You all know about the Darwin Awards - It's an annual honor given to the person who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.

And this year's nominee is (drum roll, please):

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal, embedded into the side of a cliff running above a strip of highway, at the apex of a curve.

The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was actually the remains of a car. The type of car, however, was unidentifiable at the scene.

The crackerjack police crime lab, after much pondering and computing of highly improbable and annoyingly complex physics formulas, finally figured out what it was and the details of what had happened.

It seems that the driver of the car had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit - as in, Jet Assisted Take Off - which is actually a solid fuel = rocket used to give heavy military transport planes an extra "push" for taking off from short airfields. He had then driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road, attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed, and fired it off.

Silly boy.

The facts as best as could be determined by what little was left of him, are that the operator of the former 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.9 miles from the final crash site. This was determined by the very prominent, and somewhat smelly, scorched and melted asphalt at that location.

If operating properly, the JATO would have reached "maximum thrust" within 5 seconds after ignition, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph, and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 short but certainly harrowing seconds.

At this point, the driver, now pilot, and soon-to-be cadaver, would be experiencing g-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 pilots under full afterburner blowout, and reducing him to nearly two-dimensional status for the rest of the ride.

However, the trusty Impala managed to remain on the highway for an additional 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds in rocket travel time) before the driver, in a nearly superhuman (and superstupid) effort to stop the car, applied the brakes. Not completely un-like ice cream on a hot summer day, the brakes immediately melted, and the tires subsequently blew, leaving thick streaks of steamy rubber on the road surface. The Impala, now without either brakes or wheels, and therefore . . . airborne . . . . continued for an additional 1.4 screaming miles of fun, before impacting a cliff face at an amazing height of 125 feet, leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.

Sadly, but not unbelievably, most of the driver's remains were not recoverable. However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted painstakingly from the smoking crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

All in all, about enough to fill a maraca.

(So remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.)

More Darwin Awards: These are nearly always granted posthumously. This citation is bestowed upon (the remains of) that individual, who through single-minded self-sacrifice, has done the most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool.

[San Jose Mercury News]
An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former girlfriend's windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.

[Hickory Daily Record, 12-21-92]
Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, N. C., when, awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson .38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.

[News of the Weird, 18 May 93, San Jose Mercury News]
A 24-year-old salesman from Hialeah, Fla., was killed near Lantana, Fla., in March when his car smashed into a pole in the median strip of Interstate 95 in the middle of the afternoon. Police said that the man was traveling at 80 MPH and, judging by the sales manual that was found open and clutched to his chest, had been busy reading.

[Reuters, 25 March 1993]
A Vapid Death
A terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by his own gas. There was no mark on his body but autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage (and a couple other things). It was just the right combination of foods.

It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing from the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows opened it wouldn't have been fatal but the man was shut up in his near airtight bedroom. He was ``...a big man with a huge capacity for creating [this deadly gas].'' Three of the rescue workers got sick and one was hospitalized.

[Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario]
Man slips, falls 23 stories to his death.
A man cleaning a bird feeder on his balcony of his fell 23 stories to his death, police said Monday.

Stephen Macko was cleaning the bird feeder on his balcony when he accident occurred, said Inspector D'Arcy Honer of the Peel regional police.

"It appears the chair moved and he went over the balcony," Honer said. "It's one of those freak accidents. No foul play is suspected."

[UPI, Toronto]
Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law students.

Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports. Peter Lauwers, managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was ``one of the best and brightest'' members of the 200-man association.

[AP, Cairo, Egypt, 31 Aug 1995] CAIRO, Egypt (AP)
Six people drowned Monday while trying to rescue a chicken that had fallen into a well in southern Egypt.

An 18-year-old farmer was the first to descend into the 60-foot well. He drowned, apparently after an undercurrent in the water pulled him down, police said.

His sister and two brothers, none of whom could swim well, went in one by one to help him, but also drowned. Two elderly farmers then came to help, but they apparently were pulled down by the same undercurrent.

The bodies of the six were later pulled out of the well in the village of Nazlat Imara, 240 miles south of Cairo.

The chicken was also pulled out. It survived.