Its that time again… They are finally out again. You all know about the
Darwin Awards – Its an annual honour given to the person who did the gene pool
the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid
way. Last years 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:

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.

A 34-year-old white male found dead in the basement of his home
died of suffocation, according to police. He was approximately 62 tall and
weighed 225 pounds. He was wearing a pleated skirt, white bra, black and white
saddle shoes, and a womans wig. It appeared that he was trying to create a
schoolgirls 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 one end of a hollow wooden tube approx. 12 long
and 3 in diameter which 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.

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.

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.

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 been
remarkable except it appears the drivers 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 Tamagotchis life,
the woman lost her own.

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.

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.

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 (563 km/h) 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 (38 m) leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.
Most of the drivers 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 (676 km/h)!