1998 DARWIN AWARDS
======================

They have finally been released!  For those not familiar with the Darwin
Award - It's an annual honor given to the person who provided the
universal human gene pool the biggest service by getting killed in the
most extraordinarily stupid way.  As always, competition this year has
been keen.

Some candidates appear to have trained their whole lives for this event!

DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES
   1.  In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned
in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide
sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
   2.  In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally
zoned when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged off a
200-foot-high cliff on his daily run.
   3.  Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he
had dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it.  Beachgoers said
Daniel Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and
had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon when
it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand.  People on the beach,
on the Outer Banks, used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their
way to Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, VA, but could not reach him.  It
took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him
while about 200 people looked on. Jones was pronounced dead at a
hospital.
   4.  In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as
he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was
burglarizing.  Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed
in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of his skull
as he hit the floor.
   5.  According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick
Berrena, 20, was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey
Hoffman, 23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate
the flakvest Berrena was wearing.
   6.  Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville,
Del., as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver
loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.
   7.  In February, according to police in Windsor, Ontario, Daniel
Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus
earning a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their
snowmobiles.
   8.  In September, a 7-year-old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff
near Ozark, Ark, after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked
the spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990.

DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTIONS
   1.  In Guthrie, Okla , in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a
millipede with a shot from his 22-caliber rifle, but the bullet
ricocheted off a rock near the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in the
head, fracturing his skull.
   2.  In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean
out cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a
propane torch and caused a fire that burned the first and second floors
of his house.
   3.  Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, in
September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick
of dynamite that blew up in their car.  While driving around at 2 AM,
the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to
see what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that the
window was closed.
   4.  Taking "Amateur Night" Too Far: In Betulia, Colombia, an annual
festival in November includes five days of amateur bullfighting.  This
year, no bull was killed, but dozens of matadors were injured, including
one gored in the head and one Bobbittized.  Said one participant, "It's
just one bull against [a town of] a thousand Morons."

AND THE WINNER:

PADERBORN, GERMANY - Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt fed his
constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a
bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm
finally let fly - and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop!
Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the
ailing elephant an olive-oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on
him like a dump truck full of mud.  "The sheer force of the elephant's
unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground, where he
struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued
to evacuate his bowels on top of him," said flabbergasted Paderborn
police detective Erik Dern.  "With no one there to help him, he lay
under all that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came along,
and during that time he suffocated.  It seems to be just one of those
freak accidents.