For the uninitiated the DARWIN AWARDS are named in honor of Charles Darwin, father of evolution, to “commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.” its organizers say.
The winner for the 2009 was a rare Double Darwin, says Wendy Northcutt of the Darwin Awards, and is awarded for a crime gone awry in Belgium.
On December 25, 2009 a pair of would-be thieves hatched a plan to withdraw cash from a ATM machine by using dynamite. “They overestimated the quantity of dynamite needed for the explosion, " the citation notes dryly. “The blast demolished the building the bank was housed in.” Rescue workers rushed one bomb burglar to the hospital, where he died on arrival. They assumed the second got away until finding parts of his body in the rubble hours latter. No one else was in the building at the time of the blast.