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1999 Personal Accounts
| The Darwin Awards salutes the spirit portrayed in the following personal accounts, submitted by loyal (and sometimes deceased) readers. |
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What a Gas!
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(July 1999) Maybe it's time to start beefing up those Driver Education classes offered in American high schools. This story is about a man who was unfamiliar with one of the basic principles of locomotion: gasoline is flammable. This young man, somewhere in rural America, was having trouble starting his car one icy winter day. He checked the fuel system and discovered that the carburetor was clogged with a condensate of frozen water particles. He figured that the best way to solve this problem was to heat a quantity of fuel in a tin bucket on his kitchen stove, then pour the piping hot gasoline into the gas tank to thaw the system. Needless to say, since the flash point of gasoline is 65 degrees Celsius, the gasoline was quickly set ablaze and the fire spread throughout the kitchen. The man was torched, but survived after treatment for severe burns. This story was REALLY reported on the Tonight Show, I swear! But since it was as long ago as 1993, I don't remember 100% of the details. |
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Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection
Hardback. 240 pages. Autographed.$15 A fresh collection of magnificent misadventures! Lust, Vanity, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, and Wrath extract an evolutionary toll on the wicked. Salute the owner of an equipment training school who demonstrates the dangers of driving a forklift by failing to survive the filming of his own safety video. Witness the man who becomes a victim of his own strange passion for jumping into rivers. Heed the honest bricklayer who loses a battle of wits with 300 pounds of tools. This book includes more History of the Awards, Gordon's Law, and 10 discussions of evolution, including speciation and the role of verbal memes in civilization. Autographed by Author! |
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