Darwin Awards Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it. The Grand Canyon in Arizona is cordoned off by a fence around the more treacherous overlooks, to prevent unsteady sightseers from tottering into the depths. Some of these overlooks have small towering plateaus a short distance from the fence.
Tourists toss coins onto the plateaus, like dry wishing wells.
Quite a few coins pile up on the surfaces, while others fall to the valley floor far below. One entrepreneur climbed over the fence with a bag, and leapt to one of the precarious, coin-covered perches. He filled the bag with booty, then tried to leap back to the fence with the coins. But the heavy bag arrested his jump, and several tourist were treated to a view of his plunge to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. He did not survive to harvest the piles of coins that had suffered his same fate.