1999 Darwin Criminal Award

A Charlotte, NC man having purchased a box of very rare, very expensive cigars insured them against fire among other things.
Within a month of having smoked his entire stockpile of cigars and without having made even his first premium payment on the
policy, the man filed a claim against the insurance company.

In his claim, the man stated the cigars were lost "in a series of small fires." The insurance company refused to pay, citing
the obvious reason: that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The man sued...and won!

In delivering the ruling, the judge agreed that the claim was frivolous. He stated nevertheless that the man held a policy
from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure against fire,
without defining what is considered to be "unacceptable fire," and was obligated to pay the claim. Rather than endure a lengthy
and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid the man $15,000.00 for the rare cigars he had
lost in the "fires."

HERE COMES THE GOOD PART!!
After the man cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of ARSON. With his insurance claim and
testimony from the previous case being used against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and
sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000.00 fine.

This is a true story and it won the 1999 Criminal Darwin Award.

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There are teachers and then there are Teachers.

A middle school in Oregon was faced with a unique problem.

A number of girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would
press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. The principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to
the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were making things difficult for the custodian who
had to clean the mirrors every night.

She then asked the maintenance man to demonstrate the effort required to clean the mirrors. The maintenance dude took out a long-handled squeegee,
dipped it into the toilet and swiped the mirror. From that point forward, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

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Jake, Johnny, and Billy Bob, went to the rodeo. Unfortunately, a big bull jumped the fence into the spectators and they were trampled to death. Being good God-fearing men, they ascended to Heaven where they were met at the Pearly Gates by St. Peter. He said, "Welcome to Heaven, gentlemen. I'm sure you'll be quite comfortable here, but I must warn you that we do have our rules in Heaven. If you break them, you'll be punished. One rule is never step on a duck. If you step on a duck, the duck quacks, they all quack, and it just goes on and on."

Sounded simple enough so they all agreed and walked in. As they passed through the Pearly Gates and were surprised to find ducks everywhere. In no time at all, Jake stepped on one. The duck quacked, then all quacked, they made a terrible racket and it just went on and on. Pretty soon, along came St. Peter with a terribly homely and ugly woman in tow. "I warned you that if you broke the duck rule, you'd be punished." He chained the ugly woman to Jake and said," You will be together forever," and walked away.

Sometime later, despite his best efforts, Johnny accidentally stepped on a duck. The duck quacked, then they all quacked and made a terrible commotion that just went on and on. Sure enough, along came St. Peter with an even homelier and uglier woman. "I warned you that if you broke the duck rule, you'd be punished." With that, he chained the woman to Johnny and said, "The two of you will be together for all eternity," and walked away.

Well, from then on, Billy Bob was very careful not to step on a duck. One day, St. Peter came along with a drop dead gorgeous blonde. He chained her to Billy Bob and said, "You will be together now and forever more," and walked away. Billy Bob exclaimed happily," Wow, I wonder what I did to deserve this?" "I don't know about you," said the beautiful woman, "but I stepped on a duck."

* A Blonde walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the loan officer. She says She is going to Europe on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000. The bank officer says the bank will need some kind of security for such a loan, so the Blonde hands over the keys to a new Rolls Royce parked on the street in front of the bank. Everything checks out, and the bank agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan. An employee drives the Rolls into the bank's underground garage and parks it there. Two weeks later, the Blonde returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41. The loan officer says, "We are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multimillionaire. What puzzles us is why would you bother to borrow $5,000?" The Blonde replied, "Where else in New York can I park my car for two weeks for 15 bucks?"

* A blonde and a lawyer are seated next to each other on a flight from LA to NY. The lawyer asks if she would like to play a fun game? The blonde, tired, just wants to take a nap, politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The lawyer persists and explains that the game is easy and a lot of fun. He explains, "I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5.00, and vise versa." Again, she declines and tries to get some sleep. The lawyer, now agitated, says, "Okay, if you don't know the answer you pay me $5.00, and if I don't know the answer, I will pay you $500.00." This catches the blonde's attention and, figuring there will be no end to this torment unless she plays, agrees to the game. The lawyer asks the first question. "What's the distance from the earth to the moon?" The blonde doesn't say a word, reaches into her purse, pulls out a $5.00 bill and hands it to the lawyer. Okay says the lawyer, your turn. She asks the lawyer, "What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four legs?" The lawyer, puzzled, takes out his laptop computer and searches all his references, no answer. He taps into the air phone with his modem and searches the net and the library of congress, no answer. Frustrated, he sends e-mails to all his friends and coworkers, to no avail. After an hour, he wakes the blonde, and hands her $500.00. The blonde says, "Thank you," and turns back to get some more sleep. The lawyer, who is more than a little miffed, wakes the blonde and asks, "Well, what's the answer?" Without a word, the blonde reaches into her purse, hands the lawyer $5.00, and goes back to sleep

A blind guy on a bar stool shouts to the bartender, "Wanna hear a blonde joke?" In a hushed voice, the guy next to him says, "Before you tell that joke, there is something you should know. Our bartender is blond, the bouncer is blond, I'm a 6' tall, 200 lb black belt. The guy sitting next to me is 6'2, weighs 225 and he's a rugby player. The fella to your right is 6'5" pushing 300 and he's a wrestler. Each one of US is blond. Think about it, Mister. You still wanna tell that joke?" The blind guy says, "Nah, not if I'm gonna have to explain it five times.

On July 20, 1969, as commander of the Apollo 11 lunar module, Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon. His first words after stepping on the moon, "that's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," were televised to earth and heard by millions.

But just before he reentered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."

Many people at NASA though it was a casual remark concerning some rival soviet cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "good luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.

On July 5, 1995, in Tampa Bay, Florida, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26-year-old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had died, so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.

In 1938 when he was a kid in a small Midwest town, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. his friend hit the ball, which landed in his neighbor's yard by the bedroom windows. his neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky: "Sex!? You want sex?! You'll get sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

Fire authorities in California found a corpse in a burned out section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest fire. The deceased male was dressed in a full wet suit, complete with scuba tanks on his back, flippers, and face mask. A post-mortem test revealed that the man died not from burns, but from massive internal injuries. Dental records provided a positive identification. Investigators then set about to determine how a fully clad diver ended up in the middle of a forest fire. It was revealed that on the day of the fire, the man went diving off the coast, some 20 miles from the forest. The fire fighters, seeking to control the fire as quickly as possible, had called in a fleet of helicopters with very large dip buckets. Water was dipped from the ocean and emptied at the site of the forest fire. You guessed it. One minute our diver was making like Flipper in the Pacific, the next, he was doing the breast stroke in a fire dip bucket 300 feet in the air. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

A man was working on his motorcycle on the patio, his wife nearby in the kitchen. While racing the engine, the motorcycle accidentally slipped into gear. The man, still holding onto the handlebars, was dragged along as it burst through the glass patio doors. His wife, hearing the crash, ran in !??! the room to find her husband cut and bleeding, the motorcycle, and the shattered patio door. She called for an ambulance and, because the house sat on a fairly large hill, went down the several flights of stairs to meet the paramedics and escort them to her husband. While the attendants were loading her husband, the wife managed to right the motorcycle and push it outside. She also quickly blotted up the spilled gasoline with some paper towels and tossed them into the toilet. After being treated and released, the man returned home, looked at the shattered patio door and the damage done to his motorcycle. He went into the bathroom and consoled himself with a cigarette while attending to his business. About to stand, he flipped the butt between his legs. The wife, who was in the kitchen, heard a loud explosion and her husband screaming. Finding him lying on the bathroom floor with his trousers blown away and burns on his buttocks, legs and groin, she once again phoned for an ambulance. The same paramedic crew was dispatched. As the paramedics carried the man down the stairs to the ambulance they asked the wife how he had come to burn himself. She told them. They started laughing so hard, one slipped, tipping the stretcher and dumping the husband out. He fell down the remaining stairs, breaking his arm.

The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were being released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, in full view, a killer whale ate them both.

A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen shaking frantically, almost in a dancing frenzy, with some kind of wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current, she whacked him with a handy plank of wood, breaking his arm in two places. Up to that moment, he had been happily listening to his Walkman.

Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn, Germany. Suddenly, all two thousand pigs broke loose and escaped through a broken fence, stampeding madly. The two hopeless protesters were trampled to death.

Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits. There now, feeling better?

A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment. The next week, the man realized that he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight to Chicago. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence AND LOSE , he wrote on a piece of paper, "Please wake me at 5:00 AM." The next morning the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and that he had missed his flight. Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn't woken him when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed. The paper said, "It is 5:00 AM. Wake up."

A young boy had just gotten his driving permit. He asked his father if they could discuss his use of the family car. His father took him into his study and said, "I'll make a deal with you. You bring your grades up, study your Bible a little, get your hair cut and then we'll talk about it." After about a month, the boy came back and again asked his father if they could discuss his use of the car. They again went into the father's study where the father said, "Son, I've been very proud of you. You have brought your grades up, you've studied the Bible diligently, but you didn't get your hair cut." The young man waited a moment and then replied, "You know Dad, I've been thinking about that. You know Samson had long hair, Moses had long hair, Noah had long hair, and even Jesus had long hair." The father said, "Yes, and everywhere they went, they walked."

A New York boy, John, moved to Texas and bought a donkey from an old farmer for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the animal the next day. The next day, the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry, but I have some bad news, the donkey died." John said, "Well, then, just give me my money back." The farmer replied, "Can't do that. I went and spent it already." So, John said, "OK, then, just unload the donkey." Puzzled, the farmer asked, "What ya gonna do with him?" John said, "I'm going to raffle him off." The farmer was taken aback and said, "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!" John answered, "Sure I can. I just won't tell anybody he's dead." A month later the farmer met up with the city boy and asked, "Hey, John, what happened with that dead donkey?" John smiled and said, "I raffled him off. I sold five hundred tickets at two dollars a piece and made a profit of $898.00" The farmer asked, "Didn't anyone complain?" John replied, "Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December. Female reindeer retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring. Therefore, according to every historical rendition depicting Santa's reindeer, every single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen - had to be a girl. We should've known. Only women would be able to drag a fat man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost.

An elderly couple was lying in bed one night. The husband was falling asleep but the wife was in a romantic mood and wanted to talk. She said: "You use to hold my hand when we were courting." Wearily he reached across, held her hand for a second, then tried to get back to sleep. A few moments later she said: "Then you use to kiss me." Mildly irritated, he reached across, gave her a peck on the cheek and settled down to sleep. Thirty seconds later she said, "Then you use to bite my neck." Angrily, he threw back the bed clothes and got out of bed. "Where are you going?" she asked. "To get my teeth!" came the reply.

An old man was sitting on a bench at the mall. A young man walked up and sat down next to him. He had spiked hair in different colors: green, red, orange, blue and yellow. The old man just stared at him. The young man turned to him & said sarcastically, "What's the matter old timer, never done anything this wild in your life?" Without batting an eye, the old man replied, "Got drunk once and had sex with a parrot. I was just wondering if you were my son."

Two Nuns spent time collecting all sort of things for an auction to be held on the week end. As they were heading back home on the freeway they ran out of gas. Not having a gas can, they began to see what they could find among the things they had collected. They could find nothing to use except a bed pan so they took that and walked to a nearby gas station. After filling it full and carefully carrying it back to the car, they proceeded to try to pour it into the gas tank. While doing so a truck was just passing and the passenger said to the driver, "NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL FAITH."

We've been notified by Building Security that there have been 4 suspected terrorists working at our office. Three of the four have been apprehended. Bin Sleepin, Bin Loafin, and Bin Drinkin have been taken into custody. Security advised us that they could find no one fitting the description of the fourth cell member, Bin Workin. Police are confident that anyone who looks like he's Bin Workin will be very easy to spot, but so far no luck.