Unbelievably, some people seem to have forgotten the reason for Elliot's fame. This page explains everything.

On the 20th of March 1983, an anonymous Professor of an equally anonymous university announced an astonishing discovery – he claimed to have found a ‘lost notebook' belonging to the long-dead naturalist, Charles Darwin.

The notebook was chiefly concerned with forecasting the future evolutionary direction of mankind; containing detailed drawings and speculations on how Darwin believed the human race would physically develop in the centuries and millennia to come.

Extracts from the notebook were published all over the world, and millions of people marvelled at (allegedly) Darwin's fascinating predictions.

This is how some people believe the front cover should have looked

Among his various anticipations of the human form was ‘tail-less man': a figure almost indistinguishable from present sapiens but for the simple fact of having no coccyx (tail bone). Darwin's alleged assumption was that tail-less man was ‘the next logical step' in human evolution, although exactly how he supposed the lack of a coccyx would give any advantage to a human was unclear.

A day after the notebook furore, on the 21st of March 1983, a baby was born. This baby was named Elliot Hawthorn and after some tests, was discovered to have a curious (and, subsequently, life-changing) condition – he had no tail bone.

It wasn't long before the press got hold of the story and baby Elliot was front-page news. Headlines like: 'Embrace über Baby', 'Infant Doom-Bringer' and 'The Best Human on the Planet' guaranteed young Elliot would remain firmly in the spotlight of mankind his whole life.

   
Click to enlarge the front pages

Some jealous boffins did claim, however, that babies born without tail bones are a very common occurance and Elliot was nothing special. It's safe to say Elliot has proved them wrong.