I think Icarus deserves a Darwin Award as he stupidly ignored wax melts when flying too close to the sun.

-------------------------------------- Icarus

Icarus was the son of the inventor Daedalus and a slave named Naucrate. King Minos of Crete imprisoned Daedalus and Icarus in the Labyrinth to punish Daedalus for helping the hero Theseus to kill the monster called the Minotaur and to escape with Minos' daughter, Ariadne. Daedalus knew that Minos controlled any escape routes by land or sea, but Minos could not prevent an escape by flight. So Daedalus used his skills to build wings for himself and Icarus. He used wax and string to fasten feathers to reeds of varying lengths to imitate the curves of birds' wings. When their wings were ready, Daedalus warned Icarus to fly at medium altitude. If he flew too high, the sun could melt the wax of his wings, and the sea could dampen the feathers if he flew too low. Once they had escaped Crete, Icarus became exhilarated by flight. Ignoring his father's warning, he flew higher and higher. The sun melted the wax holding his wings together, and the boy fell into the water and drowned. Daedalus looked down to see feathers floating in the waves, and realized what had happened. He buried his son on an island which would be called Icaria, and the sea into which Icarus had fallen would ever after be called the Icarian Sea (between the Cyclades and Asia Minor).

Submitted on 09/18/2003

Submitted by: Diego
Reference: Myth books

Copyright © 2003 DarwinAwards.com

Bill said:
Definitely Keep: For Darwin's Eyes
I don't think we should have a cutoff date - this "UL" is a classic, though the physics and meteorology don't work.

Jack said:
Definitely Keep: For Darwin's Eyes
In addition to what Charles said, the higher you go, the colder the air gets and thus the less likely for the wax to melt. But I'm marking this "Keep - For Darwin's Eyes" because I think that it is time to set up a cut-off date for submissions without historically verifible information. What next - Moses and the Egyptians ... ?

Charles said:
Neutral: Urban Legend
In actual fact, it is impossible to build wings of wax and feathers, no matter what framework you use, that will allow a human to make a self-powered flight, although a glide for quite a long distance is possible. So this one has to remain a myth... or urban legend, which is the closest category we have for this. I'm begrudgingly allowing it, but I think that first, it may be past the cutoff date, and second, Icarus may have failed the age criterion -- the legend is unclear how old he was.

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