Strange and Amusing Stories #.1

I asked Google Search Engine to find me  some strange and funny stories. They gave me:LeftWingWacko.com.
What a great site (At least for me).




It is once again time to vote for-the Darwin Award nominees for 1997. As you may already know, the Darwin Awards are for those nominees who will not be contributing to the gene pool (thankfully).


The 1997 nominees are:


NOMINEE No.1: [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.


NOMINEE No.2 [Kalamazoo Gazette]
James Burns, 34, of Alamo,Mich., was killed in March as he was trying to repair what. police described as a "farm-type truck." Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Bums hung underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise. Burns' clothes caught on something, however, and
the other man found Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft."


NOMINEE No.3 [Hickory Daily Record]
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.


NOMINEE No.4 [UIPI, 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 Lawyers, 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.


NOMINEE No.5 [Bloomburg News Service]
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 of other things). It was just the right combination of foods. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows been opened, it wouldn't have been fatal. But the man was shut,up in his, near airtight bedroom. According to the article, "He was a big man with a huge capacity for
creating "this deadly gas." Three of the rescuers got sick and one was hospitalized.


NOMINEE No..6 [The News of the Weird.]
Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously. He had spent several years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison. Whilst sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.


NOMINEE NO.7["The. Indianapolis Star"]
A cigarette lighter may have triggered fatal explosion - Dunkirk,Indiana. A Jay COunty man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriffs 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 muzzle loader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.


NOMINEE No.8 lAP, St. Louis]
Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it in his mouth, and walked out without paying for it. Police found him unconscious in front of the store; paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat, where it had choked him to death.


NOMINEE No.9 [Unknown]
To poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock-and was killed instantly when it fell on him.


NOMINEE No.10 [Associated Press, Kincaid] Blasting Cap Explodes in Man's Mouth at Party. A man at a party popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down, triggering an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth, and tougue state police said Wednesday. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during a party late Tuesday night, said Cpl. M.D.Payne. Another man had it in an aquarium hooked to a battery, and was trying to explode it," Payne said. "It wouldn't go off and this guy said, 'I'II show you how to set it off."


Yet Another Darwin award candidate - or pair of candidates -- this just might be the winner!


Police in George, WA issued a report on the events leading up to the deaths of Robert Uhlenake (24) and his friend, Ormond D. Young (27) at the Metallica concert last Friday. Uhlenake and Young were found dead at the Gorge Amphitheater after the show.


Uhlenake was near a pickup that was on top of Young at the bottom of a 20 ft drop. Young was found with severe lacerations, numerous fractures, contusions, and a branch in his anal cavity. He also had been stabbed and his pants were in a tree above him, some 15 ft off the ground adding to the mystery of the heretofore unexplained scene.


According to Commissioner-In-Charge Inoye Appleton, Uhlenake and Young had tried to get tickets for the sold-out concert. When they were unable to get any tickets, the two decided to stay in the lot and drink.


Once the show began, and after the two had consumed 18 beers between the two of them, they hit upon the idea of scaling the 7 foot wooden security fence around the perimeter of the site and sneak in.


They apparently moved the truck up to the edge of the fence and decided that Young would go over first and assist Uhlenake later. They had not counted on the fact that while it was a 7 foot fence on the parking lot side, there was a 23 foot drop on the other side.


Young, who weighed 255 lbs and was quite inebriated, had jumped up and over the fence and promptly fell about half the 23 foot distance before a large tree branch broke his fall AND his left forearm; unfortunately, he also managed to get his shorts caught on the branch.


Since he was now in a lot of pain and with no way to extricate himself and his shorts from the tree, he decided, seeing bushes down below, to cut his shorts off and fall to the ground. Upon cutting the last bit of fabric from himself, he suddenly plummeted to earth, losing grip of the knife. The "soft" bushes were actually holly bushes and landing in them caused a massive number of cuts. He also had the misfortune of landing squarely on a holly bush branch; effectively impaling himself.


The knife, which he had accidentally released 15 ft up, now landed and stabbed him in his left thigh. Apparently, he was in a lot of pain. Enter his friend Robert. Uhlenake had apparently observed the last bit of this and, despite his inebriated state, realized that Young was in trouble.


He hit upon the idea of lowering a rope to his friend and pull him up and over the fence. This was complicated by the fact that Uhlenake was outweighed by his friend by a good 100 lbs.


Again, despite his state he realized he could use their truck to pull Young out. Unfortunately, because of his state, Uhlenake put the truck in reverse, rather than drive, broke through the fence, landed on Young (killing him). Uhlenake was thrown out of the truck and subsequently died of internal injuries.


"So that's how a dead 255 lb man with no pants on, with a truck on top of him and a stick up his ass came to be" said Commissioner Appleton.