Some more:

11.) Parents often warn that firecrackers can blow your hand off, but as a 26-year-old Australian learned, they can also remove your gonads from the gene pool. An ambulance rushed to an Illawarra park after receiving reports that a man was hemorrhaging from his behind. The mercifully unidentified man had placed a lit firecracker between the cheeks of his buttocks, stumbled, and fell upon it.

"We do caution people against these acts," said Acting Senior Sergeant John Klepczarek of the local police.

Emergency surgeon Dr. McCurdie said the resulting wound looked like "a war injury." The explosion was forced upward, "blasted a great hole in the pelvis, ruptured the urethra, and injured muscles," rendering the man incontinent as well as sexually dysfunctional. He survived to tell the tale, making him eligible for the dubious honor of a Living Darwin Award.


12.) Daniel and his friend were practicing their marksmanship by shooting at targets in a farm field. But instead of the usual choices of mice, bottles, or birds, they selected a more worthy adversary: electrical insulators.

These pear-shaped glass or plastic devices are intended to hold electrical wires aloft. But after the men shot six insulators off two utility poles, the shattered targets were no longer up to the job. A high-voltage wire fell to the ground and Daniel, attempting to prevent a serious fire, seized the sizzling wire in his hand, and was electrocuted.

An Allegheny Power spokesman advised people not to shoot at electrical insulators.

13.) Around 4:45 p.m., neighbors reported hearing a loud pop followed by a fire at a rail yard in Filipstad, just outside Oslo. Fearing a potential terrorist attack, fire and police crews rushed to the scene. The top of an electric train was burning! When the fire died down, investigators pieced together its cause.

The spray cans and wet paint on the side of the train were the first clues. Inner-city Norwegian youth, victims of a society polite to its core, were lashing out in desperation at the brutal cleanliness and order of a country where the trains always run on time, and sticking it to The Man by tagging the symbol of their oppression. So desperate were they to make their political point that they walked right past several signs warning of the danger of high voltage, and climbed over fences to reach their objective.

One of them, a 17-year-old, wanted to tag where no man had tagged before--on the roof of the train. The fact that few people would ever see his art was no impediment to this brave young man as he sought to subvert the dominant paradigm. He climbed atop the train, sprayed his creation, and rose up to proclaim his accomplishment -- touching the main power line and lighting up the neighborhood as 15,000 volts coursed through his body. His remains were so badly burned that authorities were initially unable to determine that the victim was human.

14.) A Croatian was killed while trying to open a hand grenade with a chainsaw. He wanted to retrieve the explosive to make firecrackers for the New Year's holiday.

15.) When Gerald was pulled over by police for erratic driving, he decided it was better to flee from the stolen car on foot, rather than face possible jail time for a parole violation. This was the first of two successive mental lapses. Gerald's actual thoughts are unknown, but *may* have been something like this: "The officers are only suspicious and alert now... I'll make them hot, sweaty, tired, and angry by leading them on a wild chase through dark alleys and fields."

During the subsequent foot chase, Gerald attempted to dissuade officers from the pursuit by firing a 9mm Ruger semiautomatic handgun blindly over his shoulder. This was the second illustration of a potential mental deficiency. "Officers are running behind me. They have guns. I have a gun! They have eyes in the front of their heads, so they can see to aim at me. I don't have eyes in the back of my head, so I'll fire wildly behind me and see what happens!"

Unfortunately, Gerald appears to have been one of those folks who can't chew gum and walk at the same time. Or at least he couldn't flee and fire at the same time. While discharging the weapon over his shoulder, Gerald managed to shoot himself in the head with his own gun, bringing the chase to a sudden conclusion.

Four shots were fired, none by the officers, who found Gerald's pistol next to his fallen body. Gerald was transported to a local hospital where he expired the following day, thus removing a set of genes deficient in both judgment and coordination from the gene pool.

16.) A farm keeper from São Paulo decided to remove a beehive from his orange tree. He didn't know exactly how to proceed, but he knew the hive should be burned, and he knew bees sting. So he protected his head with a plastic bag sealed tightly around his neck, grabbed a torch, and went off to fight the bees.

His worried wife went to look for him a few hours later, and found him dead. However, it wasn't the bees that killed him. The plastic bag had protected him from smoke, stingers, and... oxygen! He had forgotten to put breathing holes in the bag.

17.) Tribal clashes are common in Northern Ghana, and people often resort to witchcraft with the hope of becoming invulnerable to weapons. For example, Aleobiga, 23, and fifteen fellow believers who purchased a "magical" potion to render them invincible to bullets.

After smearing the magical lotion over their bodies for two weeks, Aleobiga volunteered to test the spell. He stood in a clearing while his friends raised their weapons, aimed, fired...

You'd think he would have tested the spell on a non-essential body part first. Aleobiga is now roaming the Great Savannah in the sky, and the jujuman who supplied the defective magic was beaten for his failure.

18.) A 23-year-old bar-brawler who had been escorted out of the Turtle Club in Florida by a bouncer, sneaked back in and leaped off a staircase, aiming a kick at another man, but was killed when he landed on his head.

19.) Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet, didn't put enough postage on a letter bomb, and it came back marked "return to sender." He opened the package and was blown away.

20.) Two animal rights activists were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn by freeing a captive herd. Suddenly all two thousand of pigs stampeded through the gate they were opening, and trampled the hapless protesters to death.

21.) A Houston man earned a succinct lesson in gun safety when he played Russian roulette with a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Rashaad, nineteen, was visiting friends when he announced his intention to play the deadly game. He apparently did not realize that a semiautomatic pistol, unlike a revolver, automatically inserts a cartridge into the firing chamber when the gun is cocked. His chance of winning a round of Russian roulette was zero, as he quickly discovered.