Stefan's Weblog

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.

Darwin Award Candidates

1. (21 December 1992, North Carolina) Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, 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.
2. (Zambia) A solo fishing expedition near Livingstone in Zambia turned into a tragedy when 28 year old Harris Simwaba was choked to death by a live fish which accidently slid and lodged itself into his throat. Simwaba hooked the fish from the Chungu River 16km east of Livingstone, the Zambian media reported yesterday. When he tried to bite the fish to death it slid down his throat. Simwaba tried to hook out the fish with a stick, but he pushed it further down his throat instead. Villagers going to their fields on Sunday morning found his body sprawled on the ground with a stick dangling from his mouth. The fish came out when one of the villagers pulled the stick out of Simwaba’s mouth.”
3. (1992, Tennessee) Nashville’s Pancake Pantry restaurant is well known throughout the music industry, not only for its great pancakes, but for its star-studded clientele as well. It is not uncommon for the Pantry’s sidewalk to be littered with long lines of customers waiting for breakfast and the chance to see a famous country star dining there. The man involved in this story may linger longer in our memories than the average country singer’s career. It seems one of the Pancake Pantry employees, noting how successful the place was, thought it would be a perfect place to rob. Early one morning, he climbed on the roof and reached the exhaust chute that hangs over the Pantry’s large flat grill. Upon inspection, the perpetrator realized that he couldn’t negotiate the tight passage fully dressed. He disrobed and slid down the exhaust chute naked. This was the last thing he ever did. Imagine the surprise of the opening crew for the restaurant that morning! As they prepared for the morning’s breakfast, they were horrified to find a pair of legs dangling just inches from the griddle. What happened to our would-be villain? It seems that the chute was so tight, there was no room for error. As he slid down the chute, he slipped and caught his own arm under his chin, where he stuck. He died by suffocating himself. Paul Bordenkircher says, “I share this story not because I heard it third-hand, or even second-hand. I report it because I saw the it on local TV news, including a full video of the grisly discovery hanging above the Pantry’s famous griddle.”