Non of the 1996 Nominees are divers but perhaps some of you may do somthing
to correct this ? ;-)


> 1996 CHARLES R. DARWIN MEMORIAL AWARD (For Fatal Stupidity)
>      
>      
> It is once again time to consider nominees for the Darwin Award.
> The Darwin is awarded posthumously each year to the individual or group
> of individuals that best demonstrate Darwin's theory of natural 
> selection by permanently removing their contribution from the human 
> gene pool.  RIP.
>      
> You may recall last year's Darwin Award winner:  The man who found out 
> moments before making a 300 MPH dent in an Arizona cliff that the JATO 
> (Jet Assist Take Off) unit he'd strapped to his car could not be turned
> off once it was turned on.
>      
> The 1994 winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which 
> toppled on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.
>      
> The 1996 nominees are:
>      
> NOMINEE #1 [San Jose Mercury News]
> An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former 
> girlfriend's windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the 
> gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #2 [Kalamazoo Gazette]
> James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Mich., was killed in March as he was trying 
> to repair what police described as a "farm-type truck."  Burns got a 
> friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so 
> that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise.  Burns' 
> clothes caught on something, however, and the other man found Burns 
> "wrapped in the drive shaft."
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #3 [Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario]
> Man slips, falls 23 stories to his death. A man cleaning a bird feeder 
> on his balcony of his condominium  apartment in this Toronto suburb 
> slipped and fell 23 stories to his death, police said Monday.  Stefan 
> Macko, 55, was standing on a wheeled chair Sunday when the accident 
> occurred, said Inspector D'Arcy Honer of the Peel regional police."It 
> appears the chair moved and he went over the balcony," Honer said."It's
> one of those freak accidents.  No foul play is suspected."
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #4 [Hickory Daily Record]
> Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December 
> in Newton, N.C., when, awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone 
> beside is bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & 
> Wesson ..38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #5 [UPI, Toronto]
> Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown 
> Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged
> 24 floors to his death.  A police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell 
> into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday 
> evening as he was explaining the strength of the building's windows to 
> visiting law students.  Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of 
> window strength according to police reports.  Peter Lauwers, managing 
> partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper 
> that Hoy was "one of the best and brightest" members of the 200-man 
> association.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #6 [AP, Cairo, Egypt]
> Six people drowned Monday while trying to rescue a chicken that had 
> fallen into a well in southern Egypt.  An 18-year-old farmer was the 
> first to descend into the 60-foot well.  He drowned, apparently after 
> an undercurrent in the water pulled him down, police said.  His sister 
> and two brothers, none of whom could swim well, went in one by one to 
> help him, but also drowned.  Two elderly farmers then came to help, but
> they apparently were pulled by the same undercurrent.  The bodies of 
> the six were later pulled out of the well in the village of Nazlat 
> Imara, 240 miles south of Cairo.  The chicken was also pulled out.
> It survived.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #7 [Bloomburg News Service] "The Stevereno Award for Farting
> Excellennce"
> A terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the 
> death of a man who was killed by his own gas.  There was no mark on his
> body but autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system.
> His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage (and a couple of
> other things).  It was just the right combination of foods.  It appears
> that the man died in his sleep from breathing from the poisonous cloud 
> that was hanging over his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows 
> been opened, it wouldn't have been fatal.  But the man was shut up in 
> his near airtight bedroom.  He was ".. a big man with a huge capacity 
> for creating [this deadly gas]."  Three of the rescuers got sick and 
> one was hospitalized.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #8 [San Jose Mercury News]
> A 24-year-old salesman from Hialeah, Fla., was killed near Lantana, 
> Fla., in March when his car smashed into a pole in the median strip of 
> Interstate 95 in the middle of the afternoon.  Police said that the man
> was traveling at 80 MPH and, judging by the sales manual that was found
> open and clutched to his chest, had been busy reading.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #9 [The News of the Weird]- JOINT NOMINEE
> Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously in 1989. He
> had spent several years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on a 
> murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison.
> In March 1989, sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to 
> fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.
>      
> On Jan 1, 1997, Laurence Baker, also a convicted murderer once on 
> death row, but later serving a life sentence at the state prison in 
> Pittsburgh, Pa., was electrocuted by his homemade earphones as he 
> watched his small TV while sitting on his metal toilet.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #10 [The Indianapolis Star]
> Cigarette lighter may have triggered fatal explosion in Dunkirk, 
> Indiana.  A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the 
> barrel of a muzzleloader was killed Monday night when the weapon 
> discharged in his face, sheriff's investigators said.  Gregory David 
> Pryor, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. 
> Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber muzzleloader that 
> had not been firing properly.  He was using the lighter to look into 
> the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #11 [AP, Mammoth Lakes]
> A San Anselmo man died yesterday when he hit a lift tower at the 
> Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a foam pad, 
> authorities said.  Matthew David Hubal, 22, was pronounced dead at 
> Centinela Mammoth Hospital.  The accident occurred about 3 a.m., the 
> Mono County Sheriff's Department said.  Hubal and his friends 
> apparently had hiked up a ski run called Stump Alley and undid some 
> yellow foam protectors from the lift towers, said Lieutenant Mike 
> Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department.
>      
> The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit the towers.  The 
> group apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal 
> crashed into a tower.  It was not clear if the tower he hit was one 
> with its pad removed. "With the cold temperatures, the snow was 
> probably pretty fast," said Donnelly.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #12 [Reuters, Warsaw, Poland]
> A poacher electrocuting fish in a lake in central Poland fell into the 
> water and suffered the same fate as his quarry, police said Thursday. 
> The 24-year-old man was one of four who went fishing with a cable, one 
> end of which they attached to a net and the other to a high-voltage 
> electricity supply line, the PAP news agency quoted a police official 
> in Wloclawek as saying.  "For a while everything went according to the 
> poachers' plan and they had fish in their bags.  But at a certain 
> moment the man holding the net tripped and fell into the water," the 
> agency said.  The other poachers tried in vain to revive him, it said.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE #13 [AP, St. Louis]
> Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St.  Louis 
> market.  When the clerk threatened to call police, Puelo grabbed a hot 
> dog, shoved it in his mouth, and walked out without paying for it. 
> Police found him unconscious in front of the store:  paramedics removed
> the six-inch wiener from his throat, where it had choked him to death.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE 14 [Unknown]
> To poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above him on an
> overhanging rock -- and was killed instantly when it fell on him.
>      
>      
> NOMINEE 15 [Associated Press, Kincaid, W. VA] 
> Blasting Cap Explodes in Man's Mouth at Party.
>      
> A man at a party popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down, 
> triggering an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth and tongue, state
> police said Wednesday.
>      
> Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during 
> a party late Tuesday night, said Cpl. M.D. Payne.  "Another man had it 
> in an aquarium, hooked to a battery, and was trying to explode it," 
> Payne said.  "It wouldn't go off and this guy said, `I'll show you how 
> to set it off.`" "I just can't imagine anyone doing something like 
> that," Payne said.
>      
>      
> AND FINALLY, NOMINEE #16 [Fort Worth Star-Telegram]
> In December near Mineral Wells, Tex., three men who were attempting to 
> steal copper wire off live electrical lines for resale were 
> electrocuted.  Copper wiring is a valuable scrap metal in Texas but is 
> usually stolen from electric cables that are not being used.
> 
Is this some of your friends Jason ? :-)

> -- 

regards
Atle Aamodt


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