POSTHUMOUS RECOGNITION

A 'posthumous recognition' is a ceremonial award given after the recipient has died, usually in honor of an action associated with their death. Most awards are normally given while the recipient is alive, but in the case in which it is given after death, the recipient is referred to as having been "awarded posthumously."
Some awards are given ''only'' upon or after death of the recipient, and thus are by definition a posthumous recognition. Conversely, some awards, like the Nobel Prize, and most knighthoods, are forbidden from being awarded posthumously.

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Examples

Examples

★ As part of the criteria for bestowing the Medal of Honor or the Victoria Cross, the recipient must have risked "great self-sacrifice" in an act of extraordinary heroism. As a consequence, many are awarded posthumously.

★ The tongue-in-cheek Darwin Award is often given as a posthumous recognition, since one of the criteria for receiving it is that the recipient must have committed an act that unintentionally led to their own removal from the human gene pool, ''i.e.,'' either their own death or self-sterilization.

★ The victims of the Virginia Tech massacre have been awarded posthumous degrees.

★ Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon were the first soldiers awarded Medal of Honors posthumously since Vietnam. They received this for defending a crashed chopper from hundreds of advancing Somalis in The Battle of Mogadishu.