The Darwin Awards site gets around 144,000 visitors a month and each spends an average 18 minutes a session revelling in the stupidity of others, according to its stats page. I salute any site that focuses on the death of this race. Lots of candidates come from your continent. However, after e-mailing Darwin himself no return mail was forthcoming. The jury's still out on whether to take Bill at face value.
Some stories are just too fantastic.
However, I did have some success this week. You may have heard the one about the dead whale that was dynamited to smithereens to remove its reeking carcass from a popular beach. I had written this off as yet another urban e-myth until I found compelling evidence. You can view news footage of the event, which happened on Oregon's Venice Beach, at The Infamous Exploding Whale . The aim was to vaporise a 14m, 8-tonne whale with a huge pile of TNT, so seagulls, crabs and fish could finish off the pieces.