[osreb]

These annual honors are given to the persons who did the human gene pool
the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.

You may recall that last year's winner was killed by a Coke machine that toppled over on him
as he was trying to tip a free soda out.

This year's winner was a genuine Rocket Scientist...no jive!
Read on..and remember that each and every one of these is a true story.
The nominees were:



Semifinalist #1

A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk
cheaply because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed
gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and
he vomited into the fireplace in his house. The resulting explosion and
fire burned his house down, killing both he and his sister.

Semifinalist #2

Three Brazilian men were in a light aircraft at low altitude
when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the
occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and
crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants
around their ankles.

Semifinalist #3

A 22-year-old Virginia man was found dead after he tried to use
octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle. Fairfax
County police said Eric Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of
these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the
other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the
pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators
think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. "The length of
the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the
trestle and the concrete," Carmichael said. Police say the apparent
cause of death was "Major trauma."

Semifinalist #4

A man in Alabama died from numerous rattlesnake bites. He and a
friend had been playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a
ball. The friend - no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate - was
hospitalized but lived.

Semifinalist #5

Employees in a warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a
gas leak. Management ordered people to evacuate the building,
extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc.
After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas
company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had
difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the
lights worked. Witnesses later described seeing one of the technicians
reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a
cigarette lighter. Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas
in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away.
Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually
untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the
blast had never been thought of as ''especially bright'' by his peers.


And now the winner of this year's Darwin Award; as always,
awarded posthumously;

THE 2011 WINNER!

Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal
embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a
curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was
a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene.

Police investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An
amateur rocket scientist had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet
Assisted Take Off...actually a solid-fuel rocket) that is used to give
heavy military transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from
short airfields. He had driven his 1967 Chevy Impala into the desert and
found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to the
car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO.

The facts that could be determined are that the operator of the
Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of about three miles from the
crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at
that location.

The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum
thrust within five seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in
excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25
seconds.

The driver, and soon-to-be pilot, would have experienced
G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full
afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the
event.
However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for
about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely
melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on
the road surface, then becoming airborne for 1.4 miles and impacting the
cliff face at a height of 125 feet, leaving a blackened crater 3 feet
deep in the rock. Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a
ground speed of approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not
actually on the ground.

Really.....we can't make this stuff up.
+++++++++++++++