1997 DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE
MENTIONS (I.E. Non-fatalities):
Gulf Breeze, Florida, three unidentified teenage males were using a home video
camera to film an action/adventure "movie" one of the boys had written. In
a scene that called for each character to be ignited by fire, the "special
effects coordinator," age 15, prepared the "stunt" youth by dousing lighter
fluid onto his clothes. The intentional fire, which proved unexpectedly difficult to
extinguish, left the young man with third degree burns on his left arm, torso, and
both legs. It was all captured on film.
In Bradford, PA, J. Cruwe, 28, caught a small snake in a container which he handed
to his wife. She opened the container and, startled to see the snake, dropped it. The
excited and poisonous snake immediately bit Mr. Cruwe on the shin. Mr Cruwe survived
the wound and recovered after a short visit to the local emergency room.
In rural Carbon County, PA, a group of men were drinking beer and discharging firearms
from the rear deck of a home owned by Irving Michaels, age 27. The men were
firing at a raccoon that was wandering by, but the beer apparently impaired their
aim and, despite of the estimated 35shots the group fired, the animal escaped into a 3
foot diameter drainage pipe some 100 feet away from Mr.Michaels' deck.
Determined to terminate the animal, Mr. Michaels retrieved a can of gasoline and poured
some down the pipe, intending to smoke the animal out. After several unsuccessful
attempts to ignite the fuel, Michaels emptied the entire 5gallon fuel can down the pipe
and tried to ignite it again, to no avail. Not one to admit defeat by wildlife, the
determined Mr. Michaels proceeded to slide feet-first approximately 15 feet down the
sloping pipe to toss the match. The subsequent rapidly expanding fireball propelled
Mr. Michaels back the way he had come, though at a much higher rate of speed. He
exited the angled pipe "like a Polaris missile leaves a submarine," according to
witness Joseph McFadden, 31. Mr. Michaels was launched directly over his own home, right
over the heads of his astonished friends, onto his front lawn. In all, he
traveled over 200 feet through the air. "There was a Doppler Effect to his
scream as he flew over us," McFadden reported, "followed by a loud
thud." Amazingly, he suffered only minor injuries. "It was actually pretty
cool," Michaels said, "Like when they shoot someone out of a cannon at the
circus. I'd do it again if I was sure I wouldn't get hurt."
TACOMA, WA - Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends whenone of them
said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from the middle of the Tacoma Narrows
Bridge. The conversation grew more heated and at least 10 men trooped along the
walkway of the bridge at 4:30a.m. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they
discovered that no one had brought bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking,
volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby. One end of
the cable was secured around Bingham's leg and the other end was tied to the bridge.
His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and pulled his foot off at the
ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the frigid waters of the Tacoma
Narrows and Puget Sound and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. "All I can
say," said Bingham, "Is that God was watching out for me on that night.
There's just no other explanation for it." Bingham's severed foot was
never located.
Earlier this year, the dazed crew of a Japanese trawler were plucked out of the Sea
of Japan clinging to the wreckage of their sunken ship. Their rescue, however,
was followed by immediate imprisonment
once authorities questioned the sailors on their ship's loss. To a man they claimed
that a cow, falling out of a clear blue sky, had struckthe trawler amidships,
shattering its hull and sinking the vessel within minutes. They remained in prison
for several weeks, until the Russian Air Force reluctantly informed Japanese
authorities that the crew of one of its cargo planes had apparently stolen a cow
wandering at the edge of a Siberian airfield, forced the cow into the plane's hold
and hastily taken off for home. Unprepared for live cargo, the Russian crew was
ill-equipped to manage a now rampaging cow within its hold. To save the
aircraft and themselves, they shoved the animal out of the cargo hold as they
crossed the Sea of Japan at an altitude of 30,000 feet.
While I don't particularly 'like' insurance
companies, this story appeals to me. I also am not happy about lawyers and courts
who make a mockery of human decency and intelligence by filing...and often
winning...absurd cases.
A Charlotte, North Carolina man, having purchased a box of 24 rare and very expensive
cigars, insured them against... fire. Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile
of fabulous cigars, and having yet to make a single premium payment on the policy, the man
filed a claim against theinsurance company. In his claim, the man stated that he had lost
the cigars in "a series of small fires." The insurance company refused to
pay, citing the obvious reason: that the man had consumed the cigars in a normal
fashion. The man sued, and won. In delivering his ruling, the judge stated that the
man held a policy from the company in which it was warranted that the cigars were
insurable. The company, in the policy, had also guaranteed that it would insure the
cigars against fire,without defining what it considered to be "unacceptable
fire,"and so, the company was obligated to compensate the insured for his loss.
Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the
judge's ruling and paid the man $15,000 for the rare cigars he had lost in "the
fires." However, shortly after the man cashed his check, the insurance company had
him arrested on 24 counts of arson. With his own insurance claim and testimony from
the previous case used as evidence against him, the man was convicted of intentionally
burning the rare cigars and sentenced to 24consecutive one-year prison terms.
