The Darwin Awards are given to people who died due to foolish or idiotic actions, meeting specific criteria. The awards aim to honor those who accidentally remove themselves from the gene pool. Wendy Northcutt maintains the website and books, with examples including a man who set himself on fire and a Brazilian man who tried to disassemble a rocket-propelled grenade. The popularity of the awards led to a film of the same name.
The Darwin Awards are bogus unofficial awards or recognitions given to people whose death was accidentally caused by a foolish or idiotic action. There are certain criteria that must be met before an incident, group or individual is awarded the Darwin Award, but the premise of the Darwin Awards is “to honor those who enhance the species by accidentally removing themselves from it”. The Darwin Awards were named for evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and are labeled “a chronicle of enterprising deaths” and carry the motto Chlorinating the Gene Pool.
The Darwin Awards have appeared annually since 1991 and records of the Darwin Awards and nominees are recorded on the www.darwinawards.com website, maintained by Wendy Northcutt, author of the Darwin Awards books. The criteria implemented by Northcutt consist of requirements that an accident must meet before a person is eligible for the award. The main requirement is that the candidate must have rendered himself incapable of reproduction by dying or becoming infertile. Secondary requirements include being of legal age, otherwise sane, and the accident must be self-caused and verifiable.
Examples of previous Darwin Awards nominees include a man, covered in flammable paraffin cream, who set himself on fire while putting out a cigarette butt he had hidden for smoking on a hospital fire escape. Despite his doctor’s warnings to avoid smoking, he died while being treated for first-degree burns in intensive care. Another candidate was a Brazilian man who tried to disassemble a rocket-propelled grenade by beating it with a sledgehammer, which in turn caused it to explode.
The popularity of the Darwin Awards led to a film of the same name, which premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. The film featured mostly urban legend incidents, some of which were chronicled in Darwin Awards before established guidelines of veracity kicked in, as well as some actual Darwin Award winners.
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