> 2001 DARWIN AWARDS
> ===================
> 
> 
> It's that time again . . . . . They are finally out  again. You all know about  the Darwin
> Awards - It's an annual honor 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 the nominees for 2001 are:
> 
> 
> 9. 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. 
> 
> 
> 
> 8. A 34-year-old white male found dead in the  basement of his home died of suffocation,
> according to police. He was approximately 6'2" tall and weighed 225  pounds. He was wearing a
> pleated skirt, white bra, black and white saddle shoes, and a woman's wig. It appeared that he
> was trying to create a schoolgirl's uniform look. He was also wearing a military gas mask
> that had the filter canister removed and a  rubber hose attached in its place. The other end of
> the hose was connected to a one end of a hollow wooden tube approx. 12" long and 3" in diameter.
> The tube's  other end was inserted into his rectum for reasons unknown, and was the cause of his
> suffocation. Police found the task of explaining the circumstances of his death to his family
> very  awkward.
> 
> 
> 7. 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. 6. A police officer in Ohio responded to a 911 call.  She had no
> details before  arriving, except that someone had reported that his father was not breathing. 
> Upon arrival, the officer found the man face down on the couch naked. When she  rolled him over
> to check for a pulse and to start CPR, she noticed burn marks  around his genitals.  After the
> ambulance arrived and removed the man - who was declared dead on arrival at the hospital - the
> police made a closer inspection  of the couch, and noticed that the man had made a  hole between
> the cushions. Upon flipping  the couch over, they
> discovered what  had caused his death. Apparently, the man had a habit of putting his penis 
> between the cushions, down  into the hole and between two electrical sanders (with the 
> sandpaper removed, for obvious reasons). According to the story, after his orgasm  the discharge
> shorted out one of the sanders, electrocuting him. 5. A 27-year-old French woman lost control of
> her  car on a highway near Marseilles and crashed into a tree, seriously injuring her passenger
> and killing  herself. As a commonplace road accident, this would  not have driver's attention
> had been  distracted by her Tamagotchi key ring, which had started urgently beeping for food as
> she drove  along. In an attempt to press  the correct buttons to save the Tamagotchi's life, 
> the woman lost
> her own.
> 
> 
> 4. 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." 
> 
> 
> 
> 3. A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It  seems that he and a friend  were playing a
> game of catch, using a rattlesnake as a ball. The friend - no  doubt a future Darwin Awards
> candidate - was hospitalized. 
> 
> 
> 
> 2. 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 . . .
> 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 of 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 and 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 20-25  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 insensible 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 and completely melted the brakes, blowing  the tires and leaving thick  rubber
> marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the
> cliff face 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 I,
> attaining a ground speed of approximately 420 mph!
>