Darwin Awards

[Roy Hersh]

1. When his 38 caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach , California would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.

And now, the honorable mentions:

2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat cutting machine and after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger.. The chef's claim was approved.

3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies.. The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days. Eyup, driver was Howard M. (My Favorite)

5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer... $15. [If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?]

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly.. He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape...

8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, "Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."

9.. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti , Michigan at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast... The man, frustrated, walked away. [*A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]

10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street by sucking on a hose, he got much more than he bargained for.. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline, but he plugged his siphon hose into the motor home's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had. (2nd place)

[Peter W. Meek]

Pretty funny, but are these real Darwin Awards? My understanding is that to get a Darwin Award the recipient has to render him/herself incapable of reproducing (usually by death). By that criteria, only #1 qualifies.

Also, the Ann Arbor News quit publishing over 5 years ago if I recall correctly, so this list must have been circulating for a while.

More on the Darwin Awards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards

[Andy Velebil]

Funny read but IIRC most of those are dated back to the 80's or early 90's and can't be verified by any means. Also IIRC, this list has become somewhat of an on-line urban legend that gets culled up from time to time and repast around. So the odds are most are probably some type of urban legend and didn't actually happen.

[Eric Menchen]

And to add to the chorus, here's this particular list with commentary:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/darwin05.asp

[Peter W. Meek]

Yep; snopes.com (and several other urban legend/hoax sites) are excellent places to check out these "too cool to be true" stories. Almost any questionable item you run across can be researched by searching for it with the word [ hoax ] appended.

But I repeat: pretty funny. Whether they are true or not, I always enjoy reading lists like this. I think my favorite is of the two men (supposedly in Germany) driving in a fog with their heads out the window following the center paint stripe who killed each other without leaving a scratch on either of their automobiles. Two idiots removed from the gene pool with one incident.

My most frequent use of these hoax sites is to research the many emails I receive from friends warning me of the latest and greatest threat to my computer, health, wallet, or whatever. A quick google on [ xxx yyy zzz hoax ] will usually get me a handful of links to send back to my worried friends. (VERY occasionally, I will discover that the warning is valid; I think that has happened twice in my life.)

[Rob C.]

Not sure it can quite compete with these, but here's a contender that has hit the news in the UK over the last couple of days! link to story