A Darwin Award is a tongue-in-cheek honor named after evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin. "Awards" have been given for people who "do a service to Humanity by removing themselves from the Gene pool", i.e., lose the ability to reproduce. It is for people who kill, or in rare cases, sterilize themselves accidentally by attempting to do stupid feats. As described in the Darwin Award books: The Awards honour people who ensure the long-term survival of the human race by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion. While an attempt is made to disallow urban legends from the awards, some older winners have been 'grandfathered' to keep their awards.[1]
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History
The Awards have circulated since 1985 as emails and Usenet group discussions; the Google Usenet archive records two early mentions of Darwin Awards, 7 August 1985 Vending Machine Tipover[2] and the 7 December 1990 JATO Rocket Car[3] urban legend. The JATO legend was widely distributed via emails from 1995–97. Several anonymously authored email lists titled (for example) 1999 Darwin Awards have appeared annually since 1991.[2] There are several websites that record "Darwin Awards"[1] — a well-known one started in 1994 is darwinawards.com run by Wendy Northcutt, who has also written several books on the Darwin Awards.
Requirements
Northcutt has established five requirements for a Darwin Award:
- Inability to reproduce — Nominee must be dead or rendered sterile.
- Sometimes this can be a matter of dispute. Potential awardees may be out of the gene pool due to age; others have already reproduced before their deaths. To avoid debates about the possibility of in-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, or cloning, the original Darwin Awards book applied the following "deserted island" test to potential winners: If the person would be unable to reproduce when stranded on a deserted island with a fertile member of the opposite sex, he or she would be considered sterile. In general, winners of the award are either dead or become unable to use their sexual organs.
- "Excellence" — Astoundingly stupid judgment.
- The candidate's foolishness must be unique and sensational, perhaps because the award is meant to be funny. A number of foolish but common activities, such as smoking in bed, are excluded from consideration, while smoking after being administered a flammable ointment in a hospital and specifically told not to smoke [4] is grounds for nomination.
- "Self-selection" — Cause of one's own demise.
- Killing a friend with a hand grenade would not be eligible, but killing oneself while manufacturing a homemade chimney-cleaning device from a grenade[5] would be eligible. There is no award for killing someone else or causing someone else to be sterile.
- "Maturity" — Capable of sound judgment.
- The nominee must be at least past the legal driving age and free of mental defect.
- "Veracity" — The event must be verified.
- The story must be documented by reliable sources, i.e., reputable newspaper articles, confirmed television reports, or responsible eyewitnesses. If a story is found to be untrue, it is disqualified, but particularly amusing ones are placed in the "urban legends" section of the archives.
Examples
Examples of Darwin award winners include
- juggling active hand grenades (Croatia, 2001),[6]
- jumping out of a plane to film skydivers without wearing a parachute (U.S., 1987),[7]
- trying to get enough light to look down the barrel of a loaded gun using a cigarette lighter (U.S., 1996),[8]
- using a lighter to illuminate a fuel tank to make sure it contains nothing flammable (Brazil, 2003), (This method is not entirely original: a mid-1950's Burma-Shave commercial reads:"He lit a match to check a tank. That's why they call him Skinless Frank.")
- attempting to play Russian roulette with a semi-automatic pistol that automatically reloads the next round into the chamber,[9]
- crashing through a window and falling to your death in trying to demonstrate that the window is unbreakable,[10]
Northcutt's Darwin Awards site gives "Honorable Mentions" to people who manage to survive their misadventures with their reproductive capacity intact. One notable example is Lawnchair Larry, who attached helium filled weather balloons to a lawn chair and floated far above Long Beach, California, in July 1982.
Special Winners
Each year, one award is selected as being much more "honourable" than the rest, and it is crowned as the "Darwin Award of the Year" or "[year] Darwin Award Winner".
Books
- 2000: Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action, ISBN 0-525-94572-5 & ISBN 0-452-28344-2
- 2001: Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection, ISBN 0-525-94623-3 & ISBN 0-452-28401-5
- 2003: Darwin Awards III: Survival of the Fittest, ISBN 0-525-94773-6 & ISBN 0-452-28572-0
- 2006: Darwin Awards IV: Intelligent Design, ISBN 0-525-94960-7
Movie
See also
References
- ^ a b snopes.com discussion of the Darwin Awards
- ^ a b Vending machine tipover
- ^ JATO Rocket Car
- ^ [1] "Stubbed Out"
- ^ [2] "Chimney Cleaning Grenade"
- ^ Juggling Hand Grenades
- ^ Parachuting Without a Parachute
- ^ Looking Down a Gun Barrel
- ^ Gun Safety Training
- ^ Lawyer Aloft
