The Darwin Awards are coming !

[Simone Lussardi]

Ecco le nominees !!

http://www.darwinawards.com/

Tra le migliori perle:

Rare Double Darwin.

(12 September 2007, Tampa, Florida) The setup: A woman wins two concert tickets from a local radio station. She can't believe her luck. The Dave Matthews Band, live! She invites her friend to join her. But they are in for more than a concert experience.
Flash forward to the next morning. My buddy, head of operations at the amphitheater, looks like hell. He tells me that two women were killed the previous night at the concert. I am shocked. Nothing like this has ever happened at the amphitheater. I ask for details.
Flash back to the previous evening, 8:30pm and pouring rain. The show is delayed. Two women leave the venue to escape the rain. They pass multiple free shuttle buses that run directly to the parking lot. Instead, they opt for a shortcut across a 7-lane Interstate.
They run a hundred yards through wet grass, and jump a six-foot fence that borders the road. Ahead are 3 lanes of freeway traffic, a 100' median, and another 4 lanes of traffic. Beyond that is another six-foot fence, the maze of an 'under construction' garage, and a long hike around a casino.
All in all, the 'shortcut' to their vehicle covers a distance of about a half mile. And the women are in a torrential thunderstorm. Free shuttle bus, or mad dash across dangerous territory?
My buddy was an eyewitness when the first vehicle struck the women at 8:30 pm. Oddly, this was in the first lane of traffic, on a straightaway where one can see headlights for miles in either direction. The impact hurled the women farther into traffic, and each was struck by a second car. They did not survive the collisions.
Ironically, one of the women was an "energetic and gifted athlete" who won two national championships in gymnastics. Physical prowess is no substitute for the homespun maxim: "Stop. Look. Listen. Or tomorrow you'll be missing."

SENZA PAROLE !

2007, Ontario, Canada) Recently a patient was rushed into the hospital, needing a surgeon to reattach the tips of his fingers to his left hand. While taking the patient history, it was found that this bright chap got the idea of holding his lawn mower sideways and applying it to his hedge. He was holding the mower deck, trimming the hedge, and things went well until the weight of the mower got to be a bit much. He readjusted his grip on the mower deck, and that was when the blade bit him.

When the reconstructive plastic surgeon was almost finished with the complex job of sewing the patient back together, another patient came in with the same injury! On investigation, it was found that he, too, had been using his mower to trim his hedge. Apparently, he lived near the first patient. He saw his neighbor trimming his hedge with the mower, and thought it was a bright idea.
Often fact is so much weirder than fiction. This story was related by my friend, whose daughter is a plastic surgeon with expertise in reconstructive surgery.

[Simone Lussardi]

Remember science class? Remember the time the teacher dropped bits of sodium into a bowl of water? We would watch as the element skipped about, fizzing away as it burned. Well, for one teacher, this tidy little demonstration didn't go exactly to plan.

A safety glass screen is usually placed between the bowl and the students, so random bits of sodium don't jump out and scald them. One particular teacher decided that he would put the screen over the bowl, lifting it up to drop in sodium. He did this several times, so all the children could see. When he was done, he removed the screen from the bowl.
2 Na + 2 H2O = 2 NaOH + H2
Sodium in water produces hydrogen gas. And this teacher had the bad judgement to have a Bunsen burner burning near the edge of his desk. When he lifted the glass screen, the accumuated hydrogen exploded.
The students were just leaving the classroom when they heard an almighty BANG! They turned back to see the teacher on his ass looking shell-shocked, with bits of the overhead florescent lighting falling down from the ceiling.
A science teacher really should know better than to let hydrogen build up. But that said, in the same department, another teacher accidentally let a senior student make nitroglycerine. They were picking bits of lab equipment out of the ceiling for a fortnight. This should qualify for an Honorable Mention, since none of the students were hurt (except maybe from laughing) and the science teachers really should have known better; despite their best efforts, they remain in the gene pool.