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 The following are direct excerpts from "Darwinawards.com". This site is dedicated to the biggest idiots in the world getting themselves killed via their own stupidity. Some don't quite make the cut and end up with an "Honorable mention". They are as follows:


Darwin Award!:

Crushing Debt
2009 Darwin Award Nominee

Double Darwin!

(26 September 2009, Dinant, Belgium) Two bankrobbers attempting to make a sizeable withdrawal from an ATM machine died when they overestimated the quantity of dynamite needed for the explosion. The blast demolished the building the bank was housed in. Nobody else was in the building at the time of the attack.

Robber One was rushed to the hospital with severe head trauma; he died shortly after arrival. Investigators initially assumed that his accomplice had managed a getway, but the second bungler's body was unexpectedly excavated from the debris twelve hours later.

Would-be Robbers One and Two weren't exactly impoverished--their getaway car was a BMW.

READER COMMENTS:
"Dynamite: not for everything."
"They really blew it."
"Self Banking Gone Extreme"

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Urban Legend/Honorable Mention:

Taser Test
2007 Urban Legend

Darwin says, "This story is an Urban Legend according to Snopes.com. Since it's a phenomenal story of nearly-fatal poor judgment, it merits being included among the Darwinian Urban Legends."

Dear Carl,

Last weekend I was at Larry's Pistol & Pawn looking for a little something special for my wife, Renee. I came across a 100,000-volt pocket taser. Its disabling effect on an assailant was described as short-lived, with no long-term consequences, but would allow my wife--who would never consider a gun--adequate time to retreat to safety.

WAY TOO COOL!!

Long story short, I bought the device and brought it home. I loaded two AAA batteries and pushed the button. Nothing! I was disappointed, but then I read (yes, I read the instructions) that if I pressed the taser against a metal surface and pushed the button at the same time, I'd see a blue arc of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs, to verify that it was working.

Awesome!!!

I have yet to explain to Renee that new burn spot on the face of her microwave.

There I was, home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn't be all that bad with only two triple-A batteries, right? I sat there in my recliner, reading the directions, my cat Gracie looking on intently. Trusting little soul. I got to thinking that I really needed to try this thing out on a flesh and blood moving target. I admit I thought about zapping Gracie for a fraction of a second. She is such a sweet cat, but if I was going to give this device to my wife to protect herself against a mugger, I did want some assurance that it would work as advertised. Am I wrong?

So there I sat in shorts and a tank top with my reading glasses perched on the bridge of my nose, directions in one hand, and taser in another. The directions said a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant, a two-second burst would cause muscle spasms and a major loss of bodily control, and a three-second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of water. A burst longer than three seconds would be a waste of batteries.

I'm sitting there alone, with Gracie looking on, her head cocked to one side as if to say, 'Don't do it.' But I was reasoning that a one-second burst from such a tiny little thing couldn't hurt all that bad. I decided to give myself a one-second burst, just for the heck of it. I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and...

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD! WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!

Jessie Ventura ran in through the side door, picked me up from my recliner, and body slammed us both onto the carpet, over and over and over again. I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, with tears in my eyes, body soaking wet, tingling legs, nipples on fire, and testicles nowhere to be found.

SON-OF-A... That Hurt Like HELL!

If you ever feel compelled to 'mug' yourself with a taser, you should know that there is no such thing as a one-second burst when you zap yourself. You will not let go of that taser until it is dislodged from your hand by your involuntary violent thrashing about on the floor.

A minute or so later (I can't be sure, as time was relative at that point) I collected what wits I had left, sat up, and surveyed the landscape. My bent reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace. How did they get there? My triceps, right thigh, and both nipples were still twitching. My face felt like it was shot up with Novocaine. My bottom lip weighed 88 lbs. And I'm still looking for my testicles!!

I'm offering a significant reward for their safe return.

Still in shock,

Jacob

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Raccoon Rocket
1998 Urban Legend

(1998) In rural Carbon County, Pennsylvania, a group of men were drinking beer and discharging firearms from the rear deck of a home owned by Irving Michaels, age 27. The men were firing at a raccoon that was wandering by, but the beer apparently impaired their aim. Despite an estimated 35 shots fired by the group, the animal escaped into a 3' diameter drainage pipe 100 feet away from Mr. Michaels' deck.

Determined to terminate the animal, Mr. Michaels retrieved a can of gasoline and poured some down the pipe, intending to smoke the animal out. After several unsuccessful attempts to ignite the fuel, Michaels emptied the entire five-gallon fuel can down the pipe and tried to light it again, to no avail.

Not one to admit defeat by wildlife, the determined Mr. Michaels proceeded to slide feet-first approximately 15 feet down the sloping pipe to toss the match. The subsequent rapidly-expanding fireball propelled Mr. Michaels back the way he had come, though at a much higher rate of speed. He exited the angled pipe "like a Polaris missile leaves a submarine," according to witness Joseph McFadden, 31.

Mr. Michaels was launched directly over his own home, right over the heads of his astonished friends, onto his front lawn. In all, he traveled over 200 feet through the air. "There was a Doppler Effect to his scream as he flew over us," McFadden reported, "followed by a loud thud." Amazingly, he suffered only minor injuries.

"It was actually pretty cool," Michaels said, "Like when they shoot someone out of a cannon at the circus. I'd do it again if I was sure I wouldn't get hurt."

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Mad Trombonist

1998 Urban Legend

(August 1998, Uruguay) In a misplaced moment of inspiration, Paolo Esperanza, bass-trombonist with the Symphonica Maya de Uruguay, decided to make his own contribution to the cannon shots fired during a performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture at an outdoor children's concert.

In complete disregard of common sense, he dropped a large lit firecracker, equivalent in strength to a quarter stick of dynamite, into his aluminum straight mute, and then stuck the mute into the bell of his new Yamaha in-line double-valve bass trombone.

Later from his hospital bed he explained to a reporter through a mask of bandages, "I thought the bell of my trombone would shield me from the explosion and focus the energy of the blast outwards and away from me, propelling the mute high above the orchestra like a rocket."

However Paolo was not to speed on his propulsion physics, nor was he qualified to wield high-powered artillery. Despite his haste to raise the horn before the firecracker exploded, he failed to lift the bell of the horn high enough for the airborne mute's arc to clear the orchestra. What happened should serve as a lesson to us all during our own delirious moments of divine inspiration.

First, because he failed to sufficiently elevate the bell of his horn, the blast propelled the mute between rows of musicians in the woodwind and viola section, where it bypassed the players and rammed straight into the stomach of the conductor, driving him backwards off the podium and directly into the front row of the audience.

Fortunately, the audience was sitting in folding chairs and thus they protected from serious injury. The chairs collapsed under the first row, and passed the energy from the impact of the flying conductor backwards into the people sitting behind them, who in turn were driven back into the people in the third row and so on, like a row of dominos. The sound of collapsing wooden chairs and grunts of people falling on their behinds increased geometrically, adding to the overall commotion of cannons and brass playing the closing measures of the Overture.

Meanwhile, unplanned audience choreography notwithstanding, Paolo Esperanza's Waterloo was still unfolding back on stage. According to Paolo, "As I heard the sound of the firecracker blast, time seemed to stand still. Right before I lost consciousness, I heard an Austrian accent say, "Fur every akshon zer iz un eekval unt opposeet reakshon!" This comes as no surprise, for Paolo was about to become a textbook demonstration of this fundamental law of physics.

Having failed to plug the lead pipe of his trombone, he paved the way for the energy of the blast to send a superheated jet of gas backwards through the mouthpiece, which slammed into his face like the hand of fate, burning his lips and face and knocking him mercifully unconscious.

The pyrotechnic ballet wasn't over yet. The force of the blast was so great it split the bell of his shiny new Yamaha trombone right down the middle, turning it inside out while propelling Paolo backwards off the riser. For the grand finale, as Paolo fell to the ground, his limp hands lost their grip on the slide of the trombone, allowing the pressure of the hot gases to propel the slide like a golden spear into the head of the third clarinetist, knocking him senseless.

The moral of the story? The next time a trombonist hollers "Watch this!" you'd better duck!

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