Darwin Awards

 
Friday's Urban Legend: MOSTLY FALSE

Haver you ever received an email message like this one?

It's that time again! Yes, it's that magical time of the again when the Darwin Awards are bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us. Here then, is the glorious winner:

Darwin Award winners:

1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked..... And now, the honorable mentions: ....

Did you think it was a true story? Unfortunately, these stories are about as accurate as the ones that tell you about your lottery winnings or your long-lost relative who just died and left you $350,000.

Go to snopes.com to get the inside story on the 2005 Darwin Awards and all the others.

Contrary to common belief, there is no panel of distinguished judges weighing each potential Darwin Award entry then sagely reaching agreement as to which deserves an official accolade. Darwin Awards e-mails have been circulating on the Internet at least since May 1991, with the earliest e-mails and newsgroups posts of this nature setting before posterity inventive works of fiction that had been labeled by their authors as true accounts of actual deaths. Years after the term "Darwin Award" was being used in connection with text descriptions of deaths by misadventure, a number of web sites sprung up to archive the variety of Darwin Award tales then in circulation. Those sites not only collected the fictional offerings then making the online rounds but also on their own dug up numerous true accounts of death by stupidity, thus building a vast body of such tales, some true and some not. While other sites have since faded into obscurity, one has emerged as the clear winner: www.DarwinAwards.com, a site owned and maintained by Wendy Northcutt. Ms. Northcutt has since authored three highly successful books based on her site.

The various "Annual Darwin Awards" e-mails (such as the one which is the topic of this article) do not originate with DarwinAwards.com; they are put together by unknown persons.

The cover of one of Wendy Northcutt's book is shown above. (It's the first volume.) The book lists hundreds of Darwin awards, Honorable Mentions, Urban Legends, and Personal Accounts. Many, but not all, of the valid Darwin Awards are marked "Confirmed by Darwin" to indicate that Wendy Northcutt has checked them out and they actually happened. Unfortunately, confirmation often consists of just tracking down a newspaper account that repeats the story. We all know that newspaper reporters can often be taken in by made-up stories.

They may be fake but they're still amusing. Here's one of the latest from www.DarwinAwards.com.

(21 June 2007, Philippines) Three enterprising individuals tried to make a buck by selling metal to the scrap heap. They entered a former US military complex in Clark, Pampanga, Philippines. Before them stood the prize: an abandoned water tank! Bedazzled by the profit to be made, the three gleefully abandoned logic, and began to cut the metal legs out from under the water tank. Guess where the tank fell? Straight onto the thieves. They have not yet been identified, as their bodies were severely flattened.

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