The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction (26 page)

11 MARCH 1978, FRANCE | The singer Claude François, whose stellar career can be compared to that of legendary Elvis Presley, popularized rock’n’roll in France. One evening, he returned to his Paris apartment from a busy touring schedule and ran a quiet bath. While standing in the steaming water in the tub, he noticed some wires dangling from the ceiling light. These wires had been the subject of numerous complaints in his various correspondences! The naked singer reached out and grabbed hold of the naked wires . . . and was electrocuted then and there.

 

Reference: Wikipedia and online French TV archives

Researched by the indomitable Ariane La Gauche

 

“How do you pronounce that, Claude or Clod?”

 

 

1980s, TENNESSEE | A mile down the road from Middle Tennessee State University, a couple of young, very drunk MTSU frat boys climbed a barbed-wire fence that was intended to keep lesser mortals out of an electrical substation. One frat boy climbed right up to the top of a transformer tower. That alone was an obviously bad idea, but it got worse when he urinated on the transformer on which he stood. As if electrocution via genitalia wasn’t bad enough, consider his motivating target: a wasp nest attached to the transformer. Needless to say, with electricity and gravity competing for attention, the wasps were the lesser of his worries. He did not live long.

 

Reference: Anonymous resident of the community

 

 

1 JUNE 2008, WEST VIRGINIA | In search of altitude, a man climbed the high-voltage power-line tower behind his house, attached a rope to the top of it, and began to rappel down. But he was shocked to discover that his “harmless” hobby was not safe at all when he hit a power line that carries as much as 46,000 volts, according to American Electric Power employees. The man fell to the ground, a battered but lucky survivor of what easily could have been a Darwin-Award-caliber misjudgment.

 

Reference:
The Charleston Gazette

 

“Thought you’d get a jolt out of this story.”

“Now, tell me these stories don’t make you feel superior!”

 

 

1971, FLORIDA | An aviation electronics instructor began his class on insulators with this observation: “Wood is a nonconductor, right? Well don’t you believe it!”

He had purchased an acre of property that was covered in fast-growing poplar trees, each about five inches thick and twenty feet tall. Ax in hand, he set out to clear the yard. His wife expressed concern about the high-voltage power lines that passed along the edge of the lot, but he assured her that there was nothing to worry about. Wood is nonconductive.

A few minutes later one of his mighty blows felled a tree, which toppled directly onto the power lines. He stood there transfixed as the blue electricity snaked down the tree trunk and up the ax handle, and blew him twenty feet across the yard. Fortunately his wife witnessed the event and rushed his twitching carcass to the hospital, where he was treated for third-degree burns on the palms and soles of his feet (where the electricity entered and exited his body). He was kept in the hospital for two weeks, until his arms quit shaking uncontrollably.

Wood is nonconductive?
Don’t you believe it!

 

Reference: Carin Gleason

 

 

2009 | I was helping a friend decorate her tree for Christmas. A strand of lights seemed to have a short, so my friend took it upon herself to solve the problem. She stripped the wires in the area and spliced them, and plugged in the lights to check her work. Then she finished up by using her teeth to crimp the bare wires together. Needless to say, she lit up like a Christmas tree!

 

Reference: Robert Miller

 

 

The enemy is all around us, invisible, deadly, and using a secret code to coordinate its attacks. In the world of biological warfare, bacteria have humans outnumbered. Not only are there countless combatants on the ground and in the air, but also many species live on and inside our bodies. You are composed of around one trillion human cells, yet at least ten trillion bacteria also call you home. You are more bacteria than human by an order of magnitude!

Although we rarely stop to consider their existence, bacteria are leading intriguing and noisy lives. In recent years, microbiologists have discovered that bacteria possess a useful skill previously thought to be employed only by higher organisms: language.

Scientists call this bacterial language “quorum sensing.” Unlike our own speech, it relies solely on simple molecules. With these chemicals, bacteria are able to reach group decisions and coordinate many behaviors, including mass migrations and deadly attacks. Once considered an exotic anomaly, quorum sensing recently has been discovered in nearly all bacteria. Every species has its own vocabulary to prevent eavesdropping by neighboring bacteria, though their languages are as closely related as Spanish is to Italian.