Fuer alle, die's verpasst haben:

You all know about the Darwin Awards - It's an annual honor given to the 
person who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in 
the most extraordinarily stupid way...

The 1997 winner:  Larry Waters of Los Angeles--one of the few Darwin
winners to survive his award-winning accomplishment. 

One day Larry went to the local Army-Navy surplus store and purchased 45
weather balloons and several tanks of helium.  The weather balloons when
fully inflated would measure more than four feet across. Back home Larry
securely strapped the balloons to his sturdy lawn chair.  He anchored the
chair to the bumper of his jeep and inflated the balloons with the helium.
He climbed on for a test while it was still only a few feet above the
ground.

Satisfied it would work, Larry packed several sandwiches and a six-pack of
Miller Lite [a beer], loaded his pellet gun--figuring he could pop a few
balloons when it was time to descend--and went back to the floating lawn
chair. He tied himself in along with his pellet gun and provisions. 
Larry's plan was to lazily float up to a height of about 30 feet above his
back yard after severing the anchor and in a few hours come back down.
Things didn't quite work out that way. 

When he cut the cord anchoring the lawn chair to his jeep, he didn't float 
lazily up to 30 or so feet. Instead  he streaked into the LA sky as if shot 
from a cannon.

He didn't level off at 30 feet, nor did he level off at 100 feet. After
climbing and climbing, he leveled off at 11,000 feet.[!!] At that height
he couldn't risk shooting any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load
and really find himself in trouble.  So he stayed there, drifting, cold
and frightened, for more than 14 hours. [!!]

Then he really got in trouble.

He found himself drifting into the primary approach corridor of Los Angeles 
International Airport.

A United pilot first spotted Larry.  He radioed the tower and described 
passing a guy in a lawn chair with a gun.  Radar confirmed the existence of 
an object floating 11,000 feet above the airport. LAX emergency procedures 
swung into full alert and a helicopter was dispatched to investigate.

LAX is right on the ocean.  Night was falling and the offshore breeze began 
to flow.  It carried Larry out to sea with the helicopter in hot pursuit.

Several miles out, the helicopter caught up with Larry. Once the crew
determined that Larry was not dangerous [??], they attempted to close in
for a rescue but the draft from the blades would push Larry away whenever
they neared. 

Finally, the helicopter ascended to a position several hundred feet above 
Larry and lowered a rescue line. Larry snagged the line and was hauled back 
to shore.  The difficult maneuver was flawlessly executed by the helicopter 
crew.

As soon as Larry was hauled to earth, he was arrested by waiting members of 
the LAPD for violating LAX airspace.

As he was led away in handcuffs, a reporter dispatched to cover the daring 
rescue asked why he had done it.    Larry stopped, turned and replied 
nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around."

Gruss, Radbert
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