You've been waiting for them with bated breath, so without further ado here are the 2008 Darwin Awards!

Eighth Place
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.

Seventh Place
A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who 'totally zoned when he ran', accidentally jogged off a 100-foot high cliff on his daily run.

Sixth Place
While at the beach, Daniel Jones, 21, dug an 8 foot hole for protection from the wind and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom! When it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand, people on the beach used their han ds and shovels trying to get him out but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Fifth Place
Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed as he fell 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.

Fourth Place
Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed 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.

Third Place
After stepping around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door, a man walked into H&J Leather & Firearms intent ! on robbing the store. The shop was full of customers and a uniformed officer w as standing at the counter. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, and several customers also drew their guns and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt.

HONOURABLE MENTION
Paul Stiller, 47, and his wife Bonnie were bored just driving around at 2 A.M. so they lit a quarter stick of dynamite to toss out the window to see what would ! happen. Apparently they failed to notice the window was closed.


RUNNER UP
Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from a local bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more heated and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 AM. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable, that was near by. They secured one end around Bingham's leg and then tied the other to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle.. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. Bingham's foot was never located.

AND THE WINNER IS...
Zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt ( Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally got relief. Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded.

The sheer force of the elephant's un expected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock as the elephant continued to evacuate 200 pounds of dung on top of him. It seems to be just one of those freak accidents that proves... 'Shit happens'

IT ALWAYS SEEMS IMPORTANT TO THANK THESE PEOPLE FOR REMOVING THEMSELVES FROM THE GENE POOL

I love you Justin, but this is all a bunch of urban legend stuff. You should have posted it in the Attic.

No one ever got killed by elephant defecation here in Germany.

Not that can be documented.

It's funny, though. Isn't it?

:lol:

I didn't really think it was true? But I had nothing interesting to post. No offence to my friends in Berlin!

You have friends in Berlin? So...like...if I want to go to Berlin for a weekend, you can call up a friend and they'll let me stay there for free and I can save a huge hotel bill.

Justin...what kind of friend are you to me?

The offer to take you riding in the Alps still holds.

I'm sorry Stoney, I didn't mean to get you all excited. I was using the royal friends.

But I do know a lot of people (a LOT of people!) so let me check around and see who's in Berlin. I'll get back to you.

I'm still trying to figure out how you got the s-word past the auto-reverbalizer.

Yeah, that list is somehow messed up.

The constipated elephant story is listed as a 1998 Urban Legend on the Darwin Awards page:

http://www.darwinawards.com/legends/

I'm not Darwin and these are not MY awards. I just passed it along.

Next I'll look for the anal awards, I have a feeling there are a few contenders right here...lol


Sometimes its just good to laugh at a joke and not have to have it explained.

Some things that are not actually true ... SHOULD be true.

The Darwin awards are real, and the person who writes up these sad but true stories always sites the sources, or is quick to debunk when a reliable source is not in evidence. I am away of three books of compilations of these awards; I own two of them.

My all time favorite is still the man who was killed in an explosion while welding a "no smoking" sign onto a gasoline tank.

The Darwin Awards are real, but NOT all of the stories listed on its website are.

The Darwin Awards link I posted earlier makes clear that some of the stories in the list that started this thread are actually urban legends.

Like I said, the list that was posted appears to have been messed up. It is a combination of actual awards and urban legends cited on the DA page, which appeared over the past decade, not just in 2008.

Myself, I have had one of the Darwin Awards books on order through Amazon for over a year now. Amazon keeps sending me occasional emails complimenting me on my esoteric taste in books, but they've yet been able to locate a copy to ship to me.


I still remember the good old days on the web when if you helped someone, e.g. by providing them with background information or a source for a story they posted, they would actually thank you instead of knocking you. Sigh.

Ohh, you're sooo sensitive.

Here...Thank you!, have a beer!

:stout:


here's to the class know-it-all

:cheers:

Actually MOST of the "Darwin Award" stories are Urban Legend stuff. Fun and an entire thread all their own.

I remember doing colleges in the 80's. That great story about the girl drunk home from a frat party could not find the light, and passed out. Wakes up roomate dead and on the mirror in blood is "aren't you glad you couldn't find the light?".

I heard this story from coast to coast. Almost EVERY school had the story, it was popular second semester as a new girl would "transfer in" and this was why.

I was amazed how it was able to be almost IDENTICAL prior to the internet.

Sorry I digress but I LOVE the psychology behind the Urban Legend.

Back in the early 80's an Urban Legend was created by a University class ( on the east coast) in and experiment with a sister University on the west coast. The plan was to make up a story and see how long it took for a student on the West Coast to hear it from someone not in the experiment.

I think it was the story of the snake in the fur coat. It took just about a year for the story to cross the country by word of mouth. It'd be faster these days with the net.

Best,

Tim

I guess it depends what you mean by "Darwin Award" stories.

While I have not checked each of the 300+ official Darwin Award stories at the web page I linked to earlier, I did spot check quite a few and almost all of these gave apparently legitimate sources / references.

As I noted before, the Darwin Awards page has another list of 'Darwin Awards Urban Legends'. But that is a separate category and they are not true Darwin Award winning stories.

I suspect it is also the case that many of the stories distributed and advertised as Darwin Awards stories actually are not true Darwin Award stories. Rather, they are just advertised as such for effect.

Well, on the site it says if the story is confirmed or not.
Balducci,
why on earth did you post that link. Ihave spend the past few days (and I did have a load of work to do) reading darwin stories. Arrrggghh.

Because I am pure evil. Mwuh huh huh huh ....

Perhaps because it had a quote mark immediately before the "s", counted it as part of the word, and passed over it.

Even though the Mr. Poop-Elephant story is probably false, it was still funny and quite well-written.

One of my personal favorites, which was actually listed in a book of stupid 911 calls, was about a woman who had found some sort of bug or animal and tried to flush it down a toilet. When that didn't work, she sprayed several pesticides and other chemicals into the commode in order to kill it. After she was done, she closed the lid to the toilet, leaving the gases trapped inside.

Later, hubby comes home and needs to use the crapper. Unfortunately, hubby is also a smoker. As he sits down on the john, he lights up a cancer stick (aka cigarette) or tosses the final smouldering bit of it into the bottom of the bowl, right between his knees. The resulting explosion hurls him off the throne and severely burns his behindy.

Unfortunately for our hapless husband, his agony only worsens when the paramedics arrive and put him on a cart to transport him to the hospital. As they are wheeling him outside, they are laughing so hard that they accidentally let go of the cart. The poor man, strapped in face down, suddenly finds himself rolling down a set of steps and onto the sidewalk where the cart hits the ambulance, tips over, and breaks his leg.