You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

Two Belgian bankrobbers have been named the Darwin Award winners of the year after killing themselves while trying to crack open a cash machine.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent
Published: 7:57AM GMT 02 Jan 2010

The pair used so much dynamite that they managed to destroy the entire bank building - and themselves with it.

Wendy Northcutt, the founder of the annual awards, declared them the 2009 winners of the Darwin Awards, given to those doing the most to improve the human gene pool by removing themselves from it.

The awards are an annual celebration of the most dumb, daft and dimwitted ways that people prove themselves unable to keep up with the survival of the fittest, preferably with an element of black humour.

"This award is generally bestowed posthumously," she said. "What these two did was very, very stupid. They really should have known better.

"In the first place they should have known not to do a crime. In the second place, they used far too much explosive."

The two bank robbers had packed large quantities of dynamite by the ATM machine at a bank in Dinant, Belgium, as well as pumping gas through the letter box in an attempt to make the explosion even more powerful.

They detonated the explosive successfully but had neglected to retire to a safe distance.

The explosion was so large that it blew the bank apart and what remained of the building was declared structurally unsound.

When police reached the smoking remains they found one of the robbers with severe head injuries. He was taken to hospital but died soon afterwards and his accomplice was later discovered dead and buried beneath several feet of rubble.

The scene was reminiscent of the scene from the film The Italian Job where robbers led by Sir Michael Caine blow up a truck completely when they were only meant to blow open the doors.

Ms Northcutt said: "It seems these guys were putting dynamite in every crevice they could find. It sounds so stupid that it creates a mental picture in my mind that can't help but bring a smile to my face."

Despite being impressed by the robbers' ineptitude she said she would have given the award to a priest who killed himself by flying out to sea while attached to a cluster of 1,000 party balloon but that he had done it in 2008.

Instead, she belatedly named Father Adelir Antonio di Carli the 2008 winner.

This year's runner-up was Shawn Montero, of the US, who found himself caught short while a passenger in a car after leaving a bar.

The traffic was so slow-moving that he got out of the car and leapt over a low concrete parapet to find somewhere more private than Interstate 95.

He had failed to realise, however, that the car was in a queue on a bridge over rail lines and he plunged 65 feet to his death.

In third place was Rosanne Tippett, of North Carolina in the US, who rode her moped past a warning barrier into a flooded river. A police officer rescued her but she jumped straight back in again and drowned in what was thought to be a suicidal bid to retrieve her beloved moped.

Earlier winners include a man who attached a Jet Assisted Take-off rocket to his car and a Polsih man who chopped his own head off with a chain saw to prove how macho he was.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6916554/You-were-only-supposed-to-blow-the-bloody-doors-off.html