Annual Darwin Awards.

The annual honour given to the persons who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid ways.

Last year's 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.



This year's winner was a real rocket scientist... HONEST! Read on...

And remember that each one of these is TRUE.



And the nominees were:



Semifinalist #1

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.

The resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.



Semifinalist #2

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.



Semifinalist #3

A 22-year-old Reston,

Virginia 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 Accutek 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.'



Semifinalist #4

A man in Alabama died from

rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend were playing a game

of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend - no doubt a

future Darwin Awards candidate was hospitalized.



Semifinalist #5

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.



Now,

the winner of this year's Darwin

Award (awarded, as always, posthumously):

The Arizona Highway Patrol

came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in 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. Police investigators

finally pieced together the mystery.

An amateur rocket scientist....

had somehow gotten hold of a J A T O 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,

straight stretch of road. He attached the J A T O unit to the car,

jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the J A T O! The facts as

best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala

hit the J A T O ignition at approximately 3.0 miles from the crash

site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that

location. The J A T O, if operating properly, would have reached

maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well

in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20

-25 seconds. The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced

G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full

afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant 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 leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.

Most of the driver's 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 attained a ground speed of 420-mph, though

much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.