Did you know that Feb. 12, 2009 was Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday? And the man credited with the theory of evolution now shares his name with an annual list of people whose unsafe acts accidentally led to their deaths. And many of these occurred at work.

According to its Web site, “The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it.”

Among this year’s awards:

• The man who thought it would be fun to use a pressurized hose for an inappropriate purpose
• A ski lift operator who did pull-ups on a piece of moving equipment
• The building demolition worker who hadn’t considered his own fate while tearing down a structure around him, and
• The man who found out the hardest way that body piercings and electronic control testers don’t mix.

You can read these and more 2008 Darwin Award winners (losers?) here.

Tags: Darwin Awards, remove from gene pool, unsafe acts