Darwin award honorable mention

Man can't believe APD blew up his beloved artifact cannonball

Anchorage Daily News
Published: September 5th, 2005

When he called police and the bomb squad showed up at his Anchorage home last week, Yale Metzger just wanted them to examine the cannonball he had picked up in Cordova. He didn't want them to bring out the remote-controlled robot, haul away the cast iron ball and blow it to smithereens.

But that's what they did.

Now Metzger is saying the Anchorage Police Department was looking for an excuse to dynamite something and that they owe him a cannonball.

The police are calling Metzger "an idiot" for carrying the incendiary device around in his truck, then bringing it into downtown Anchorage, where they say it could have sent shrapnel flying for blocks had it exploded.

See story. While he doesn't qualify for a Darwin Award, I think he should get an honorable mention. (The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally kill themselves in really stupid ways.)