Darwin Awards Also Rans
For those not familiar with the
Darwin Award -- It's an annual honor given to the person who
provided the universal human gene pool the biggest service by
getting killed in the most extraordinarily stupid way.
Here are a couple of "also Rans"
This guy pushed his motorcycle from the patio into his living room, where he began to clean the engine with some rags and a bowl of gasoline, all in the comfort of his own home. When he finished, he sat on the motorcycle and decided to give his bike a quick start and make sure everything was still OK. Unfortunately, the bike started in gear, and crashed through the glass patio door with him still clinging to the handlebars.
His wife had been working in the kitchen. She came running at the fearful sound, and found him crumpled on the patio, badly cut from the shards of broken glass.
She called 911, and the paramedics carried the unfortunate man to the Emergency Room.
Later that afternoon, after many stitches had pulled her husband back together, the wife brought him home and put him to bed. She cleaned up the mess in the living room, and dumped the bowl of gasoline in the toilet.
Shortly thereafter, her husband woke up, lit a cigarette, and went into the bathroom for a much-needed relief break. He sat down and tossed the cigarette into the toilet, which promptly exploded because the wife had not flushed the gasoline away.
The explosion blew the man through the bathroom door.
The wife heard a loud explosion and the terrible sound of her husband's screams. She ran into the hall and found her husband lying on the floor with his trousers blown away and burns on his buttocks.
The wife again ran to the phone and called for an ambulance. The same two paramedics were dispatched to the scene. They loaded the husband on the stretcher and began carrying him to the street. One of them asked the wife how the injury had occurred. When she told them, they began laughing so hard that they dropped the stretcher, and broke the guy's collarbone.
(1998) In rural Carbon County, Pennsylvania, 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.
Despite an estimated 35 shots fired by the group, the animal escaped into a 3' diameter drainage pipe 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 five-gallon fuel can down the pipe and tried to light 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.'
Michigan, USA.
A guy buys a brand new Grand Cherokee for 30 someTHING thousand dollars and
has $400 monthly payments. He immediately gets ahold of his friend and
they go do some male bonding. They go duck hunting, and of course all
the lakes are frozen.
These 2 Atomic Brains go to the lake with the guns, the dog, the beer
and of course the new vehicle. They drive out onto the lake ice and get
ready.
Now, they want to make some kind of a natural landing area for
the ducks, something for the decoys to float on. Remember, it's all ice
and in order to make a hole large enough to look like something a
wandering duck wants to fly down and land on, it is going to take a
little more effort than an ice hole drill.
Out of the back of the new Grand Cherokee comes a stick of dynamite
with a short, 40 second fuse.
Now these two Rocket Scientists DO take into consideration that if they
place the stick of dynamite on the ice at a location far from where
they are standing (and the new Grand Cherokee), they take the risk of
slipping on the ice when they run from the burning fuse and possibly
going up in smoke with the resulting blast. So, they decide to light
this 40 second fuse and throw the dynamite, which is what they end up
doing.
Remember a couple of paragraphs back when I mentioned the vehicle, the
beer, the guns AND THE DOG ????
Yes, the dog. A highly trained Black Lab used for retrieving,
especially things thrown by the owner.
You guessed it, the dog takes off at a high rate of doggy speed on the
ice and gets the stick of dynamite with the burning 40 second fuse
about the time it hits the ice, all to the dismay of the 2 idiots yelling,
stomping, waving arms and wondering what the hell to do now.
The dog, doing his job, heads back from where it came from moments
before, with the stick of dynamite, the 2 bozos are now really going
ballistic - waving their arms, yelling even louder and jumping to new
heights - all of which seems to encourage the dog.
Now one of the guys decides to think, something that has not been done
up to this point in our plot, grabs a shotgun and shoots the dog. The
shotgun is loaded with #8 shot, hardly enough to stop a Black Lab on
its appointed rounds. Dog stops for a moment, slightly confused and
continues on. Another shot, and this time the dog, still standing,
becomes really confused & of course scared, thinking these 2 Nobel
Prize winners have gone insane, Rover takes off to find cover, with the now
really short short fuse burning on this stick of dynamite.
The cover the dog finds? Underneath the brand new vehicle sitting on
the lake ice. Our brave hunters drop their shotguns and run like hell.
BOOM !
The dog dies. It and the brand new Grand Cherokee, sink to the bottom
of the lake, taking with it all their gear, the discarded shotguns, and
the beer, leaving the 2 candidates for Intellectual Co-leaders of the Known
Universe standing there with this "I can't believe this happened" look
on their faces. And a long walk home.
Later, the owner of the vehicle calls his insurance company which tells
him that sinking a vehicle in a lake by illegal use of explosives is
not covered, not even in the clauses which normally cover owner stupidity.
all that is left of this memorable hunting trip is the unused payment
booklet for the Grand Cherokee.