[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
UL Spotters, Check it out (fwd)
------- start of forwarded message -------
From: Tom Horton <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: UL Spotters, Check it out
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 09:59:00 -0800
This message is bouncing around the Internet and I thought if might be
fun to check out for ULs, known and unknown.
The Darwin Awards
It is once again time to consider nominees for the Darwin Award. The
Darwin is awarded posthumously each year to the individual or group of
individuals that best demonstrate Darwin's theory of natural selection
by permanently removing their contribution to the human gene pool. RIP.
You may recall last year's Darwin Award winner: The man who found out
moments before making a 300 MPH dent in an Arizona cliff that the JATO
(Jet Assist Take Off) unit he'd strapped to his car could not be turned
off once it was turned on.
The 1994 winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which
toppled on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.
The 1997 nominees are:
NOMINEE #1 [San Jose Mercury News) An unidentified man, using a shotgun
like a club to break a former girlfriend's windshield, accidentally shot
himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.
NOMINEE #2 [Kalamazoo Gazette] James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Mich., was
killed in March as he was trying to repair what police described as a
"farm-type truck." Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway
while Burns hung underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a
troubling noise. Burns' clothes caught on something, however, and the
other man found Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft."
NOMINEE #3 [Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario] Man slips, falls 23 stories
to his death. A man cleaning a bird feeder on his balcony of his
condominium apartment in this Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23 stories
to his death, police said Monday. Stefan Macko, 55, was standing on a
wheeled chair Sunday when the accident occurred, said Inspector D'Arcy
Honer of the Peel regional police."It appears the chair moved and he
went over the balcony," Honer said."It's one of those freak accidents.
No foul play is suspected."
NOMINEE #4 "Hickory Daily Record Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally
shot himself to death in December in Newton, N.C., when, awakening to
the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the
phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson 38 Special, which discharged
when he drew it to his ear.
NOMINEE #5 [UPI, Toronto] Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety
of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with
his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said
Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank
Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of the
building's windows to visiting law students. Hoy previously had
conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports.
Peter Lauwers, managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the
Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was "one of the best and brightest"
members of the 200-man association.
NOMINEE #6 [AP, Cairo, Egypt] Six people drowned Monday while trying to
rescue a chicken that had fallen into a well in southern Egypt. An
18-year-old farmer was the first to descend into the 60-foot well. He
drowned, apparently after an undercurrent in the water pulled him down,
police said. His sister and two brothers, none of whom could swim well,
went in one by one to help him, but also drowned. Two elderly farmers
then came to help, but they apparently were pulled by the same
undercurrent. The bodies of the six were later pulled out of the well in
the village of Nazlat Imara, 240 miles south of Cairo. The chicken was
also pulled out. It survived.
NOMINEE #7 [Bloomburg News Service] A terrible diet and room with no
ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by
his own gas. There was no mark on his body but autopsy showed large
amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had consisted primarily
of beans and cabbage (and a couple of other things). It was just the
right combination of food. It appears that the man died in his sleep
from breathing from the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed.
Had he been outside or had his windows been opened, it wouldn't have
been fatal. But the man was shut up in his near airtight bedroom. He was
", . a big man with a huge capacity for creating [this deadly gas]." .
Three of the rescuers got sick and one was hospitalized.
NOMINEE #8 [San Jose Mercury News] A 24-year-old salesman from Hialeah,
Fla. , was killed near Lantana, Fla., in March when his car smashed into
a pole in the median strip of Interstate 95 in the middle of the
afternoon. Police said that the man was traveling at 80 MPH and, judging
by the sales manual that was found open and clutched to his chest, had
been busy reading.
NOMINEE #9 ( The News of the Weird] JOINT NOMINEE Michael Anderson
Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously in 1989. He had spent several
years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on a murder conviction
before having his sentence reduced to life in prison. In March 1989,
sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix his small TV
set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.
0n Jan 1, 1997, Laurence Baker, also a convicted murderer once on death
row, but later serving a life sentence at the state prison in
Pittsburgh, Pa., was electrocuted by his homemade earphones as he
watched his small TV while sitting on his metal toilet.
NOMINEE #10 [The Indianapolis Star] Cigarette lighter may have triggered
fatal explosion in Dunkirk, Indiana. A Jay County man using a cigarette
lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader was killed Monday night
when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's investigators said.
Gregory David Pryor 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about
11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber muzzle
loader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to
look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.
NOMINEE #11 [AP, Mammoth Lakes] A San Anselmo man died yesterday when he
hit a lift tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the
slope on a foam pad, authorities said. Matthew David Hubal, 22, was
pronounced dead at Centinela Mammoth Hospital. The accident occurred
about 3 a.m., the Mono County Sheriff's Department said. Hubal and his
friends apparently had hiked up a ski run called Stump Alley and undid
some yellow foam protectors from the lift towers, said Lieutenant Mike
Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department. The pads are used to
protect skiers who might hit the towers. The group apparently used the
pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal crashed into a tower. It was
not clear if the tower he hit was one with its pad removed. "With the
cold temperatures, the snow was probably pretty fast," said Donnelly.
NOMINEE #12 [Reuters, Warsaw, Poland] A poacher electrocuting fish in a
lake in central Poland fell into the water and suffered the same fate as
his quarry, police said Thursday. The 24-year-old man was one of four
who went fishing with a cable, one end of which they attached to a net
and the other to a high-voltage electricity supply line, the PAP news
agency quoted a police official in Wloclawek as saying. "For a while
everything went according to the poachers' plan and they had fish in
their bags. But at a certain moment the man holding the net tripped and
fell into the water," the agency said. The other poachers tried in vain
to revive him, it said.
NOMINEE #13 [AP, St. Louis] Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being
disorderly in a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call
police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it in his mouth, and walked out
out paying for it. Police found him unconscious in front of the store:
paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat, where it had
choked him to death.
NOMINEE 14 [Unknown] To poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing
above him on an overhanging rock -- and was killed instantly when it
fell on him.
NOMINEE 15 [Associated Press, Kincaid, W. VA] Blasting Cap Explodes in
Man's Mouth at Party. A man at a party popped a blasting cap into his
mouth and bit down, triggering an explosion that blew off his lips,
teeth and tongue, state police said Wednesday. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of
Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during a party late Tuesday
night, said Cpl. M.D. Payne. "Another man had it in an aquarium, hooked
to a battery, and was trying to explode it," Payne said. " It wouldn't
go off and this guy said, 'I'll show you how to set it off.'. "I just
can't imagine anyone doing something like that," Payne said.
AND FINALLY NOMINEE #16 [Fort Worth Star-Telegram] In December near
Mineral Wells, Tex., three men who were attempting to steal copper wire
off live electrical lines for resale were electrocuted. Copper wiring is
a valuable scrap metal in Texas but is usually stolen from electric
cables that are not being used.
--
Tom Horton -- [email protected]
http://www.HFAonline.com
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't
understand it well enough."
-- Albert Einstein
------- end of forwarded message -------
--
Matthew Hunt <[email protected]> * Think locally, act globally.
finger [email protected] for PGP public key.
===
This message was sent to mph-humor. No guarantees of actual humor are
provided. Archives and instructions for subscribing or unsubscribing
are available from http://mph124.rh.psu.edu/~hunt/humor .