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Darwin Awards [1996]

These awards are given each year to bestow 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.

1996 Darwin Award Nominees

(1996, Toronto) 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.

(1996, Mississauga Canada) Man slips, falls 23 stories to his death. A man cleaning a bird feeder on his balcony of his condominium apartment in this Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death, police said Monday. Stefan Macko, 55, was standing on a wheeled chair Sunday when the 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."

(4 December 1996, Indiana) A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzleloader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's investigators said. Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber muzzleloader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.

(11 October 1996, New York) A teenager was crushed to death by his pet python after he had failed to keep the snake properly fed, police reported. Grant Williams, 19, was found unconscious in a pool of blood, the life practically squeezed out of him by a 12ft Burmese python named Damien, which was still wrapped over his body. The snake had been given nothing more than a single dead chicken in the past week and may have been crazed by hunger.
Mr Williams was found in the hallway. He may have been trying to escape the flat to summon help. Medical orderlies summoned the strength of body and of mind to lift the 45lb, 5in-thick python off Mr Williams and hurl it into an adjacent room, but the snake lover died in hospital. At the time of the attack, Mr Williams was preparing to feed Damien a live chicken. It is possible that the python, peckish, opted for the larger prey. When on the brink of a kill, the Burmese python (Molorus bivattatus) can move with deadly speed, and there are few creatures able to escape its grasp.

Mr Williams may have suspected that his familiarity with Damien placed him above danger, but a hungry python does not quibble about such niceties. Captain Thomas Kelly, from the 46th precinct, said: "It looks accidental." Mr Williams and his brother kept a number of snakes, many uncaged, in their Bronx flat. The dead man's mother, Carmelita Williams, said that she had tried to persuade her son to abandon his hobby. "I begged him to get rid of the python," she said, weeping. "I even threatened to call the police."

Damien was last night caged at an animal control centre, after being fed. Its fate is uncertain.

Remember the tragic death of two small boys who drowned when the car they were in rolled down a boat ramp into a lake? Their mother Susan Smith was convicted of their murder. The lake has become a shrine for visitors. A family visiting the lake drove up to the boat ramp but forgot to set the parking brake. The car rolled into the lake, drowning two adults and two children.

1996 Darwin Awards Runner-Up

(2 January 1996, India) A tiger killed one man and mauled another at the Calcutta zoo yesterday when they tried to put a marigold garland around its neck in a New Year's greeting.
Prakesh Tiwari, the dead man, and Suresh Rai had been drinking before they bought the floral garlands and crossed the moat around the tiger's enclosure, authorities said. "I was shocked to see the two young men weaving about in front of a tiger with garlands in their hands, " said Rakesh Banerjee, who witnessed the attack that triggered panic and a near stampede in the zoo.

The men, both in their 20's, were trying to put the garland on a 13-year old
male Royal Bengal tiger named "Shiva" after the Hindu god of destruction. When Rai threw the garland around Shiva's neck, the tiger attacked him. His friend Tiwari intervened, kicking the tiger in the face. The tiger released Rai, and attacked and killed Tiwari.
"I saw it all; the tiger turned and jumped on the other young man and put its head on the man's neck, and within moments, the man was apparently dead, his head dangling," Banerjee said.

The two were reportedly devotees of the goddess Durga and had gone to "worship" the tiger. Immediately after the incident, an angry crowd went on a stone-pelting spree in which two children and a woman were injured.

1996 Darwin Awards Winner

Some men will got to extraordinary lengths to prove how macho they are. Frenchman Pierre Pumpille recently shunted a stationary car two feet by headbutting it. "Women thought I was a god," he explained from his hospital bed.
Deity or not, however, Pumpille is a veritable girl's blouse compared to Polish farmer Krystof Azninski, who staked a strong claim to being Europe's most macho man by cutting off his own head in 1995. Azninski, 30, had been drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and play some "men's games". Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen turnips, but then one man upped the ante by seizing a chainsaw and cutting off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and, shouting "Watch this then," je swung at his own head and chopped it off.

"It's funny," said one companion, "when he was young he put on his sister's underwear. But he died like a man."

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