(1 January 2010, South Africa) Pop quiz, class. Do you or don't you go swimming in the crocodile-infested Limpopo? Do, or don't, leave your friends on the banks of the great grey-green Olifants River (main tributary of the Limpopo) and swim in its limpid waters not once, not twice, but three times the day you are finally devoured by that old crocodile? Let's just say it was a short New Year for Mariska B., 27, a waitress and former swimmer.
According to a long-time resident of Phalaborwa, locals know, "You don't even put a toe in the river. It's teeming with crocodiles and hippos." This local, on her third refreshing dip of the day, didn't have time to scream or struggle. Friends saw just a ripple on the water where seconds before she had been swimming.
Did I mention that swimming was strictly prohibited? Police searched for Mariska's body with long poles, and with the chemical detectors known as sniffer dogs, but found nothing. The cycle of life continues.
SIDEBAR: Olifants = Elephant
(1 January 2010, Netherlands) Every now and then a completely new window into the world opens before our eyes. Here we have rural Dutch families enjoying their traditional winter sport, carbidschieten, or Carbide Shooting. It's a ridiculously dangerous machine akin to a potato gun, designed to hurl projectiless from the mouth of a metal milk can.
Carbide shooting, that wacky Dutch New Year's tradition, begins with moistening calcicum carbide and placing it in a large milk container. The damp CaCb emits acetylene (ethyne) gas which builds up inside the container. Then a spark is supplied, causing the pressurised gas bomb to blow the lid (or packing) off the milk jug.
Our nominee, a 54-year-old male, was having the time of his life--right up until the moment he poured a container filled with liquid oxygen over a fire to "flare it up" -- and the container obligingly exploded.
hmmm.
(10 January 2010, Brazil) An electrical discharge made toast of municipal guard Arthur de Souza Coelho, 47, on Sunday evening. According to police reports, he had installed a tiny electric fence around his car to protect against the frequent robberies that occur in his neighborhood in Belem, Para. Then (direct translation from Portuguese) "he forgot that he had left the fence on and he ended dying with the electric shock."
After all, we are all dying, but some end sooner than others.
Another account from the archives of a 30-year ER MD.
In the late fall and early winter months, snow-covered mountains become infested with hunters. One ambitious pair climbed high up a mountain in search of their quarry. The trail crossed a small glacier that had crusted over. The lead hunter had to stomp a foot-hold in the snow, one step at a time, in order to cross the glacier.
Somewhere near the middle of the glacier, his next stomp hit not snow but a rock. The lead hunter lost his footing and fell. Down the crusty glacier he zipped, off the edge and out of sight.
Unable to help, his companion watched him slide away. After a while, he shouted out, "Are you OK?"
"Yes!" came the answer.
Reasoning that it was a quick way off the glacier, the second hunter plopped down and accelerated down the ice, following his friend. There, just over the edge of the glacier, was his friend...holding onto the top of a tree that barely protruded from the snow.
There were no other treetops nearby, nothing to grab, nothing but a hundred-foot drop onto the rocks below. As the second hunter shot past the first, he uttered his final epitaph: a single word, which we may not utter lest our mothers soap our mouths.
(April 2010, Romania) A thirty-five-year-old man from Braila was only trying to fix a broken soil tamper, a tool his father had made himself and used for decades. The metal handle of this family heirloom had rusted loose and our man was trying to weld it back into position, but unfortunately he was welding the metal rod onto an antique WWII cannon shell.
Yes, the family had been banging a cannon shell against the garden dirt for two generations!
Specialists from the Bucharest ISU (General Institute for Emergency Situations) stated that the first weld had been made in a harmless position, but the second weld was made in exactly the wrong spot. The heat triggered the shell to explode, mortally wounding the man. In his defense, he was sure the projectile was harmless because his father had used it to compact earth for almost 40 years.
If one generation doesn't get it right, the next does.
Who would park the car on a busy freeway in heavy fog, for a quickie?
Picture this: A young couple driving on Via Dutra, the major freeway in Brazil with tons of heavy traffic, at 6AM under heavy fog the couple decided to park the car for "dating," according to the charming Google translation. And yes, they parked in the right lane of freeway, not on the shoulder or at a gas station -- and naturally, a huge cargo truck comes by and runs right over the car, immediately killing both inside during the act. Double Double Darwin! Two (2) people making two obviously stupid decisions, and natural selection acts at the very moment the two are reproducing . . . Textbook Darwin Award.
(19 July 2010, Washington) Two out-of-town race car crew were at a machine shop that builds and services race cars, when they dreamed up an unusual thrill ride. Fire Chief Dean Klinger reported that on Sunday evening, the men poured four gallons of methanol into a 55-gallon barrel in the parking lot, sat on top of the barrel, and lit it.
("Lit what?" "Lit the bunghole!")
The men were in the town of Sedro-Woolley (pop. 10,000) to participate in the American Sprint Car Series at Skagit Raceway. Apparently they thought the barrel would slide across the parking lot like a rocket sled, with a tail of flame shooting out, and two rodeo clowns sitting on top, waving their caps and hooting. But instead of sliding across the pavement, the barrel blew up beneath them. Who woulda thunk that 4 gallons of methanol inside a 55-gallon drum would be a bomb?
The explosion was so powerful that one end of the barrel landed 120 feet away from the blast site. The two Sparks* landed in Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Racing folks are smart people with a high degree of mechanical ability. The work is risky, but this was not a random "shop accident." Rather, it was a dangerous and ill-conceived stunt by two bored men who were hoping to find some fun in the small town of Sedro-Woolley. Instead of fun, one man lost his life, and a second survived with a sober lesson on the power of combustion.
For me, it has to be the freeway sex. Swimming with the crocs is close to the same level of stupidity, but at least that was only one person making a really dumb choice. Plus the freeway incident seems like laser guided Darwinism, got them both out of the gene pool just before they could contribute to it.
