1998 Darwin Awards

Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.

Don't Chute the Messenger  1998 Darwin Award Nominee Confirmed True by Darwin (21 March 1998, Chicago) Hyatt Regency Hotel workers discovered the remains of an ill-fated co-worker when they noticed that no laundry was reaching the bottom of the 20-story laundry chute on Saturday morning. The man, wrapped in 100 pounds of laundry, was found sliding slowly down the chute by a hotel employee who saw his feet through an opening. Jian, a 67-year-old housekeeper at the hotel, was familiar with the 2½ foot square opening the East Tower of the hotel, and it is tempting to speculate why he lost his footing and plunged into the waist-high laundry opening in the East Tower. Was he peeking into the chute to drop laundry onto the head of a co-worker below? Was he trying to encourage a recalcitrant bundle of sheets to slide further down the chute? Did his own clothing seem so dirty that he suddenly realized it needed a good cleaning? The man was pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Saturday.

DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2009 Submitted by: S G Harrod Reference: Chicago Tribune

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