[escepticos] (Fwd) 1997 Darwin Awards

["Fernando L. Frias Sanchez" <yamato@...>]

1997 Darwin Awards!!!

For the uninitiated, the Darwin Awards are given are given each year
to the person who does the gene pool a big favor by getting himself
killed in a creative way. These are the latest nominees:

· BUXTON, N.C. A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had
dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beachgoers said Daniel
Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and had
been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon when it
collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand.  People on the beach on
the Outer Banks used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way
to Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, Va., but could not reach him. It
took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him
while about 200 people looked on. Jones was pronounced dead at a
hospital.

· In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, Calif., as
he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was
burglarizing. Death was caused when the large flashlight he had placed
in his mouth (to keep his hands free) crammed against the base of his
skull as he hit the floor.

· According to police in Dahlonega, Ga., ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20
was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23,
who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flak vest
Berrena was wearing.

· Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville,
Del., as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a
revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.

· 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.

· In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally
zoned when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged off a
200-foot-high cliff on his daily run.

· In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in
two feet of water after squeezing headfirst through an 18-inch-wide
sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.

· In September, a 7-year- old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near
Ozark, Ark., after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked
the spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990.

DARWIN AWARD WANNA-BE'S

· In Guthrie, Okla., in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede
with a shot from his  .22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off
a rock near the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in the head,
fracturing his skull.

· In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out
cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a propane
torch and caused a fire that burned the first and second floors of his
house.

· Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, N. J., in
September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick of
dynamite that blew up in their car. While driving around at 2 a.m.,
the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window
to see what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that
the window was closed.


Ron Ebert
ron.ebert en ucr.edu
*******************
The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until
they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.
-John Tyndall





Fernando L. Frías Sánchez
mailto:yamato en ctv.es
http://come.to/yamato/

Yamato en IRC