Darwin Awards 2006

ms1234 writes "The year is coming to and end so it is time to see how our genepool is doing. Darwin Awards 2006 includes everything from whacking RPGs with hammers to recreating experiments by Franklin."

Re:Fool me twice...

[schon]

I'm not sure about the others, but the "Star wars" one happened in early 2005, not 2006 - although whether one person died or not I don't know (last I heard it was just injuries.)

Slashdot covered it here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/24/141225 3 [slashdot.org]

Re:Fool me twice...

[El Torico]

Apparently the one about the drowning Pastor is. This is from the World Net Daily of August 30, 2006 [worldnetdaily.com],

Pastor Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle, and he attempted it from a beach in Gabon's capital of Libreville. "He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat. He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back."

Re:Fake -- Not!

[SteveM]

The story you are refering to is on page 36 of my copy. References to eight news sources are given for the story. And the story says nothing of the gun being unloaded. It does say that the man was tryign to pin the snakes head with the butt of the gun to catch it alive.

The book lists stories in four categories, Darwin Awards, Honorable Mentions, Urban Legends, and Personal Accounts. Stories in the first two categories "are known or believed to be true". Urban legends "should be understood as the fables they are". Personal Accounts "are plausible but usually unverified". The also rates each of the first two categories as Confirmed by Darwin, meaning multiple credile sources, or Unconfimred by Darwin, for stories believed to be true but with fewer or unverifialbe sources. (Quotes from pages six and seven of The Darwin Awards.)

SteveM

Lightsabre fuel duels

[CdBee]

I can warrant for this one, it happpened 100 metres from my house in Hertfordshire, UK

Re:Fool me twice...

[lessthan]

The article linked is to the Darwin Awards website, which verifies all its winners. the articles you linked are for the chain-mails that make the rounds. why did you do this?

Re:Fool me twice...

[heyitsgogi]

From snopes.com: The various "Annual Darwin Awards" e-mails (such as the one which is the topic of this article) do not originate with DarwinAwards.com; they are put together by unknown persons. -- snopes asserts that the website is legit.

I believe!

[beaverfever]

They do claim these are true stories. I can attest for at least one of them [darwinawards.com]. The 1996 silly-sad tale of the lawyer jumping against the windows in the skyscraper office where he worked was in many Toronto news sources at the time. Where this event occurred is a very busy area, so there were plenty of witnesses.

It was later that same year when I heard of the Darwin awards, as someone mentioned that this well-known story was nominated.

Re:Fool me twice...

[kirun]

You may well have read some article assuming they were the same, there are rather too many "journalists" who get all excited when they think they can steal something off the Internet in place of doing real work. The Darwin Awards aren't the only ones suffering from this problem, the True Stella Awards [stellaawards.com] site often gets listed as the source for the bogus Stella Awards email.

Re:Wait a minute

[n0dna]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/hert s/4575291.stm [bbc.co.uk]

I guess if I couldn't work google, I'd post AC too.

Mountaneering and other "Extreme Sports" exempted.

[Ellis D. Tripp]

From the Darwin Awards rules page at:

http://darwinawards.com/rules/rules2.html [darwinawards.com]

"Those who participate in extreme sports are not automatically eligible, as they knowingly assume an increased risk of death. They are, in a sense, correctly applying their judgment that the entertainment is worth the risk. However bizarre the sport, an additional misapplication of judgment must be present in order for the deceased to qualify for a Darwin Award."

Re:Not so funny candidate--Christine Boskoff

[canajin56]

Read that article more carefully. It wasn't a thunderstorm. He hit some power lines with his kite, which the "article" says is like Franklin because power lines are sort of like an artificial thunder storm ;)

Re:Posthumous Award.....

[nomadic]

your body will tell you when you are doing something you shouldn't be doing. To over-hydrate and not know it is baloney

I strenuously disagree. Death by over-hydration happens frequently because people don't realize they're overhydrated. The symptoms of overhydration are similar to those for a lot of other medical conditions (bizarrely, a lot of them mimic the symptoms for dehydration).

Real news

[Propaganda13]

I prefer http://newsoftheweird.com/ [newsoftheweird.com] These are taken from newspapers around the world. When I found the site, I did double check several stories to determine that they were printed in actual newspapers.

Scooped! Arghhh.

[Web Goddess]

I was scooped on my own story! I was so looking forward to submitting the 2006 Darwin Awards to /. But thanks for turning your minds towards the honorable deaths of these men and women... well OK mostly men... whose heroic self-sacrifice improves our gene pool.

We owe the winners a debt of gratitude!

Here's what it looks like to be slashdotted: In the past seventeen hours, my top referers are:

        646 www.bluesnews.com
        649 www.fazed.org
        659 b2.is
        941 www.b2.is
        967 fazed.net
      1124 www.fark.com
      1271 www.g4tv.com
      1279 www.uniquepeek.com
      1391 reddit.com
      1951 www.google.com
      2197 www.fazed.net
      2244 www.flabber.nl
      2487 i-am-bored.com
      2594 meneame.net
      8009 www.i-am-bored.com
    56796 slashdot.org

So far, 1,528,483 total hits, 10x more than my weekend average. The server seems like it's ho0lding up fine (any complaints?) -- THANK YOU, LMI.NET!

Wendy

Re:Fool me twice...

[Web Goddess]

Darwin Awards Condoms: Keep yourself out of the gene pool.

My website has some cruft; however, I do my best to sort truth from fiction. And remember, I've improved over the years, and so has Internet-accessible news.

There was this one time I was fooled "backwards" over a story I KNEW was an Urban Legend. It happened in the ocean off Pee Wee beach, near Darwin, Australia. The woman (a woman!) supposedly drank a case of beer before submerging to give head to her boyfriend... and never came back up. The man's lawyer was supposedly named Ms. Cox, and his last name was Payne. Plus the identical story was submitted hundreds of times. Urban legend for sure!

A few years later... a few people have written to say the story is true, but you know, Pee Wee Beach? Ms. Cox? I still think it's an urban legend, until the Australian court reporter launches himself at me, irate, defamation of his reputation, something like that... Oops!

Who knew?

I have only quite recently started to link to the original submissions. But since late 2001, anyone can search the Slush Pile / Reject Pile and find the original sources. I try my very best to not alter facts, and to incorporate all the relevant facts, but well... sometimes I err on colorful ways of expressing things, or say what he might have been "thinking" which of course no one can know.

Darwin Awards: The tree of life is self-pruning.