Chemistry gone to her head

It was a cold but sunny February afternoon. Lidia, a biology teacher from Sofia, was driving two friends home from a memorial service. Suddenly the vehicle stopped. Bystanders saw all three occupants dash from the car to a nearby manhole, and start pouring down liquids and powders from various bottles and jars.Apparently, the biology teacher had been performing chemistry experiments in her free time, and had some leftover noxious chemicals. It is still not entirely clear what the chemicals were, but two of the bottles were labelled diethyl ether and methanol, both highly flammable substances. The former is also used as a sedative, so one explanation for their actions is that they felt dizzy from the ether vapors and thought it was a good idea to pour them in the sewer.

As it turns out, a good idea it definitely was not. The cocktail of flammable substances in the enclosed space of the sewer caused an explosion so powerful that it launched the manhole cover into the air, decapitating the (briefly) surprised Lidia. Left without a head on her shoulders, she decided it was time to kick the bucket.

The other two people were not left unharmed, but were alive. They were taken to the hospital with burns on their faces. They may not regain their eyesight, but hopefully will be able to speak clearly enough to tell their children that tossing random chemicals down the drain is not as wise as it might at first appear.

Ski Theft backfires

Matthew and his friends were sliding down a Mammoth Mountain ski run on a foam pad at 3am, when he crashed into a lift tower and died. His makeshift sledge of yellow foam had been stolen from the legs of a lift tower on Stump Alley. The cushion is meant to protect skiers who hit the tower, and the tower Matthew ran into was the one from which he had created his sledge. There’s a moral in there somewhere.

Gone Fishin’

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.

In a related story, on January 9 the China Post reported that a 23-year-old Pingtung man died after eating fish he poisoned in a nearby ditch. Three days of diarrhea and vomiting led to his demise after he ate fish he caught by pouring toxic chemicals in the water at the suggestion of friends.

Lawyers Aloft

Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane of glass with his shoulder and plunged twenty-four floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry, thirty-nine, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower as he was explaining the strength of the building’s windows to visiting law students. Garry had previously conducted the demonstration of window strength without mishap, according to police reports. The managing partner of the law firm that employed the deceased told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Garry was “one of the best and brightest” members of the two-hundred-man association.

Prison Escape

December 1997, Pennsylvania  |   A prisoner in the new Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh attempted to evade his punishment by engineering an escape from his confinement. Jerome constructed a hundred-foot rope of bedsheets, broke through a supposedly shatter-proof cell window, and began to climb to freedom down his makeshift ladder.It is not known whether his plan took into account the curiosity of drivers on the busy street and Liberty Bridge below. It certainly did not take into account the sharp edges of the glass, the worn nature of the bedsheet, or the great distance to the pavement. The bottom of the knotted bedsheet was eighty-six feet short of the ground. But our hero did not reach the end of his rope. The windowpane sliced through the weak cloth and dropped him to his untidy demise 150 feet below.

But wait, there’s more!

Apparently the jailhouse rumor of the previous death did not reach a prisoner who was awaiting transfer to a federal penitentiary one year later. He tied eight bedsheets together and rappelled from his seventh-floor window, only to find that the rope fell twenty-five feet short of the ground. Luckier than Jerome, he merely fractured his ankle and scraped his face.

Man Vs goldfish

(29 January 1998, Ohio) Hungry or just plain stupid? Wednesday was a fateful day for Michael. He was shooting the breeze with a group of buddies, watching a friend clean his fish tank, when the friend complained that one specimen in particular had become a fishy menace. It had outgrown the tank, and was eating other denizens of the aquatic community.

Michael volunteered to assist. He seized the five-inch fish and attempted to swallow it. Unfortunately, the fish continued its predatory ways by sticking in his craw. As he gasped futilely for breath, turned blue, and sank to his knees, his three friends realized that something was amiss. They phoned 911 and informed the dispatcher that Michael had eaten some fish, and was having trouble breathing.

Paramedics were quickly dispatched, and they arrived to find the fish tail still protruding from the victim’s mouth. Despite their best efforts neither the fish nor the twenty-three-year-old could be resuscitated. The killer fish had claimed one last victim.

“If I dare you to jump off a bridge and you do it, you’re stupid,” Police Major Mike Matulavich said. Apparently Michael was not a victim, he was just another Darwin Awards contender.

Armed Hold up

(20 March 2000, Niedersachsen, Germany) When the masked man stormed into the Volksbank and demanded money, the teller complied. Like a child demanding candy, the robber held his bag open with both hands and waited for the cash. Now any fool knows you can’t hold a heavy bag of money and a gun at the same time, so he put the weapon away for a moment. The teller seized his chance and seized the gun, and suddenly the tables had turned. The confused robber raised his arm and, forgetting that his gun was missing, menaced the teller with his index finger. When the robber realized that his situation was not as strong as he had anticipated, he fled the bank on an old bike with pink protection sheet metal. The police are hunting for the man, but they have to take care. He his armed — with his forefinger.

More at www.darwinawards.com.au

Failed frame Up

 ”Unusual” and “complicated” is how the Missaukee County sheriff described the mysterious death of 19-year-old Christopher.After an evening spent imbibing large quantities of alcohol, Christopher noticed a shortage in his liquor supply that could not be attributed to his own depredations. He concluded that his neighbor had stolen a bottle of booze! He menaced the neighbor with a knife, to no avail, whereupon he retired to his own apartment to brood about revenge.

Finally he figured out the perfect way to get back at that conniving bottle-thief: Christopher would stab himself and blame the neighbor!

A witness saw Christopher enter the bathroom as he called 911. He calmly informed the dispatcher that his neighbor had stabbed him. Witnesses said he looked fine when he emerged from the bathroom, but a moment later gouts of blood spewed from his chest. Suddenly he began screaming begging for help. The dispatcher heard a woman shout, “Why did you do this?” He collapsed at the door of his apartment.

Deputies arrived quickly, but Christopher had already bled to death from self-inflicted stab wounds to his chest. An autopsy determined that he had stabbed himself in the chest twice. The first wound apparently didn’t look dangerous enough, so he tried again. The second time, the knife plunged into his left ventricle. This wound was plenty dangerous: he had only two minutes to live.

Christopher died in vain. His deathbed accusation of his neighbor failed, as a witness confirmed that the neighbor was not in the apartment. All Christopher got for revenge was an accidental death sentence.

From The Darwin Awards

Darwin Awards-Grenade Juggler

(May 2001, Croatia) A college student dropped the ball when a hand grenade exploded while he juggled it at a party in Vidovci. Six students watching him were also injured. A spectator is usually disqualified from winning a Darwin Award caused by another’s idiocy, but this audience should have known better than to gape at a man juggling explosives. The six onlookers earn Honorable Mentions for their disregard of common sense, and the juggler wins a Darwin for his lethal stupidity.