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Wrong Miss Universe Is Crowned. For one brief shining moment on Sunday night in Las Vegas, Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutiérrez Arévalo, was crowned Miss Universe.

And then the pageant’s host, Steve Harvey, realized that he had misread the card on which the winners were listed.

It was a gaffe made for the age of Twitter, GIFs, Vines and 24/7 social media snark. Almost as soon as the mistake was made, it was memed.

Mr. Harvey did not realize his mistake until after Ms. Gutiérrez had begun to soak up the glory of the title.

She was standing center stage, holding a bouquet of flowers with the glittering crown perched atop her head, waving, waving, waving to the audience, when Mr. Harvey sheepishly returned to the stage, his steps slow and heavy.

“Ok, folks, uh,” he stammered. “There’s ... I have to apologize.”

The crowd laughed, and Ms. Gutiérrez laughed, too, unaware of her pending fate.

“The first runner-up is Colombia,” he said, to the screams of the audience.

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The cameras panned rapidly back and forth among Mr. Harvey, Ms. Gutiérrez and the actual winner, Miss Philippines, Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach. Looks of confusion, shock and mortification abounded.

“Miss Universe 2015 is Philippines,” he exclaimed.

Ms. Wurtzbach walked awkwardly forward, seemingly unsure of what to do.

Mr. Harvey, a comedian and talk show host, apologized effusively and made a point of showing the card to the cameras to prove that the second crowning of the night was, in fact, the correct one.

“Horrible mistake, but the right thing,” he said. “I can show it to you right here. The first runner-up is Colombia.”

Mr. Harvey did not stick around, swiftly heading for stage right as Miss Philippines took her place beside Miss Colombia, still clutching her flowers and wearing the crown.

The two contestants stood awkwardly side by side, a smile on neither face, while one woman was de-crowned and the other was crowned.

Later, Mr. Harvey turned to Twitter to apologize for his mistake in a tweet that misspelled the names of both countries. He later deleted the tweet — but not before it was retweeted more than 30,000 times.

“I want to apologize emphatically to Miss Philippians and Miss Columbia,” he wrote. “This was a terribly honest human mistake and I am so regretful.”