The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design (26 page)

Lucas, thirty, is the only known Serbian victim of the giant tsunami that devastated countries around the Indian Ocean. And he was at home in Serbia at the time. He blames television for the tragedy.

He was so shocked when he saw the tsunami footage on TV that he jumped out his apartment window. As he fell from the second floor, it occurred to him that the tsunami was not actually a threat to southern Serbia, which is separated by an entire continent from the Indian Ocean. But it was too late to avoid impact: He suffered two broken legs and a damaged spine.

Recovering later from his tsunami injuries, Lucas threatened to sue the local television station for announcing that “the tsunami is coming our way,” and people should “immediately evacuate.” A spokesperson for the television station said Lucas must have misunderstood the reporter’s words.

Reference: 24ur.com

The construction trades have been revolutionized by new tools that are little short of miraculous. Take the nail gun. Operating on compressed air, it turns the tedious task of nailing into a simple point-and-click operation. It also makes possible a new way to injure yourself, one hitherto unknown: hammering a nail into your brain.

Stud, a thirty-three-year-old bricklayer, had just finished using a nail gun to install wall paneling at home. After the safety-minded man had turned off the compressor and removed the nail cartridge, he downed a few beers with his mates while they joked “about construction site accidents, and taking your eye out with a nail gun.” For dramatic effect, Stud pointed his nail gun at his head and pulled the trigger. His mates noted a small red dot on his skin.

Stud figured the firing pin had simply glanced off his skull, powered by a leftover charge of compressed air. In fact, he had fired a 3.2-centimeter nail into his brain. He started to feel lightheaded, but didn’t feel much pain—due, perhaps, to the anesthetic effect of beer. Nevertheless, his son insisted on calling an ambulance.

When he arrived at the hospital the pain had become worse, so Stud asked the nurses for “a pair of pliers to pull it out myself.” Instead, a neurosurgeon and a team of specialists spent four hours sawing through part of his skull and carefully removing the nail. Stud was expected to make a full recovery. “Luckily it lodged in the motor area of the brain and not a more critical area,” said the doctor.

“I did a very stupid thing,” said Stud. If the nail had been a centimeter deeper, he likely would have suffered permanent brain damage, or paralysis.

Reference: news.com.au, ananova.com,
Occupational Health & Safety Daily News
, Reuters

A thirty-year-old resident of this aptly named town of sixty thousand, nestled in the Northern Territories on the Sea of Timor, just wanted to go home. But he was thwarted by two circumstances. First, he lived in an upper-level unit in a high-rise apartment building, and second, he had locked his keys in the apartment.

It was four
A.M
. Some people do their best thinking in the wee hours of the morning, but our protagonist was not one of them. He concluded that his best course of action was to scale the outside of the building. He managed to climb a short distance before he slipped.

Luckily, a parked car was beneath him to cushion the fall. He pulled himself off the shattered windshield and, unwilling to give up after one small setback, set out again to scale the wall. This time he reached the third floor before he slipped.

He was less fortunate than before, because he landed on his head, but also more fortunate, because this knocked him unconscious and saved him from a third attempt. He survived the fall, and was taken to Royal Darwin Hospital for treatment.

Lest outsiders get the wrong idea of Darwin, Australia, we include a comment from a sergeant on the Darwin police force: “It doesn’t happen every day,” he said.

Reference:
The Australian, Gold Coast Bulletin

Khabarovsk is as far east as you can get in Siberia without falling into the Sea of Japan. It’s home to military installations that conducted top-secret operations during the Cold War.

A few soldiers were poking around in the dump at their base and found a can full of a white powdery substance. At least twenty-five servicemen began using the handy substance, adding it to their tobacco when they rolled cigarettes, dusting it on their sweaty feet, and even snorting it. Within a short time, many of them became mysteriously ill and their hair began falling out.

Tests showed that the alluring white powder was thallium, an element once used as rat poison, but found to be so toxic that it is banned in the United States and several other countries. Extensive thallium exposure can cause liver and kidney damage, and organ failure.

Several soldiers were airlifted in serious condition to the St. Petersburg Academy of Military Medicine. They may not have earned a medal for their creative recycling efforts, but they did earn an Honorable Mention from the Darwin Awards.

Reference: BBC News,
Verdens Gang

 

More about Thallium:

 

www.DarwinAwards.com/book/thallium.html

 

 

“For sale cheap: one parachute used once, never opened.”

I have a picture of someone who may be my relative, called Franz Reichelt. He is dressed in what looks like a huge black overcoat, and the caption reads, “Monsieur Franz Reichelt with his early parachute—an outstanding example of the way in which early aviators were as spectacular in their failures as in their successes.

“Reichelt was an Austrian tailor who sought to combine his interests by creating a garment to serve as both an overcoat and a parachute. In 1911, he decided to test his invention. Having told the authorities that he wanted to make a ‘dummy’ drop, at the last minute he strapped himself in, and with sublime confidence stepped from a platform off the Eiffel Tower, and fell to his death.”

Reference: Personal Account; clipping of an unknown origin.

 

 

See a picture of Franz’s overcoat!
www.DarwinAwards.com/book/icarus.html

 

Unfortunately, I cannot confirm whether the following individual’s ability to procreate was permanently impaired after this incident, but it certainly was for a while….

I was chatting with a tradesman’s apprentice whose boss was on a four-week leave of absence, claiming to have pulled a muscle in his leg. His customers complained mightily, as a backlog was piling up.

My friend—who shall, like his boss, remain nameless to protect his privacy—informed me of the
real
reason his boss was off work, a truth that he would not admit to his customers.

He had arranged a romantic weekend with his girlfriend, and had decided to spice up the evening with chocolate body paint. The instructions on the jar say to warm it in the microwave for a few seconds, but he misread the directions and microwaved it on high for two minutes.

You know how a mother tests baby milk on the back of her hand, to make sure it’s not too hot? He didn’t. He proceeded to pour the
very
hot chocolate onto his privates without realizing, until it made contact, exactly how hot it was. He suffered nasty burns, which gave him a John Wayne walk for weeks, and almost certainly put him out of sexual action for longer than that!

Reference: Personal Account

A young man came into the emergency room complaining of scrotal pain. The triage nurse sent him to a waiting area, where his girlfriend held his hand lovingly and tried to comfort him. Two hours later he was called into an examination room. He insisted that his girlfriend wait outside. The male nurse who examined him saw that his scrotum had swollen to the size of a basketball, hanging down to his mid-thigh.

The nurse asked the young man how this had happened. After much hesitation, he finally confided that he attempted to make his scrotum appear larger to impress his girlfriend, who had remarked that he did not have “big balls” like her last boyfriend. He bought a kit online, and injected 500 cc of normal saline into his scrotum with an IV needle.

This self-improvement effort had caused a severe case of cellulitis, which required large doses of IV antibiotics and a three-day hospital stay. The doctor told him that the swelling had put tremendous pressure on his testes, and he might be sterile because of it.

He tried to hide his affliction from his girlfriend as he was moved upstairs to his room. The male nurse wasn’t sure whether the young man had managed to impress her, but he had certainly proved to the ER staff that he had big balls.

Reference: Personal Account

During my days in the Canadian Air Force I worked at the gliding school instructing cadets. A magneto uses magnets to produce a powerful high-voltage electric current to fire the starters of an aircraft engine. One night we officers had a private competition to see who could hold onto the four leads of a magneto the longest. One by one we all dropped out, except for “Captain Magneto.”

We pooled our money and came up with a bet, and the debonair Captain Magneto took the bet. He attached all four leads to his left testicle. Then we fired up the magneto. As you can imagine, Captain Magneto dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Nobody was able to assist him because we were all laughing too damn hard to breathe, let alone move. To add insult to injury, Mrs. Magneto (his wife) chose this very moment to walk in. She took one look at her husband, and instead of comforting him, started bitching him out. “What’s wrong with you,” she yelled, “I want kids someday!”

In time Captain Magneto was able to stand without screaming, but he probably won’t be playing with magnetos anytime soon.

Reference: Personal Account