Is all publicity good publicity? The Chinese dating app Youjia created a fake ad claiming that a young woman was funding her travels throughout China by having sex with men who would pay her way for her. But the ad raised the ire of Chinese authorities who have now banned the sale of the app throughout the country. [telegraph.co.uk]
40 years ago. The 1974 War of the Worlds Panic broadcast in which Martians invaded Rhode Island — a lesser-known sequel to the 1932 broadcast. [Providence Journal]
Satirical art provokes outrage. Artist Darren Cullen set up a fake "Pocket Money Loans" shop for kids (and accompanying website) to mock parasitic payday lenders. Many people didn't realize it was satire. [London24]
Ghost stories for Halloween. Richard Sugg writes about 19th century campus ghosts, and campus ghost hoaxes. [Times Higher Education]
MOH gets a shout out. Jack Shafer notes that the problem of fake news "clickbait" stories long predates the internet, and he cites a number of examples of 19th century fake news stories archived here at the Hoax Museum. [reuters]
Fake news. Emergent.info lists an article about a Macedonian man who cut off his penis and put it in the trash as "unverified and problematic." [emergent.info]
Celebrity death hoaxes. Judd Nelson isn't dead, nor is Walking Dead actor Norman Reedus. [ibtimes, classicalite]
Music urban legend. Is 27 the age at which rock stars are most likely to die an untimely death? That's the popular theory, but author Dianna Kenny found that it's just a myth. "The average male musician dies in his late 50s, compared with 75 for men outside the industry." [Wall Street Journal]
A case of a man crying wolf? Andrew Davies lies on the ground faking illness so often that he's now been given an anti-social behavior order banning him from wasting the time of emergency crews any more. [telegraph.co.uk]
Real photo, fake caption. The viral Airplane Rainbow Photo was supposedly taken by a woman as her plane flew through a rainbow. But the rainbow effect is caused by the light being polarised by the window. Not from flying through a rainbow. [usvsth3m.com]
Halloween urban legend. The 'man arrested for having sex with a pumpkin' urban legend. [About.com urban legends]
Poe's Law in action. The satirical claim that Michele Bachmann questioned why dinosaur bones are dirty if they've been buried for millions of years has been widely accepted as an actual quotation from her. [Snopes]
Cryptozoologists feuding. The American Bigfoot research community is well-known for its bitter feuds and rivalries. Apparently Australian Yowie researchers are no different. [Courier Mail]
Nessie Hunting. New documents show that back in the 1930s, the London Natural History Museum appealed to bounty hunters to shoot and kill Nessie, for the sake of science. A letter from a museum official stated, "Should you ever come within range of the ‘Monster’ I hope you will not be deterred by humanitarian considerations from shooting him on the spot and sending the carcase to us in cold storage, carriage forward. Short of this, a flipper, a jaw or a tooth would be very welcome." [Scotsman.com]
Prolific ghosts. Ben Radford's article about spirits who dictate books includes the interesting factoid that, 175 years after her death, Betsy Ross revealed to psychic Susan Lander that she was a lesbian. [Discovery News]
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