it seems to be right on. smashing the grids. freak accident no.
> 1998 DARWIN AWARDS
>
>They have finally been released! For those not familiar with the
>Darwin Award - It's an annual honor given to the person who
>provided the human gene pool the biggest service by getting killed in
>the most extraordinarily stupid way. As always, competition this year
>has been keen again. Some candidates appear to have trained their
>whole lives for this event!
>
>
> DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES
>
>1. In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and
>drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through
>an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
>
>2. 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.
>
>3. Buxton, NC: 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.
>
>4. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA,
>as he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he
>was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he
>had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of
>his
>skull as he hit the floor.
>
>5. 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 flakvest Berrena was wearing.
>
>6. 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.
>
>7. In February, according to police in Windsor, Ontario, 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.
>
>8. 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 HONORABLE MENTIONS
>1. 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.
>
>2. 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.
>
>3. Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, 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 AM, 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.
>
>4. Taking "Amateur Night" Too Far: In Betulia, Colombia, an
>annual festival in November includes five days of amateur
>bullfighting. This year, no bull was killed, but dozens of matadors were
>injured,
>including one gored in the head and one Bobbittized. Said one
>participant, "It's just one bull against [a town of] a thousand
>Morons."
>
>AND THE WINNER:
>PADERBORN, GERMANY - Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt
>fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative
>and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the
>plugged-up pachyderm finally let fly - and suffocated the keeper
>under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was
>attempting
>to give the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema when the relieved beast
>unloaded on him like a dump truck full of mud.
>
>"The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked
>Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground, where he struck his head on a rock
>and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his
>bowels on top of him," said flabbergasted Paderborn police
>detective Erik Dern.
>"With no one there to help him, he lay under all that dung for at least
>an hour before a watchman came along, and during that time he
>suffocated.
>It seems to be just one of those freak accidents."
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