Jokes	General Humour	Darwin Awards
Computer Humour	Office Humour	True Stories

As you may or may not know, The Darwin Award is given posthumously for services to mankind, specifically by being so stupid that you kill yourself before you have had a chance to pro-create and thereby remove your inherent stupidity from the human gene pool, thus giving the future race more chance of survival...
 

This entry comes after a find by the Arizona Highway Patrol, who found a pile of smoldering metal embedded into the side of a cliff rising above a road at the deepest point of a curve. The wreckage looked like a plane crash, but turned out to be a car, though what sort it was impossible to tell until the forensics had been over it. It appears that the driver had got hold of a JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off) unit & some solid rocket fuel used to give heavy army transport planes a bit of extra whoosh when taking off from short runways. Our guy sticks this rocket fuel unit onto his Chevy Impala, finds a stretch of desert road, and puts his foot down. 'The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit Jato ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site' says the reporter, after looking at the path of scorched asphalt. 
If the Jato worked properly, it would have reached max. thrust in 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to hit well over 350 mph. The driver, 'soon to be a pilot', (as the report puts it) would probably have felt G-forces of the type experienced by dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, 'basically causing him to become insignificant for theremainder of the event'. The car remained on the tarmac for 2.5 miles before the driver tried and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tyres and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles, hitting the cliff face at a height of 125 ft., leaving a blackened crater 3 ft. deep in the rock. Most of the driver's remains were unrecoverable; 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.

On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound of the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency).

As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this. 

Ordinarily a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds,  even though the mechanism might not be what he intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide.  But the fact
that his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had homicide on his hands. 

The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife.  They were arguing and he was threatening her with the shotgun.  He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Opus. 

When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B.  When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded.  The old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun.  He had no intention to murder her - therefore, the killing of Opus appeared to be an accident.  That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident.  It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's
financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

There was an exquisite twist.  Further investigation revealed that the son [Ronald Opus] had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a ninth story window.

The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

A driver, who crashed into the side of a 3000 ton wheat train and was 
dragged in his car more than a kilometre before being slammed into a 
pylon at the edge of a cliff, fell to his death as he walked for help.
The Queensland, Australia man, 63, and his female companion, 64, were
driving along the Newell Highway near Moree, in Northwestern New South
Wales, on Wednesday night, police said.
Their car crashed into the side of a fully laden, 600 metre long train
at a level crossing.  (I guess that would be harder to miss than the
side of a barn!) The vehicle became wedged between the second last and
last carriages and was dragged sideways beside the track as the train
continued towards Moree, a police spokeswoman said.
After being carried more than a kilometre and a half they approached
an unfenced bridge with a 10 metre drop, the spokeswoman said. Moments
before they reached the precipice, the car was struck by a pylon,
dislodged from the train and spun several times. When it came to rest,
the pair managed to free themselves from the wreck (I wonder if it was
a Volvo?) with minor bruising and the man set off along the railway
line for help.  But he slipped on the bridge and fell to his death,
the spokeswoman said.
The woman was eventually able to raise the alarm and was recovering in
Moree hospital with chest injuries.

     Miami, FL motorist Alvin Sims didn't notice that his truck had smacked
     into a utility pole and his passenger was dead until the police
     stopped his car. 
     Donna Richardson, 29, was hanging her head out of the window of her
     boy friends 1993 Chevrolet truck early Saturday - she was vomiting -
     when the truck suddenly veered. Her head slammed a pole and she died
     instantly, police said Monday. Sims, 36. kept driving.
     Metro-Dade police said when an officer stopped the truck several miles
     later - its right mirror and antenna were damaged.  Sims told police
     that he was looking for a hospital because his passenger was sick.
     "Apparently, he thought he hit a puddle and did not see that he had
     killed her."

     On February 3, 1990, a Renton (Seattle area) man tried to commit a
     robbery. This was probably his first attempt, as suggested by his lack
     of a record of violent crime, and by his terminally stupid choice:
     1. The target was H&J Leather & Firearms, a gunshop;
     2. The shop was full of customers, in a state where a substantial
     fraction of the adult population is licensed to carry concealed
     handguns in public places;
     3. To enter the shop, he had to step around a marked King County
     Police patrol car parked at the front door;
     4. An officer in uniform was standing next to the counter, having
     coffee before reporting to duty.
     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, removing him from the
     gene pool.
     Several other customers also drew their guns, but didn't fire. No one
     else was hurt.

     Derrick L. Richards, 28, was charged in April in Minneapolis with
     third-degree murder in the death of his beloved cousin, Kenneth E.
     Richards. According to police, Derrick suggested a game of Russian
     roulette and put a semiautomatic pistol to Ken's head instead of a
     revolver.

     MOSCOW, RUSSIA -A drunk security man asked a colleague at the Moscow
     bank they were guarding to stab his bullet-proof vest to see if it
     protected him against the knife.....
     It didn't and the 25-year-old guard died of a heart wound.  Isn't it
     good to see the Russians getting into the spirit of the awards.

     Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided to commit
     suicide. He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose around
     his neck. He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock. He drank
     some poison and set fire to his clothes. He even tried to shoot
     himself at the last moment.
     He jumped and fired the pistol. The bullet missed him and cut through
     the rope above him. Free of the threat of hanging, he plunged into the
     sea. The sudden dunking extinguished the flames and made him vomit the
     poison. He was dragged out of the water by a kind fisherman and was
     taken to hospital, where he died ... of exposure!!!

 
 

Larry Walters is among the relatively few who have actually turned
their dreams into reality. His story is true, as hard as you may find it
to believe . . .
 

Larry was a truck driver, but his lifelong dream was to fly. When he
graduated from high school, he joined the  Air Force in hopes of becoming
a pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. So when he finally
left the service, he had to satisfy himself with watching others fly
the fighter jets that crisscrossed the skies over his backyard. As he
sat there in his lawn chair, he dreamed about the magic of flying.

Then one day, Larry had an idea. He went down to the local Army-Navy
surplus  store and bought forty-five weather balloons, and several tanks of

helium.  These were not your brightly colored party balloons, these were
heavy-duty spheres measuring more than four feet across when fully
inflated.

Back in his yard, Larry used straps to attach the balloons to  his lawn
chair, the kind you might have in your back yard.

He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep, and inflated the
balloons with  helium.  Then he packed a few sandwiches and drinks, and a
loaded BB gun, figuring he could pop a few balloons when it was time to
returnto earth.

His preparations complete,  Larry sat in his chair and cut the
anchoring cord.  His plan was to lazily float into the sky, and eventually
back to terra firma.  But things didn't quite work out that way.  When
Larry cut
the cord, he didn't float lazily up;  he shot up as if fired from a cannon!
Nordid he go up a couple  hundred feet. He climbed and climbed until he
finally leveled off at eleven thousand feet!  At that height, he could hardly risk
deflating any  of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really
experience flying. So he stayed up there, sailing around for fourteen
hours, totally at a loss about how to get down. Eventually, Larry drifted into the
approach corridor for Los Angeles International Airport.

A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a guy in a lawn chair
at eleven thousand feet, with a gun in his lap (... now there's a
conversation I would have given anything to have heard!).

LAX is right on the ocean, and you may know  that at nightfall, the
winds on the coast begin to change. So, as dusk fell, Larry  began
drifting out to sea.  At that point, the Navy dispatched a helicopter to
rescue him, but the rescue team had a hard time getting to him because the draft
from their propeller kept pushing his home-made contraption farther and farther
away. Eventually, they were able to hover above him and drop a
rescue line, with which they gradually hauled him back to safety.

As soon as Larry hit the ground, he was arrested. But as he was led
away in handcuffs, a television reporter called out, "Sir, why'd you do
it?"

Larry stopped, eyed  the man, then replied nonchalantly, "A man
can't just sit around!"