And The Darwn Award Goes To...

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Here they are, 1999’s finest!!!! With people like this still
swimming around in the shallow end of the gene pool, you have nothing to worry about!

One of the long awaited moments of each new year is the
awarding of the Darwin Award. This prestigious award recognizes those people, who through
stupid and insane actions kill themselves, thus improving society by removing their genes from the gene pool. So
here are the runners-up for this year’s award.

(15 July 1999, Alabama) A 25-year-old soldier died of injuries
sustained from a 3-story fall, precipitated by his attempt to spit
farther than his buddy. His plan was to hurl himself towards a metal guardrail while expectorating, in order to add
momentum to his saliva. In a tragic miscalculation, his momentum carried him right over the railing, which he
caught hold of for a few moments before his grip slipped, sending him plummeting 24 feet to the cement below.
The military
specialist had a blood alcohol content of 0.14%, impairing his judgment and paving the way for his opportunity to
win a Darwin Award.

(11 August 1999) A 42-year-old man killed himself
watching the eclipse while driving near Kaiserslautern, Germany. A witness driving behind him stated that the
man was weaving back and forth as he accelerated and hit the bridge pier. He had apparently just donned his
solar viewers, which are dark enough to totally obscure everything except the sun.

(25 May 1999, Ukraine) A fisherman in Kiev electrocuted
himself while fishing in the river Tereblya. The 43-year-old man connected cables to the main power supply of his
home, and trailed the end into the river. The electric shock killed the fish, which floated belly-up to the top of the
water. The man waded in to collect his catch, neglecting to remove the
live wire, and tragically suffered the same fate as the fish. In
an ironic twist, the man was fishing for a mourning meal to commemorate the first anniversary of his
mother-in-law’s death.

(16 August 1999, Germany) A hunter from Bad Urach was shot dead by his own dog on Monday. The 51-year-old
man was found
sprawled next to his car in the Black Forest. A gun barrel was pointing out the window, and
his bereaved dog was howling inside the car. The animal is
presumed to have pressed the trigger with its paw. Police have ruled out foul play.

(1991, Nicosia, Cypress) Under similar circumstances,
an Iranian hunter was shot to death near Tehran by a snake that coiled around his shotgun as he pinned the
reptile to the ground. Another hunter reported that the victim, named Ali, tried to catch the snake alive by
pressing the butt of his shotgun behind its head. The snake coiled around the butt
and pulled the trigger, shooting Ali in the head.

(August 1999, Australia) Drinking oneself to death need
not be a long lingering process. Allan, a 33-year-old computer technician, showed his competitive spirit by dying
of competitive spirits. A Sydney, Australia hotel bar held a drinking competition, known as Feral Friday,
with a100-minute time limit and a sliding point scale ranging from
1 point for beer to 8 points for hard liquor. Allan stood and cheered his winning total of 236, (winners never quit!)
which had also netted him the literally staggering blood alcohol level of 0.353, 7 times greater than Australia’s
legal driving limit of 0.05%. After several trips to the usual temple of overindulgence, the bathroom, Allan was
helped back to his workplace to sleep it off, a condition that became permanent. A forensic pharmacologist
estimated that after downing 34 beers, 4 bourbons, and 17 shots of tequila within 1 hour and 40 minutes, his blood
alcohol level would have been 0.41 to 0.43, but Allan had vomited several times after the drinking stopped. The
cost paid by Allan was much higher than
that of the hotel, which was fined the equivalent of $13,100 US dollars for not intervening. It is not known whether
Allan required any
further embalming.

(28 January 1999, London) A flock of sheep charged a well-meaning British farmer’s wife and pushed her over a
cliff to her death. Betty Stobbs, 67, was charged by dozens of sheep as she brought them a bale of
hay on the back of a power bike. The sheep rushed forward and
rammed the vehicle, knocking Betty and her bike over the edge of a vacant 100' quarry near Durham, in
northeastern England. "I saw the sheep surround the bike. The next thing she was tumbling down the incline,"
neighbor Alan Renfry told reporters.

First Runner Up Award goes to: (22 March 1999, Phnom Penh) Decades of armed strife has
littered Cambodia with unexploded munitions and ordnance. Authorities warn citizens not to tamper with the
devices. Three friends recently spent an evening sharing drinks and exchanging insults at a local cafe in the
southeastern Province of Svay Rieng. Their companionable arguing continued for hours, until one man pulled out
a 25-year-old unexploded anti-tank mine found in his backyard. He tossed it under the table, and the three men
began playing Russian roulette, each tossing down a drink and then stamping on the mine. The other villagers
fled in terror. Minutes later, the explosive detonated with a tremendous boom, killing the three men in the bar.
"Their wives could not even find their flesh because the blast destroyed everything.