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Old March 1, 2005, 02:59 PM   #1
bci4usa
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darwin adwards

Darwin Awards Devoted to the annual awards honoring people who contribute to evolution by offing themselves in an idiotic yet amusing manner.

Category: Stupidity Humor > Darwin Awards

www.darwinawards.com


Wrong Time, Wrong Place
1990 Darwin Award Nominee
Confirmed True by Darwin
3 February 1990, Washington
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree appeared to be the robber's first, due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
1. His target was H&J Leather & Firearms. A gun shop.
2. The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
3. To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
4. A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work.
Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a holdup, and fired a few wild shots. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, covered by several customers who also drew their guns, thereby removing the confused criminal from the gene pool.
No one else was hurt.


(28 February 2000, Texas) A Houston man earned a succinct lesson in gun safety when he played Russian roulette with a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Rashaad, nineteen, was visiting friends when he announced his intention to play the deadly game. He apparently did not realize that a semiautomatic pistol, unlike a revolver, automatically inserts a cartridge into the firing chamber when the gun is cocked. His chance of winning a round of Russian roulette was zero, as he quickly discovered.
5 September 1999, Jerusalem In most parts of the world, the switch away from Daylight Saving Time proceeds smoothly. But the time change raised havoc with Palestinian terrorists this year.
Israel insisted on a premature switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time to accommodate a week of pre-sunrise prayers. Palestinians refused to live on "Zionist Time." Two weeks of scheduling havoc ensued. Nobody knew the "correct" time.
At precisely 5:30pm on Sunday, two coordinated car bombs exploded in different cities, killing three terrorists who were transporting the bombs. It was initially believed that the devices had been detonated prematurely by klutzy amateurs. A closer look revealed the truth behind the explosions.
The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to detonate on Daylight Saving Time. But the confused drivers had already switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists to their untimely demises.

18 February 2002, Hawaii) Millennia after an evolving human species descended from the trees, 30-year-old Joshua reversed the process, removing himself from the gene pool while perched in a tree. Joshua had hiked several miles onto a ranch and climbed a Koa tree under cover of darkness, intent upon stealing a branch of the expensive native hardwood. To his credit, he was smarter than a classic cartoon character, and didn’t make the mistake of cutting the branch supporting him. However he was not smart enough to avoid cutting a branch directly above his head. The severed branch struck and killed him, and authorities found him still in the tree, twenty feet off the ground.
(1 January 2002, Brazil) The game of Russian Roulette, long a breeding ground for natural selection, was improved upon by two men with a unique approach to self-destruction.
On New Year’s Eve, Antonio and his friend were befogged by Pinga, a traditional Brazilian liquor, when they began playing a Russian Roulette variant using holiday fireworks. Their version of the game consisted of placing fireworks in their mouths, then lighting the fuses and competing to see who would delay longest before spitting out the firework.
The man, dare we call him "winner," who discarded the explosive closest to the point of detonation was the victor of this battle of wills.
Their blatant disregard for personal safety was matched only by their foolish bravery. Antonio was our winner, holding one of the fireworks in his mouth a bit too long, and thereby thereby earning praise for his "courage" at his funeral.
1992, California) Snakes flick their forked tongues in the air to "smell" the world, collecting molecules and analyzing them by pressing thir tongue tips tips them into small olfactory pits. An inebriated twenty-year-old man, apparently unaware of this biological fact, took umbrage when a wild rattlesnake stuck out its tounge at him. Tit for tat! He held the rattler in front of his face and stuck his tongue out right back at it. The snake expressed its displeasure at this turn of events by biting the conveniently offered body part. The toxic venom swelled the man's face and throat, choking him to death.

4 December 1996, Indiana) A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzleloader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's investigators said.
Gregory, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber muzzleloader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited
Some men will got to extraordinary lengths to prove how macho they are. Frenchman Pierre Pumpille recently shunted a stationary car two feet by headbutting it. "Women thought I was a god," he explained from his hospital bed.
Deity or not, however, Pumpille is a veritable girl's blouse compared to Polish farmer Krystof Azninski, who staked a strong claim to being Europe's most macho man by cutting off his own head in 1995. Azninski, 30, had been drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and play some "men's games". Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen turnips, but then one man upped the ante by seizing a chainsaw and cutting off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and, shouting "Watch this then," je swung at his own head and chopped it off.
"It's funny," said one companion, "when he was young he put on his sister's underwear. But he died like a man."
(1982, California) Larry Walters of Los Angeles is one of the few to contend for the Darwin Awards and live to tell the tale. "I have fulfilled my 20-year dream," said Walters, a former truck driver for a company that makes TV commercials. "I'm staying on the ground. I've proved the thing works."

Larry's boyhood dream was to fly. But fates conspired to keep him from his dream. He joined the Air Force, but his poor eyesight disqualified him from the job of pilot. After he was discharged from the military, he sat in his backyard watching jets fly overhead.

He hatched his weather balloon scheme while sitting outside in his "extremely comfortable" Sears lawnchair. He purchased 45 weather balloons from an Army-Navy surplus store, tied them to his tethered lawnchair dubbed the Inspiration I, and filled the 4' diameter balloons with helium. Then he strapped himself into his lawnchair with some sandwiches, Miller Lite, and a pellet gun. He figured he would pop a few of the many balloons when it was time to descend.

Larry's plan was to sever the anchor and lazily float up to a height of about 30 feet above his back yard, where he would enjoy a few hours of flight before coming back down. But things didn't work out quite as Larry planned.

When his friends cut the cord anchoring the lawnchair to his Jeep, he did not float lazily up to 30 feet. Instead, he streaked into the LA sky as if shot from a cannon, pulled by the lift of 42 helium balloons holding 33 cubic feet of helium each. He didn't level off at 100 feet, nor did he level off at 1000 feet. After climbing and climbing, he leveled off at 16,000 feet.

At that height he felt he couldn't risk shooting any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really find himself in trouble. So he stayed there, drifting cold and frightened with his beer and sandwiches, for more than 14 hours. He crossed the primary approach corridor of LAX, where Trans World Airlines and Delta Airlines pilots radioed in reports of the strange sight.

Eventually he gathered the nerve to shoot a few balloons, and slowly descended. The hanging tethers tangled and caught in a power line, blacking out a Long Beach neighborhood for 20 minutes. Larry climbed to safety, where he was arrested by waiting members of the LAPD. As he was led away in handcuffs, a reporter dispatched to cover the daring rescue asked him why he had done it. Larry replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around."

The Federal Aviation Administration was not amused. Safety Inspector Neal Savoy said, "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, a charge will be filed."

Footnote:
Larry's efforts won him a $1,500 FAA fine, a prize from the Bonehead Club of Dallas, the altitude record for gas-filled clustered balloons, and a Darwin Awards Honorable Mention. He gave his aluminum lawnchair to admiring neighborhood children, abandoned his truck-driving job, and went on the lecture circuit. He enjoyed intermittent demand as a motivational speaker, but said he never made much money from his innovative flight. He never married and had no children. Larry hiked into the forest and shot himself in the heart on October 6, 1993. He died at the age of 44.
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Old March 1, 2005, 03:23 PM   #2
Duxman
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Truth is truly stranger than fiction....Good thing most of these criminals are stupid. It makes the job of the average CC holder and homeowner much easier....
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Old March 1, 2005, 10:59 PM   #3
bci4usa
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the more I read this page the harder I laugh. I laugh so hard i start to have tears come down my face.
just when you think it's get any dumber they do....s.
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Old March 4, 2005, 06:57 PM   #4
abelew
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Rob a gun gun range, good idea! Not!
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"Where the choice is between only violence and cowardice, I would advise violence."
~ Mohatma Gandhi
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Old March 9, 2005, 06:31 PM   #5
Johnny Guest
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This thread has no bearing on Tactics OR Training

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