It's Time...

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“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge...”
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“In the survival of favored individuals and races, during the constantly recurring struggle for existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of selection.”
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-- Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) English naturalist
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These people are in the running for the award named after the fellow who made those statements. That’s right, it’s time to read about some of the candidates who will be nominated for the Darwin Awards.
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Three hale and hearty young men had finished their basic training. Before heading out to their respective assignments, they decided to spend their few days of leave with one's grandmother, who lived in the town where they had endured basic training. The privates descended upon Grandmother, who filled them with home cooking. Grandmother had a swing job to make ends meet, so the privates were left alone late into the night.
Grandmother had three children. To commemorate the birth of each child, a pine tree was planted in her front yard. In the fifty years since the last tree was planted, the pines had grown considerably. The middle tree now blocked the view from the living room window. To repay Grandmother for her kindness, the privates decided that they would cut down that tree, letting the sun and the view into the room.
A case of beer went into the planning.
To keep the 50-foot tree from crushing Grandmother's house, the privates reasoned that they would tie a rope to the top of the tree and pull the rope away from the house as the tree was cut.
The middle pine tree was slightly closer to the house. The privates climbed the end tree, wound a rope through its upper branches, and threw the rope to a private in the middle pine tree. He tied the rope to the middle tree. By this device, they could pull the rope from the ground, and the middle pine tree would fall away from the house. And the privates were also clear of the path of the falling tree.
Climbing a pine tree is a very sappy event, and scrapes and gouges are inflicted by the natural roughness of its bark. But the hale and hearty privates completed the preliminaries, and the middle tree was lassoed and levered by the rope running through the end tree.
So far, so good.
Two privates were situated on the ground, each straining to pull the pine tree away from Grandmother's house. The third private revved his 20 HP chainsaw and started to cut. Lo and behold, the tree actually fell away from Grandmother's house! However...
The rope-pulling privates had wrapped the rope around their waists, not considering that the falling pine weighed several tons. As the middle pine tree fell, both privates were ripped off their feet and smashed through the branches of the end pine tree. At the height of their acceleration, they broke through the top branches of the tree, and were briefly airborne before being jerked toward the earth when the middle tree hit the ground. The privates entered into Darwin history, either on the way up through the branches, or on the way down to the cold, hard ground.
The event spoke for itself.

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An enterprising lumberman jacked up the rear end of his pickup, and swapped one of the rear tires with a tire rim. He attached one end of a rope to the rim, and the other end to a large felled tree. He put the pickup into gear, apparently expecting the rim to act as a makeshift rope crank that would pull the tree up the steep embankment, saving him lots of sweat.
A great idea? Not if you're reading it here! You see the tree vastly outweighed the truck. The man was standing with one foot on the ground and the other foot on the accelerator. When he gunned the engine, the tree acted like an anchor, and the truck yanked itself backwards. The open door rammed into him, and he was swept over the embankment along with the pickup.
When the dust settled, our lumberman had entered the great beyond. But his escapade served as a warning for others. The next lumberman cut up the tree where it lay, and carried it off.

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The ambulance responded to a frantic call concerning a neighbor's trip through an industrial strength tree shredder. It seems the individual had decided to do his own tree pruning rather than hire a professional.
The local rental shop rented shredders that could make quick work of mass quantities of yard debris, including tree limbs up to 8 inches in diameter.
To save either time or money, or both, the neighbor placed the shredder at the base of a great oak tree. He intended to cut the top third of the tree off, since it had been damaged by lightning and was dead.
With the shredder running wide open, the neighbor climbed his ladder to the first tree branch, stepped off, and fell.
The Ambulance personnel found him very dead, one leg shredded to the hip, half in and out of the shredder's hopper.
Not married, no kids, removed from the gene pool.

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At 6.30 on January 15, at least two men broke into the Cyber gymnasium at Nacka, east of Stockholm, Sweden. They were startled by a janitor and ran to get away, the police report. Afraid of detection they decided to take a short cut down the 18 meter (55-foot) cliff face close to the school.
They failed to consider three crucial facts: * Due to the latitude the sun rises at 8.30 in Stockholm during January. So it was pitch black. * Unusually for the season there was no snow. Instead, it had rained during the night * Most of the rock in eastern Sweden is granite. The kind that can be polished into posh floors and fancy counter tops, both very slick. This is a known fact for people living in the area.
Try tilting a slab of polished granite, pour water over it and make a controlled descent.
In the dark. Carrying you heist with you.
In short, one of the burglars slipped and fell head-over-heels 55 feet to his death. His would-be price was found around him. The police are still looking for the other burglar.

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Quite a while ago, when I was in my teens and still living with my parents. I was watching golf on TV (yes, golf) with my dad just before suppertime. My mother was preparing the food and asked to start the BBQ to which my dad replied: "In a minute". Unable to wait the minute...she proceeded outside to the BBQ. We both arrived find her opening the burners, then opening the propane tank in that order.
My dad said, “You’re not supposed to light it like that.”
To which she responded:"What's the difference?!" in a smutty tone.
She then proceeded to lean over the grill to see if the burners were going to light and pressed the ignite button.
A woof with large fireball surrounded her head for a split second. She turned around with her eyebrows & hair singed only to hear my dad say:"That's the difference!"
I don't think I've ever laughed so hard.

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A drunken man died after setting fire to himself in a fruitless bid to prove white spirit was not flammable, an inquest heard.
Michael Toye doused himself with the fluid during an argument with friend Paul Deacon before putting a cigarette lighter to his trousers.
Mr. Deacon said he extinguished the ensuing flames but was asked not to call for help by Mr. Toye, who said: 'I'm all right, I just want a fag and a beer.' They were drinking at Mr. Toye's flat on April 12 last year at the time of the dispute
The 43-year-old applied the white spirit - a derivative of paraffin - while sitting in an armchair and his chest, arms and thighs were soon engulfed by flames.
. Deacon threw basins of water over him and wrapped him in a blanket after he refused medical help, the inquest heard. An ambulance took him to a burns unit at Salisbury District Hospital the next morning, but he died six days later from pneumonia caused by his injuries.
Mid-Hampshire coroner Grahame Short recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.
Toye, from Hedge End, near Southampton, had not understood the consequences of his actions, said. Short. 'It was an act of possible bravado,' he added.

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A man was shot fatally while trying to beat his dog to death with a shotgun, police said.
Raymond Poore Jr., 43, called his wife at work Thursday and told her that their dog had bitten him and he intended to kill the animal, aid Winchester police Capt. David Sobonya.
Police found Poore in his home at about 6 p.m. covered with dog bites and suffering from a shotgun wound to his abdomen. He died later at Winchester Medical Center.
Sobonya said Poore must have beaten the 30-pound shar-pei with a shotgun that went off. The stock of the weapon was broken and there appeared to be blood and dog hair on it, he said.
The dog was in the custody of a Winchester animal control officer. There was no word on how badly it was injured.
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I have a friend, no... acquaintance who was in a water-skiing accident, in this accident he severely damaged one of his testicles to the point where it was permanently swollen to an unusually large size.
Having this large testicle was something he considered brag worthy. At parties (once he had a few under his belt) he would pull his gargantuan teste out and show it to people. On one occasion a female at the party commented that it was a pity his other one was so small, and suggested that he might be able to remedy this problem. He immediately grabbed a beer bottle and proceeded to smash his testicle repeatedly... everyone left the room.
The next morning he awoke to a massive pain in his nether regions which (on inspection) turned out to be his bleeding and grotesquely swollen nut. He called an ambulance, was taken to hospital and was surgically removed from the gene pool.

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Five young men are dead after a car they were riding in crashed after traveling off an airport runway at the exclusive "fly-in" community of Jumbolair Aviation Estates early Saturday, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
The crash at the community, which is also the home of actor John Travolta, happened at about 3:45 a.m. According to a preliminary Florida Highway Patrol investigation, a 2008 gray BMW with five occupants, ages 18 to 20, was traveling at a high speed on the airstrip.
As it neared the end of the runway, the car skidded and traveled off the end of an 85-foot high embankment, became airborne for 200 feet and struck a large tree.
At impact, the vehicle split in half and the car's engine separated from the vehicle, scattering pieces of the car over about a 200 square foot area. Three of the five occupants were ejected from the vehicle and all were pronounced dead at the scene, according to Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Mike Burroughs said.
The victims have been identified as Joshua D. Ammirato, 18, of Fairfield, who was identified as the driver of the $75,000 car; Dustin J. Dawe, 19, also of Fairfield; James Devon Hime, 19, of Anthony; and Jacob James Casey, 19 and Isaac Rubin, 20, both of Ocala. It was not clear if any of the men lived within the gated community.

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A 37-year-old man was killed trying to cross the Manasota Island drawbridge on his motorcycle. Wearing only a bathing suit and sneakers, witnesses report that he raced at high speed as the bridge began to open and the crossing gates were coming down. He hit his head on the guard, which killed him and swept him off the back of his motorcycle. Incidentally, the motorcycle continued up the opening drawbridge and made it across to the other side!

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The Vice-president of Power Production told me about this incident he was personally aware of: An operator at a power plant in New Mexico hadn't been seen for quite awhile and didn't answer radio or PA calls. After searching for him, he was found wedged into a coal conveyor belt 'turnaround'. Apparently, he had climbed a ladder and deck over the top of a running conveyor belt and let himself down onto the top of the conveyor holding onto the guardrails. He presumably wanted to run on the belt as a treadmill for exercise. Tiring of the activity, he either slipped or gave up and was carried to the end of the conveyor where he was wedged between the running belt and its top shroud. He did manage to lose a lot of weight, however. He was found dead, having lost much of one leg, hip and lower torso to the sanding action of the belt.

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Now I know that you have tons of people setting themselves on fire every year , but this guy couldn't tell a bottle of beer from a bottle of gasoline?
That's right.
Here's the recipe for this disaster, and believe me, this one definitely is off the weirdo meter!
First take a 56-year-old man who is both a smoker and a drinker..
Then add in two unlabeled bottles, one filled with Nice German beer, the other filled with say Unleaded gasoline and put all of them into a poorly lit room.
Then have the Gentleman take a cigarette and light it and set it on an near by ashtray, before he reaches for what he thinks is that German brew,
when in reality...
it's the petrol.
Let him take a swig and then realize.. he's got a mouth full of gas, burning his mouth.
Ouch!
So what to do?
Spit it out! That's what he should do!
And not in any random direction mind you, but rather onto that lit cigarette sitting in the ashtray, which then ignites the spat out petrol, and sets not only the entire apartment ablaze but our hapless wanna-be and Potential Darwin Nominee!
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A group of students from Bishop's deciding to go rafting while drunk. Deciding that this foolhardy act was not enough, two of the group decides to tempt fate a second time by jumping off a train bridge into the St Francis River while their buddies looked on.
Pulling the rafts up next to the train bridge, the two foolhardy youths conveniently ignored the fact that each of the supports of the bridge are surrounded by a thick block of concrete.
The first student jumped off the bridge and broke his leg on the concrete. His friends at the base of the bridge rushed out to help him. Not to be outdone by his friend, the other of the two jumped off the bridge. He, unfortunately, hit is head on the concrete block, knocking himself unconscious. Police found his body floating in the river some hours later.
The saddest aspect of this story is that the student's friends were so preoccupied by the first student with the broken leg, they didn't even notice that their other friend was missing.

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Kinky sex escapade ended this week with the electrocution death of a Pennsylvania woman and the arrest of her husband for manslaughter. According to cops, Toby Taylor, 37, first claimed that his wife Kirsten was shocked by her hair dryer. But he then admitted that the couple was "into weird sexual behaviors," according to a probable cause affidavit. Taylor then explained that he hooks clips to his wife's nipples and "plugs the cord into a electric strip" and shocks her. On Wednesday evening, Taylor said, Kirsten removed her clothes, attached the clips, and shocked herself. He then picked up the electric strip and shocked her several more times, adding that he had placed a piece of electric tape over her mouth during the jolts. After the last shock, Kirsten, 29, "fell over on to her face." Taylor initially thought his wife was joking, but quickly realized she was unconscious. He then dressed her in preparation for driving to the hospital, but instead called 911 when she stopped breathing. Taylor told investigators that the couple had "been engaging in electric shock sex and other types of extreme bondage for about 2 years." He was charged yesterday with involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment and was jailed in the York Count lockup (where he remains in custody on $100,000 bail).