Then one day, Larry had an idea. He went down to the local army-navy surplus store and bought 45 weather balloons and several tanks of helium. These were not your brightly colored party balloons, these were heavy-duty spheres measuring more than four feet across when fully inflated.
Back in his yard, Larry used straps to attach the balloons to his lawn chair, the kind you might have in your backyard. He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep, and inflated the balloons with helium. Then he packed a few sandwiches and drinks, and a loaded BB gun, figuring he could pop a few balloons when it was time to return to earth.
His preparations complete, Larry sat in his chair and cut the anchoring cord. His plan was to lazily float into the sky, and eventually back to terra firma. But things didn't quite work out that way. When Larry cut the cord, he didn't float lazily up; he shot up as if fired from a cannon! Nor did he go up a couple hundred feet. He climbed and climbed until he finally leveled off at 11,000 feet! At that height, he could hardly risk deflating any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really experience flying. So he stayed up there, sailing around for 14 hours, totally at a loss about how to get down.
Eventually, Larry drifted into the approach corridor for Los Angeles International Airport. A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a guy in a lawn chair at 11,000 feet, with a gun in his lap...now there's a conversation I would give anything to have heard! LAX is right on the ocean, and you may know that at nightfall, the winds on the coast begin to change. So, as dusk fell, Larry began drifting out to sea.
At that point, the navy dispatched a helicopter to rescue him, but the rescue team had a hard time getting to him because the draft from their propeller kept pushing his homemade contraption farther and farther away. Eventually, they were able to hover above him and drop a rescue line, with which they gradually hauled him back to safety.
As soon as Larry hit the ground, he was arrested. But as he was led away in handcuffs, a television reporter called out, "Sir, why'd you do it?" Larry stopped, eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around!"
2. Winners of the Posthumous Darwin Award:
These are nearly always granted posthumously. This citation is bestowed upon (the remains of) that individual, who through single-minded self-sacrifice, has done the most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool.
News of the Weird, 5/18/93, San Jose Mercury News
A 24-year-old salesman from Hialeah, FL, was killed near Lantana, FL, in March when his car smashed into a pole in the median strip of Interstate 95 in the middle of the afternoon. Police said that the man was traveling at 80 mph and, judging by the sales manual that was found open and clutched to his chest, had been busy reading.
AP, Cairo, Egypt, 31 Aug 1995 CAIRO, Egypt (AP)
Six people drowned Monday while trying to rescue a chicken that had fallen into a well in southern Egypt. An 18-year-old farmer was the first to descend into the 60-foot well. He drowned, apparently after an undercurrent in the water pulled him down, police said. His sister and two brothers, none of whom could swim well, went in one by one to help him, but also drowned. Two elderly farmers then came to help, but apparently they were pulled down by the same undercurrent. The bodies of the six were later pulled out of the well in the village of Nazlat Imara, 240 miles south of Cairo. The chicken was also pulled out. It survived.
Times of London
A thief who sneaked int
And the Webite That Started It All
