Bringing to mind the darkly satirical Darwin Award, a man in northern Russia killed himself trying to put a decades-old artillery shell to good, albeit unconventional, use.
The 34-year-old, whose name was withheld, found the shell in the ground in the Leningrad region, the site of major World War II campaigns, local police said Saturday.
The ammunition exploded in the man's backyard when he tried to weld it to his tractor to use as counterweight.
No other casualties were reported.
The Darwin Awards are posthumously given to people who kill or sterilize themselves "in an extraordinarily idiotic manner," thereby enhancing humanity's gene pool, according to its organizers.
Russia has contributed several Darwin Awards nominees since the ironic honor's establishment in 1993, though none have won.
The latest nomination, from 2010, also involved a World War II bomb in northern Russia, though in this case, a fisher from Karelia blew it up when hammering in a hook, hoping to use the bomb as an anchor.
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