Story The Darwin Awards

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In the early 1900s, Paris-based tailor Franz Reichelt claimed to have invented a wearable parachute.
He believed in his invention so much, in fact, that he sought to test it by leaping off the Eiffel Tower.
On February 4, 1912 — despite prior tests with dummies yielding unsuccessful results and warnings from his friends not to be a dummy himself — Reichelt leaped off the Tower's first platform wearing his parachute suit. The parachute failed to deploy, and he plummeted nearly 200 feet to his death. The entire episode was filmed, and it's believed to be the first death caught on camera.

Pathe

 

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Death By Caviar
The gluttony of royalty throughout history has been pretty stupendous — Henry VIII was famously extremely greedy, and many suffered gout from over-indulgence — but Adolf Frederick, who reigned as king of Sweden in the 1700s, appears to have genuinely killed himself via a single excessive meal. Historians report that in 1771 he ate a feast of caviar, lavish amounts of seafood and sauerkraut, and a mind-boggling 14 servings of semla, a bun soaked in warm milk.

 

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Evil Feather

Falling deaths aren't all that uncommon, so why the Darwin Award?

In 2009, a middle-aged woman was walking a path along the top of a cliff when she spotted a feather on the ground. She went to pick it up, but the wind carried it over the guard railing set up to protect wanderers.

Any normal person would simply let the wind carry the feather away, but this woman had to have it. In her quest to capture the elusive feather, the woman toppled off the 80-foot cliff and died the next day from the head injury she sustained.

All we want to know is: Did she get the feather?

 

[maniac116]

GRIZZLY MAN' EATEN BY BEAR

Timothy Treadwell loved bears. The problem is, bears didn't love him nearly so much.

Blonde-haired and a trifle feminine, young Timmy loved animals as a boy, then overdosed on heroin as a young man, and subsequently devoted his adult life to living among bears. Every summer for 13 years he'd have a bush pilot drop him off amid the savage wilderness of Alaska's Katmai National Park to live among the giant grizzlies. He never got too close to them, but he made up names for them and sang songs for them and filmed them and claimed he loved them far more than he loved filthy humans and their stupid so-called "civilization."

But of course it was the end of the 13th year that would prove unlucky for the rabid bear enthusiast.

Timothy thought he understood bears. What he clearly failed to understand is that bears are highly capable of killing him, not to mention frequently more than willing to do so.

He stayed a week later than normal as the summer of 2003 started crashing into the Alaskan fall. During his final days, while he was camping out with his reputed girlfriend Amie Huguenard, he mentioned seeing a new bear that for some reason he didn't quite trust. Perhaps it was this new interloping brown bear that devoured Timothy and Amie on that fateful autumn morning as they screamed in vain. Treadwell's camera recorded the sound but not the video because the lens cap was still attached.

German director Werner Herzog turned Timothy's tragically ironic story into the brilliant 2006 documentary Grizzly Man. In the film, Herzog listens to the death audio on headphones and decides that not only shouldn't it be included in the film, the tape should be destroyed.

But it appears that the ultra-ghoulish soundtrack of Timothy and Amie's death has surfaced online. If you dare, you can hear Timothy and his girlfriend's dying screams here. WARNING: This audio is EXTREMELY upsetting:

[youtube ]

 

[maniac116]

Laughing to Death – Alex Mitchell, 1975

While watching a comedy sketch, Alex Mitchell found himself laughing uncontrollably for 25 minutes. Unfortunately, the laughter triggered a fatal heart attack.

 

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Helium Hi-jinx

As a kid, helium-filled balloons are irresistible. That awesome high-pitched squeaky voice is fun, if only for a few seconds.

College students Jason Ackerman and Sara Rydman decided to take the concept to a whole new level when they found a giant helium-filled advertisement balloon hanging from the outside of their apartment building. They pulled the huge balloon down to climb inside, thinking they'd have loads of fun.

The pair had apparently not realized that a few breaths of helium will cause a killer headache, and a few minutes of steady helium-breathing will kill you. Despite being at least partially college-educated, they overlooked the fact that oxygen is a necessary part of breathing. At least they died laughing.

 

[maniac116]

Water Intoxication – Jennifer Strange, 2007

Jennifer Strange tragically died after participating in a radio contest where she had to drink nearly two gallons of water without urinating. The contest, ironically called "Hold Your Wee for a Wii," led to her death from water intoxication.

Medical Breakdown:
Drinking too much water in a short time leads to hyponatremia, a condition where sodium levels in the blood become dangerously low. This causes water to flood the body's cells, leading to brain swelling (cerebral edema), which can result in seizures, coma, and death if not treated quickly.

 

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SLEEP RESEARCHER FALLS ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL...

Eugene Aserinsky is considered one of the pioneers of modern sleep research and is most famous for discovering REM (rapid-eye movement) sleep in 1953. Forty-five years later he slammed his car into a tree north of San Diego. It is suspected that he had fallen asleep while driving.

 

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"Count Your Chickens"
1995 Darwin Awards Runner-Up
Confirmed True by Darwin



31 August 1995, Egypt) Six people drowned Monday while trying to rescue a chicken that had fallen into a well in southern Egypt. An 18 year old farmer was the first to descend into the 60-foot well. He drowned, apparently after an undercurrent in the water pulled him down, police said his sister and two brothers, none of whom could swim well, went in one by one to help him, but also drowned. Two elderly farmers then came to help. But they apparently were pulled by the same undercurrent. The bodies of the six were later pulled out of the well in the village of Nazlat Imara, 240 miles south of Cairo. The chicken was also pulled out. It survived.

 

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Adolf Frederick

The King of Sweden, was infamous for his over-the-top eating. On February 12, 1771, the king (who in another life would have been a famous Mukbang streamer) partook in an extravagant meal comprising lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring, and champagne. The feast culminated with 14 servings of his favored dessert, semla, a sweet roll served in hot milk. In case you sped over that last sentence, let me repeat: HE HAD 14 SERVINGS OF DESSERT!!! This pig-out session led to severe digestive complications (shocker), resulting in his death. He is now often referred to in history books as "The King Who Ate Himself to Death."

 

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ANTI-SEATBELT ADVOCATE KILLED IN CAR ACCIDENT...

A Nebraska man named Derek Kieper was so passionate about the idea that seat-belt laws violated his sacred individual liberties, he wrote an opinion column about it. Less than four months later, he died in a car accident. Two of his friends in the car survived. They were wearing seatbelt.

 

[maniac116]

Detonator Doubts

21-year-old Nguyen was drinking with his buddies in Vietnam one day when he decided to show off something he had found — a rusted out detonator. He insisted that since it was old and rusted out that it couldn't explode, but his friends disagreed.

Nguyen decided to put his money where his mouth was, along with the detonator, asking his friends to connect the two protruding wires to a 220-volt electrical receptacle nearby.

Needless to say, Nguyen was very wrong. According to the police that arrived on the scene, "the explosion blew out his cheeks and smashed all his teeth." He died on the way to the hospital.

 

[maniac116]

Homegrown Chute

Back in 2000, Augusto Lakandula boarded a plane in Davao City, Philippines, with a well-thought-out plan to rob everyone on board and escape unscathed in a dashing James Bond moment of epic bravery.

He crafted a handmade parachute and packed a few grenades, a shotgun and (somehow) made it through airport security. Once onboard, he successfully robbed the 300 passengers of $25,000 and demanded the pilot lower the plane to an altitude of 6,000 feet so he could make his great escape like D.B. Cooper.

Just as a flight attendant helped him out of the plane, he pulled the pin on his grenade, but mistakenly threw the pin into the cabin. As if that wasn't bad enough, his parachute didn't even work — authorities later found him, buried in mud, with only his hands sticking out. The money, however, was gone.

 

[heyismeman]

F*ck off pro lifer

 

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Terrorist opens his own letter bomb

Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet decided to send out a letter bomb in 2000. Not being the brightest of sparks he forgot to put enough postage stamps on the letter, meaning it came back to the 'return to sender' address. Khay was so happy to receive some post that he ripped it open. His career in terrorism ended there.

 

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Sink Drowning

Water doesn't have to be deep in order to drown in it. A sink-full is more than enough.

An apartment manager in Austria discovered someone hanging from a window, and upon closer inspection found that it was the corpse of one of his tenants.

The man had been drunk the night before, and assumed he'd locked himself out of his apartment. The easiest point of entry was his kitchen window, where he managed to slide halfway through and get stuck with his head lying in the sink.

He flailed around so much that he accidentally turned on the water and drowned in it. We assume he was too drunk to turn the water off. Also, he was found with his keys in his pocket.

 

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Man tries to recreate "Up", and is too successful!

Larry Walters didn't die during the stunt, but the Darwin Awards still gave him an 'honourable mention'. After attaching 45 weather balloons to an armchair, Larry cut himself lose thinking he would float 30ft above his garden in California. He miscalculated and rose to an elevation of 10,000ft. Luckily he brought an air rifle along for the ride, and started shooting the balloons, reducing his altitude. He eventually came down over LAX, where he was promptly arrested.

Larry, moments before starting his ridiculous adventure (Picture: PA)

 

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DEATH ROW INMATE ESCAPES, IS BEATEN TO DEATH THAT NIGHT IN A BAR FIGHT

Troy Leon Gregg was a plucky and wily and crafty convicted murderer who along with three other Death Row inmates managed to escape the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville in 1980 one day before Gregg was to be put to death. Unfortunately, that night Greg was beaten to death during a bar fight in North Carolina.

 

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Death By Caviar
The gluttony of royalty throughout history has been pretty stupendous — Henry VIII was famously extremely greedy, and many suffered gout from over-indulgence — but Adolf Frederick, who reigned as king of Sweden in the 1700s, appears to have genuinely killed himself via a single excessive meal. Historians report that in 1771 he ate a feast of caviar, lavish amounts of seafood and sauerkraut, and a mind-boggling 14 servings of semla, a bun soaked in warm milk.

Write that down, write that down!

 

[maniac116]

Not Ben Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was said to have flown his kite in a thunderstorm to prove that lightning is electricity. About 250 years later, Kennon Hernandez was helping his young niece fly a kite on a beautiful Belizean day when things got stupid.

Kennon wanted the kite to go higher, so he went back to his house to grab some copper wire in hopes of extending the length of the kite string. Being an electrician and all, you'd think he'd know the dangers of using copper wire attached to a kite flying in close proximity to power lines, but that's not how this went down.

Kennon was found a short time later, severely electrocuted after the kite landed on top of the power lines — he died shortly after arriving at the hospital. We wouldn't want him to wire our house, that's for sure.