Oops: Wrong Woman Named as Miss Universe

In what must rank as one of the biggest beauty pageant blunders of all time, Miss Colombia was named Miss Universe in Las Vegas on Sunday night and was still basking in the glory when host Steve Harvey returned to the stage to admit he had screwed up. "OK, folks, um, I have to apologize," he said, explaining that he had misread the card and that Ariadna Gutierrez Arevalo was actually the runner-up and the real winner was Miss Philippines, Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach, the Guardian reports. In front of a global TV audience of millions, last year's winner, Paulina Vega, took the crown away from her fellow Colombian and placed it on Wurtzbach's head, reports the AP.

Twitter users dubbed the mistake the "fail of the decade" and mercilessly mocked Family Feud host Harvey, with one user tweeting: "We asked one hundred Americans what's the worst thing you could possibly do at a beauty pageant," USA Today reports. After the pageant, Wurtzbach said she wished Arevalo well, the Guardian reports, while former pageant co-owner Donald Trump gloated, retweeting the comment: "DonaldTrump must be overjoyed that as soon as he sells the pageant it goes off the rails." Steve Harvey tweeted apologies for his "huge mistake," though NBC News reports that a now-deleted initial tweet did not go down well because he misspelled the names of both countries involved, apologizing to "Miss Philippians and Miss Columbia." (Here's what else Trump had to say after the mess.)