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Darwin Awards Imposter

By Tom W. Bell and Glen Whitman

The 2007 Darwin Awards have been announced, but if you think you?ve read them, you may be mistaken. Here is the list forwarded to me by email, and the winner sounds like the real deal:

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.

Assuming that Elliot died from the blast, this story satisfies the Darwin Awards? original goal of ?honoring those who improve the species? by accidentally removing themselves from it!? But if you read the rest of the list, you?ll find that none of the runner-ups actually died (or rendered themselves impotent, which is just as good from an evolutionary perspective). You might even call these the Anti-Darwin Awards, insofar as the subjects' survival raises questions about the efficiency of natural selection.

As it turns out, this same list was circulated in 2005, and a number of its entries were debunked as urban legends.

The actual winner of the 2007 Darwin Awards killed himself by giving himself a liquor enema. But I prefer the first runner-up, which was actually a team effort:

June 2007, South Carolina | A passing cabbie found a 21 year-old deceased couple laying naked in the road an hour before sunrise. Authorities were baffled. There were no witnesses, no trace of clothing, and no wrecked vehicles present. But investigators eventually found a clue high on the roof of a nearby building: two sets of neatly folded clothes. Safe sex takes on a whole new meaning when you are perched on the edge of a pyramid-shaped metal roof. "It appears as if [they] accidentally fell off the roof," Sgt. McCants said.

You can read the full list of genuine 2007 Darwin Awards here; accept no substitutes.

Full post as published by Agoraphilia on January 28, 2008 (boomark / email).