Subject: Darwin award

*File Description: The Darwin Award*


The Darwin Award is given for the person who did the gene pool
the greatest service by killing themselves before they (hopefully)
reproduced.

An example of a previous winner of the award is the Kansas University
student who was killed when he pulled a coke machine onto himself.

This year's winner:


The Arizona (U.S.) Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal
embedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road, on the outside
of a curve.

The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car.
The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene.

The boys in the lab finally figured out what it was, and what had
happened.

It seems that the guy had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit, (Jet Assisted
Take Off, actually a solid-fuel rocket) that is normally used to give heavy
military transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from short
airfields.  He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert, and
found a long, straight stretch of road.  Then he attached the JATO unit
to his car, jumped in, got up some speed, and fired off the JATO!!

Best as they could determine, he was doing somewhere between 250 and
300 mph (350-420kph) when he came to that curve....

The brakes were completely burned away, apparently from trying to slow
the car.

TODAY'S LESSON KIDS: Solid-fuel rockets don't have an 'off' switch...