FORKLIFT SAFETY VIDEO
2000 Darwin Award Nominee -- Confirmed True by Darwin (Perth, Australia) It
just stands to reason, one should follow safe practices while filming a
safety video. But Peter, the 52-year-old owner of a machinery and equipment
training school, violated that rule of common sense while filming a forklift
safety demonstration. With the cameras rolling, he was thrown from the
cabin of his forklift and crushed. Subsequent investigation revealed the
culprits responsible for the fatality: driver error and high speed over
varied terrain, coupled with an unused seat belt. His final safety
demonstration was the most convincing of his career.
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JUMPING JACK CASH
2000 Darwin Award Nominee-Unconfirmed The Grand Canyon in Arizona is
cordoned off by a fence around the more treacherous overlooks, to prevent
unsteady sightseers from tottering into the depths. Some of these overlooks
have small towering plateaus a short distance from the fence. Tourists toss
coins onto the plateaus, like dry wishing wells. Quite a few coins pile up
on the surfaces, while others fall to the valley floor far below. One
entrepreneur climbed over the fence with a bag, and lept to one of the
precarious, coin-covered perches. He filled the bag with booty, then tried
to leap back to the fence with the coins. But the heavy bag arrested his
jump, and several tourist were treated to a view of his plunge to the bottom
of the Grand Canyon. He did not survive to harvest the piles of coins that
had suffered his same fate.
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GUN-TOTIN' GRANNY
2000 Urban Legend-Popular Portrayal of Vengeance (Melbourne, Australia)
Gun-toting granny Ava Estelle, 81, was so ticked-off when two thugs raped
her 18-year-old granddaughter that she tracked the unsuspecting ex-cons
down-and shot their testicles off! "The old lady spent a week hunting those
bums down-and when she found them, she took revenge on them in her own
special way," said admiring Melbourne police investigator, Evan Delp. "Then
she took a taxi to the nearest police station, laid the gun on the
sergeant's desk and told him as calm as could be:
'Those bastards will never rape anybody again, by God.'" Cops say
convicted rapist and robber, Davis Furth, 33, lost both his penis and his
testicles when outraged Ava opened fire with a 9-mm pistol in the seedy
hotel room where he and former prison cellmate, Stanley Thomas, 29, were
holed up. The wrinkled avenger also blew Thomas' testicles to kingdom come,
but doctors managed to save his mangled penis, police said. "The one guy,
Thomas, didn't lose his manhood, but the doctor I talked to said he won't be
using it the way he used to," Detective Delp told reporters. "Both men are
still in pretty bad shape, but I think they're just happy to be alive after
what they've been through." The Rambo Granny swung into action after her
granddaughter, Debbie, was carjacked and raped by two knife-wielding creeps
in a section of town bordering on skid row. "When I saw the look on my
Debbie's face that night in the hospital, I decided I was going to go out
and get those bastards myself 'cause I figured the police would go easy on
them," recalled the retired library worker. "And I wasn't scared of them,
either - because I've got me a gun and I've been shootin' it all my life."
So, using a police artist's sketch of the suspects and Debbie's description
of the sickos' car, tough-as-nails Ava spent seven days prowling the
wino-infested neighborhood where the crime took place till she spotted the
ill-fated rapists entering their flophouse hotel. "I knew it was them the
minute I saw 'em, but I shot a picture of 'em anyway and took it back to
Debbie and she said sure as hell, it was them," the ornery oldster recalled.
"So I went back to that hotel and found their room and knocked on the door
and the minute the big one, Furth, opened the door, I shot'em; got right
square between the legs, right where it would really hurt 'em most, you
know. Then I went down to the police station and turned myself in." Now,
baffled lawmen are tying to figure out how to deal with the vigilante
granny. "What she did was wrong, but you can't really throw an 81-year-old
woman in prison." Det. Delp said, "especially when all 3 million people in
the city want to nominate her for sainthood." URBAN LEGEND ALERT! Our
Australian contact refutes this GUN-TOTIN' GRANNY tale. "I work for the
Office of Public Prosecutions in Melbourne, and thus have access to
information on the criminal activities of my fellow Victorians. I checked
through our records, and I can say with confidence that neither rapist
exists in our records. If they were actually convicted, there is a 100%
chance that they would be in our records, as we would have prosecuted them.
Furthermore, even a Granny in her 80's would still be prosecuted. Case in
point is where one elderly lady was charged with stabbing another to death
in a nursing home last year. And finally, I read our newspapers and watch
the news programs each night, and I do not recall ever seeing anything about
this matter, despite its sensational nature which, if true, would be
plastered all over the media. |
