Newsgroup: it.hobby.umorismo
Titolo: Darwin Awards [in inglese]

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  1998 DARWIN AWARDS
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They have finally been released!  For those not familiar with the
Darwin Award - It's an annual honor given to the person who
provided the universal human gene pool the biggest service by
getting killed in the most extraordinarily stupid way.  As
always, competition this year has been keen.  Some candidates
appear to have trained their whole lives for this event!
DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES
1. In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and
drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through
an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
2. In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who
"totally zoned when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged
off a 200-foot-high cliff on his daily run.
3. Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he
had dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it.  Beachgoers
said Daniel Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from
the wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom
Thursday afternoon when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet
of sand.  People on the beach, on the Outer Banks, used their
hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to Jones, a resident
of Woodbridge, VA, but could not reach him.  It took rescue
workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him while
about 200 people looked on. Jones was pronounced dead at a
hospital.
4. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA,
as he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he
was burglarizing.  Death was caused when the long flashlight he
had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of
his skull as he hit the floor.
5. According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick Berrena,
20, was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey
Hoffman, 23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate
the flakvest Berrena was wearing.
6. Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in
Selbyville, Del., as he won a bet with friends who said he would
not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and
pull the trigger.
7. In February, according to police in Windsor, Ontario, Daniel
Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision,
thus earning a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their
snowmobiles.
8. In September, a 7-year-old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near
Ozark, Ark, after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked the
spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990.
DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTIONS
1. In Guthrie, Okla , in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede
with a shot from his 22-caliber rifle, but the bullet
ricocheted off a rock near the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez
in the head, fracturing his skull.
2. In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to
clean out cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in
favor of a propane torch and caused a fire that burned the first
and second floors of his house.
3. Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, in
September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a
quarter-stick of dynamite that blew up in their car.  While
driving around at 2 AM, the bored couple lit the dynamite and
tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but
they apparently failed to notice that the window was closed.
4. Taking "Amateur Night" Too Far: In Betulia, Colombia, an
annual festival in November includes five days of amateur
bullfighting.  This year, no bull was killed, but dozens of
matadors were injured, including one gored in the head and one
Bobbittized.  Said one participant, "It's just one bull against
[a town of] a thousand Morons."
AND THE WINNER:
PADERBORN, GERMANY - Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt
fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative
and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up
pachyderm finally let fly - and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of
poop!  Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give
the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded
on
him like a dump truck full of mud.  "The sheer force of the elephant's
unexpected defecation
knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground, where he struck his head on
a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate
his bowels on top of him," said flabbergasted Paderborn police
detective Erik Dern.  "With no one there to help him, he lay
under all that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came
along, and during that time he suffocated.  It seems to be just
one of those freak accidents.
Ciao,
Marco (Spring Mattress Tester).
Ho perso un'asola ...
E-mail: 
tr...@iol.it
 - UIN: 113102
Assiduo frequentatore del Bounty di via Lulli (Milano)

his skull as he hit the floor.
Ommadonna... LOMPOC!!! Uno dei posti piu' ORRENDI che si possano trovare
sulla faccia della terra.
Poverta' assoluta (strano, infatti, che abbia avuto i soldi per la pila),
con gente che abita in containers e coltiva i campi a mano.
Ci sono passato una volta, per sbaglio e, porcaputtanaeva, passare in
macchina per il paese, con tutti i contadini messicani (a cavallo di muli
e/o biciclette) che ti guardano, con rottami di macchine ai lati della
strada (dissestata come poche) e grappoli di bambini che rincorrono palloni
di stracci, ti viene voglia di scappare piu' velocemente possibile.
N.B. Lompoc, Santa Maria e dintorni sono la parte piu' povera della
California, piena di immigrati illegali e con un reddito pro capite
inferiore ai 3.000 dollari l'anno.
Ciao, Pipol!
Piero