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Darwin Awards
2007 Honorable Mentions
Email a Friend The stupidity displayed by the participants in the following tales stops short of the ultimate Darwin Awards sacrifice. Nevertheless, we salute the spirit and innovation of their misadventures. Next Prev Random

A Slippery Slope
2007 Honorable Mention
Unconfirmed by Darwin

(1960's, Norfolk, UK) The small seaside town at the mouth of the river Yare keeps a modern lifeboat at anchor in the harbour, but the old lifeboat shed is nearby. Its cobbled slipway descended at a 30-degree angle straight into the river. Four hundred yards away, the harbour opens into the North Sea. The next stop is the coast of Holland.

I was eight years old, and not afflicted by the degree of supervision that kids endure nowadays. That summer, a bunch of us decided it would be a great wheeze to take a discarded tractor tyre from the dump, and take turns curling up inside it while the others rolled us down the slipway into the river. The name of the game was to struggle out before the tyre reached the water.

This provided several minutes of hysterical fun, until the inevitable happened. All hell broke loose as the lucky winner and the tyre rapidly made their way to open sea. The sight of the big yellow Coast Guard helicopter and its crew saving his ass went some way towards compensating for the pain inflicted upon mine by my dad that evening.

ORIGINAL SUBMISSION

DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2008
Submitted by: Mike Clarke
Reference: Eyewitness Account

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The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action

Hardback. 327 pages. Autographed.
$15
185 Stories! In the ongoing saga of Survival of the Fittest, meet the thief who steals electrical wires without shutting off the current! Marvel at the would-be pilot who suspends his lawnchair from helium balloons! Learn from the man who peers into a gas can using a cigarette lighter...!

This book also includes a History of the Darwin Awards, Darwin Haiku, and a dozen humorous discussions of the implications of evolution, including the origin of idiots, and the role of testosterone.

Autographed by Author!

 


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