Much has been made of Steve Harvey’s much ballyhooed Miss Universe crowning flub Sunday night, but it’s actually not the first time something like this has happened. Let’s hop in the wayback machine, all the way to the 2006 Miss World competition hosted by Alan Thicke in St Petersburg, Russia. What transpires in the above video is a bit confusing, but basically it looks like the crown was down to two women: Miss Costa Rica and Miss Russia, as Thicke announces, “The first runner-up is … Miss Costa Rica–Miss World 2006, Miss Russia!”
It was probably a combination of both the language barrier and the manner in which he named Miss Costa Rica first, but after a small child was lowered from the ceiling to present the crown — because this is Russia, let’s not forget — to Miss Costa Rica, not Miss Russia, all beauty queen hell broke loose.
Organizers of the pageant, which was marred with controversy from the very beginning, were later accused to unfairly rigging the contest so Miss Russia (who was married to a 50-year-old banker with alleged mob ties) would win. To this day, who knows if anyone knows what really went down, but the point is that Steve Harvey can take some comfort in the fact that he’s not the first one to bungle a pageant crowing.