the 
hive/shed. The concussion of the explosion shattered the window inwards, 
seriously lacerating Ani. Deciding Mr. Saduki need stitches, the brothers 
headed out to go to a nearby hospital. While walking towards their car, Ani 
was stung three times by the surviving bees. Unbeknownst to either brother, 
Ani was allergic to bee venom, and died of suffocation enroute to the 
hospital.

 (# 3) Derrick L. Richards, 28, was charged in April in Minneapolis with 
third-degree murder in the death of his beloved cousin, Kenneth E. 
Richards. According to police, Derrick suggested a game of Russian roulette 
and put a semiautomatic pistol (instead of the more traditional revolver) 
to Ken's head and fired.

 (# 4) Phillipsburg, NJ. An unidentified 29 year old male choked to death 
on a sequined pastie he had orally removed from an exotic dancer at a local 
establishment. "I didn't think he was going to eat it," the dancer 
identified only as "Ginger" said, adding "He was really drunk."

 (# 5) In February, according to police in Windsor, Ont., 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.

 (# 6) MOSCOW, Russia-A drunk security man asked a colleague at the Moscow 
bank they were guarding to stab his bulletproof vest to see if it would 
protect him against a knife attack. It didn't, and the 25-year- old guard 
died of a heart wound. (It's good to see the Russians getting into the 
spirit of the Darwin Awards.)

 (# 7) In France, Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided 
to commit suicide. He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose 
around his neck. He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock. He 
drank some poison and set fire to his clothes. He even tried to shoot 
himself at the last moment. He jumped and fired the pistol. The bullet 
missed him completely and cut through the rope above him. Free of the 
threat of hanging, he plunged into the sea. The sudden dunking extinguished 
the flames and made him vomit the poison. He was dragged out of the water 
by a kind fisherman and was taken to a hospital, where he died of hypoth  
ermia.

 (# 8) RENTON, Washington, USA. On February 3, 1990, a Renton, Washington 
man tried to commit a robbery. This was probably his first attempt, as 
suggested by the fact that he had no previous record of violent crime, and 
by his terminally stupid choices as listed below: 1. The target was H&J 
Leather & Firearms, a gun shop. 2. The shop was full of customers, in a 
state where a substantial portion of the adult population is licensed to 
carry concealed handguns in public places. 3. To enter the shop, he had to 
step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door. 4. An 
officer in uniform was standing next to the counter, having coffee before 
reporting to duty. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a 
holdup and fired a few wild shots. The officer and a clerk promptly 
returned fire, removing him from the gene pool. Several other customers 
also drew their guns, but didn't fire. No one else was hurt.

 1997 DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTIONS (I.E. Non-fatalities):

 Gulf Breeze, Florida, three unidentified teenage males were using a home 
video camera to film an action/adventure "movie" one of the boys had 
written. In a scene that called for each character to be ignited by fire, 
the "special effects coordinator," age 15, prepared the "stunt" youth by 
dousing lighter fluid onto his clothes. The intentional fire, which proved 
unexpectedly difficult to extinguish, left the young man with third degree 
burns on his left arm, torso, and both legs. It was all captured on film.

 In Bradford, PA, J. Cruwe, 28, caught a small snake in a container which 
he handed to his wife. She opened the container and, startled to see the 
snake, dropped it. The excited and, as it turns out, poisonous, snake 
immediately bit Mr. Cruwe on the shin. Mr Cruwe survived the bite and 
recovered after a short visit to the local emergency room.

 In rural Carbon County, PA, a group of men were drinking beer and 
discharging firearms from the rear deck of a home owned by Irving Michaels, 
age 27. The men were firing at a raccoon that was wandering by, but the 
beer apparently impaired their aim and, despite of the estimated 35 shots 
the group fired, the animal escaped into a 3 foot diameter drainage pipe 
some 100 feet away from Mr.Michaels' deck. Determined to terminate the 
animal, Mr. Michaels retrieved a can of gasoline and poured some down the 
pipe, intending to smoke the animal out. After several unsuccessful 
attempts to ignite the fuel, Michaels emptied the entire 5 gallon fuel can 
down the pipe and tried to ignite it again, to no avail. Not one to admit 
defeat by wildlife, the determined Mr. Michaels proceeded to slide 
feet-first approximately 15 feet down the sloping pipe to toss the match. 
The subsequent rapidly expanding fireball propelled Mr. Michaels back the 
way he had come, though at a much higher rate of speed. He exited the 
angled pipe "like a Polaris missile leaves a submarine," according to 
witness Joseph McFadden, 31. Mr. Michaels was launched directly over his 
own home, right over the heads of his astonished friends, onto his front 
lawn. In all, he traveled over 200 feet through the air. "There was a 
Doppler Effect to his scream as he flew over us," McFadden reported, 
"followed by a loud thud." Amazingly, he suffered only minor injuries. "It 
was actually pretty cool," Michaels said, "Like when they shoot someone out 
of a cannon at the circus. I'd do it again if I was sure I wouldn't get 
hurt."

 TACOMA, WA - Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends when one 
of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from the middle of 
the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The conversation grew more heated and at least 
10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 a.m. Upon arrival at 
the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought bungee 
rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out that 
a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby. One end of the cable was secured 
around Bingham's leg and the other end was tied to the bridge. His fall 
lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and pulled his foot off at the 
ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the frigid waters of the 
Tacoma Narrows and Puget Sound and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. 
"All I can say," said Bingham, "Is that God was watching out for me on that 
night. There's just no other explanation for it." Bingham's severed foot 
was never located.

 Earlier this year, the dazed crew of a Japanese trawler were plucked out 
of the Sea of Japan clinging to the wreckage of their sunken ship. Their 
rescue, however, was followed by immediate imprisonment once authorities 
questioned the sailors on their ship's loss. To a man they claimed that a 
cow, falling out of a clear blue sky, had struck the trawler amidships, 
shattering its hull and sinking the vessel within minutes. They remained in 
prison for several weeks, until the Russian Air Force reluctantly informed 
Japanese authorities that the crew of one of its cargo planes had 
apparently stolen a cow wandering at the edge of a Siberian airfield, 
forced the cow into the plane's hold and hastily taken off for home. 
Unprepared for live cargo, the Russian crew was ill-equipped to manage a 
now rampaging cow within its hold. To save the aircraft and themselves, 
they shoved the animal out of the cargo hold as they crossed the Sea of 
Japan at an altitude of 30,000 feet.