Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Quick Links: Dog Gives Birth to Kitten, etc. —
Dog Gives Birth to Kitten
A dog in a Chinese village has allegedly given birth to a litter that included what looks like a kitten.
“Local residents have been flocking to his house to see the 'kitten' which local vets say is really a puppy which looks like a cat because of a gene mutation. It apparently yaps like a puppy.”
Whether or not the photo that accompanies the article is actually a picture of the litter is uncertain.
(Thanks, Sarah.)

Is Des a Feline Record Breaker?
Des, a cat belonging to Alison Thomas of South Wales, boasts an impressive 26 toes. Polydactylism is not uncommon in felines, and there are reports of cats with 24 toes, but Mrs Thomas is trying to find out whether 26 may be a new UK record. Unconfirmed reports from North America mention cats with 28 toes.
(Thanks, Beasjt.)

Octopig
It has been reported that a pig in Croatia has been born with six legs and two penises. As Sarah pointed out in her email, the ‘Octopig’ should more accurately be called ‘Hexapig’.

Fake Wedding Cakes — I've heard of renting wedding dresses, but I'd never heard of renting the wedding cake. But apparently renting fake wedding cakes is becoming increasingly popular. Here's how it works: It seems like a sensible idea to me. Though, of course, another option would be simply not to have such an expensive wedding if you can't afford it. I'm constantly amazed at the obscene amounts of money some people spend on their weddings. My wife and I had a very simple, low-key wedding, though we did splurge on an Elvis-shaped groom's cake (real, not fake).

Paris Hilton Lives! — In the past few days, several hoaxes have been circulating on the internet about Paris Hilton. The first claims that she was stabbed in jail. The second suggests that she committed suicide. The appearance of these hoaxes was rather predictable, given the media circus surrounding her time in jail. The method of operation of both hoaxes was to disguise themselves as credible news sites. The "Paris Hilton was stabbed" story disguised itself as a CNN webpage. The "Paris Hilton committed suicide" one disguised itself as Australia's ABC. I'll have to add these to my page about celebrity death hoaxes.

God Metal Scam — Swindlers conned a Vietnamese businessman into buying $25,000 worth of "God Metal." Apparently, the existence of God Metal is an old folk legend in Vietnam. According to Thanh Nien News: The mark for the scam thought he could resell the God Metal for millions of dollars. But first he wanted to make sure that it could do all that the legend said: They even showed him a burnt mobile phone, claiming to have “forgotten to turn it off before placing it near the metal”.

He paid the gang an advance of $25,000. But the next day the swindlers were nowhere to be found. Nor was his cash. (Thanks, Joe.)

Breast-Milk Cheese — Le Petit Singly (it's a French-language website, but here's a translated version) claims to be a French farm that specializes in producing cheese out of "the mother's milk of woman." According to the blurb on their site, they've been doing this since 1947. They say that the breast-milk cheese has a caramel color and has a hint of hazelnut taste.

Of course, I think it would be technically possible to make cheese out of breast milk. (Although this woman in Indonesia reports that she tried to use her own breast milk to make some cheese and failed. Link via The Stranger. But she was doing it on her stove top. I think if a commercial producer really put their mind to it, they would have better success.)

I actually briefly discussed this question in Hippo Eats Dwarf, in the context of debunking a site that claimed to produce cheese from lactating rats. I wrote that, "The problem is that the cheese's flavor is influenced by whatever the milk producer eats. So you would want vegetarian milk donors, unless you like cheese that tastes like rotting milk."

The Le Petit Singly site mentions nothing, that I can find, about the diet of the female milk donors. This is one sign that it's a hoax. Another sign is the ads they have on their site, and the fact that it's hosted on a lycos account. A real company would presumably at least shell out the $20 to get their own domain name. (via Why Travel To France)

Update: Looks like Le Petit Singly does discuss the diet of the milk donors. (Thanks, penny!) But I still think it's a hoax.

Best of the Forum – 8th June 07 —
Man blames health drink for unwanted erection (Bebelicious)
New Yorker Christopher Woods underwent surgery in 2004 for severe priapism – an erection that would not subside. Now he’s suing pharmaceutical company Novartis AG, claiming that their nutritional drink, Boost Plus, was the cause of his condition.

Can’t remember the name of a song? Try tapping it on your keyboard! (DJ_Canada)
This programme allows you to tap the melody of a song using your space bar to try to identify it. Results appear to be user-submitted, so they're a little hit and miss. No pun intended.

Yahoo’s list of sunscreen myths (Dily)
A Yahoo writer, Leslie Baumann, M.D., has posted a short list of common mistakes people make when considering protection from the sun.

Woman arrested for making faces at a dog (Slender Loris)
Charges have been dropped against Jayna Hutchinson from Lebanon after she was arrested for "staring at [the police dog] in a taunting/harassing manner."

Faces in Trees — I was inspired by the news story about the mayor's face in a tree to search out other examples of faces in trees. I knew that stories about faces in trees pop up regularly in the news, but to my knowledge no one had ever collected these stories together in one place. So it seemed like an appropriate thing to waste a couple of hours doing. I posted the results in the hoaxipedia. It's more faces in trees than you can shake a stick at.

Mayor Appears on Tree — Donald Stephens, Mayor of Rosemont in Illinois for fifty-one years, died on April 18. But now he's come back. On a tree. The Chicago Tribune reports that: I find it amazing that people think it's the late mayor and not Jesus. Though, according to the article, some observers did initially think it resembled Jesus. Apparently, to really see the resemblance, you need to stand inside the health club and look out at the tree through the glass doors. And probably having a couple shots of whisky doesn't hurt either. (Thanks, Joe)

The Viagra Oyster Email Hoax — George May had a clever idea: Let oysters soak in a solution of Viagra for a while, and then sell them as Viagra Oysters. Of course, Pfizer is objecting to this use of its drug, and food-safety officials don't like the idea of selling purposefully contaminated oysters. But still, May is confident he's got a successful product on his hands, and his idea has received quite a lot of media attention. So it pleased him, but didn't surprise him, when he received the following email from Google's corporate offices: Except, of course, Google doesn't send out congratulatory letters of this kind. If they did, they'd constantly be congratulating whoever was the latest internet-celebrity-of-the-day. The email was the work of a prankster who forged the "from" field. Or was it? Perhaps May cooked up the email himself to gain a little more media attention for himself. He's denying this allegation, but it seems plausible to me since he's the one benefitting from the hoax -- and because his first reaction on receiving the email was to call the media and tell them about it.

Flip This House Fake — My wife is a big fan of all the home-design shows that are on TV, so I end up watching a lot of them also, including "Flip This House" on A&E. The show follows people who buy homes, remodel them, and then try to sell them for a higher price. It can be entertaining, but I wasn't surprised to read that at least one of the house flippers featured on the show, Atlanta businessman Sam Leccima, was a fake: But actually, there's really no need for 'Flip This House' to fake episodes, because often the most entertaining episodes are the ones where the people have no clue what they're doing and end up saddled with a home they can't sell. (At least, I find those episodes to be the most entertaining.)

Jumping Germans — Inspired by the urban legend that if all the people in China jumped at once it would alter the orbit of the Earth, German scientists (working in participation with a German TV show) staged an experiment at a music festival. They arranged for all 50,000 people at the concert to jump at once, and then measured the results. They called it a "gang boing." Here's what happened:

Intention Experiments — Writer Lynne McTaggart has been sponsoring a number of "experiments" to promote her book The Intention Experiment, in which she makes the argument (from what I can surmise without actually having read the book) that we can influence the world around us through our intentions. If we want something to happen, we merely intend for it to happen.

Here's a description of the first three experiments: This makes me realize that I've been going about gardening all wrong. I've been weeding and watering and fertilizing. Instead, all this time I should have just been intending. Better yet, I should get all the readers of the Museum of Hoaxes to intend for me. If everyone intends for the bare patches in my lawn to disappear, I should have a beautiful lawn in no time. And if everyone would intend for my lawn to glow, that would be pretty cool too. Though it might make my neighbors slightly concerned.

The Hoaxipedia — The software that I use to run this site comes with a "wiki module," which allows the capability to add a wikipedia-style encyclopedia to the site. For the past few weeks I've been working on getting this feature working. It's still very much a work-in-progress, but I think it's at a point where I can let everyone see it. I'm calling it the Hoaxipedia.

I'm slowly transferring all of the content contained in the various "galleries" of the museum into the Hoaxipedia. It's going to be a slow process. So far I've only transferred a handful of articles. But the nice thing about transferring the content into the Hoaxipedia is that it allows me to categorize the articles much more easily. It also makes it easier to edit existing content and add new material.

Another interesting feature of the Hoaxipedia is that any registered member of the Museum of Hoaxes can add or edit content. I suspect that I'll be the one adding most of the content for the foreseeable future, but in the past people have asked me if there was any way they could contribute articles to the Museum, and now there is an easy way for them to do that. If you're interested, please try it out -- even if it's just to write some hoax haiku to accompany some articles.

JumpSnap Ropeless Jump Rope — One year ago I posted about an inventor, Lester Clancy, who had filed a patent for a ropeless jump rope. I noted that a jump rope that lacked a rope seemed to defeat the purpose of a jump rope. You might as well just jump up and down holding a pair of dumbbells. But now a company has come out with a commercial version of a cordless jump rope. They're calling it the JumpSnap. They claim that it's the "world's first and only patent-pending computerized ropeless jump rope."

The inventor of the JumpSnap is Brad LaTour. It sounds like there might be a patent battle brewing between Clancy and LaTour. Who first invented the ropeless jump rope? The major difference between the two inventions seems to be that the JumpSnap sports a computer that makes a swishing noise as you swing it.

Again, I think it would be a lot easier (and cheaper) just to jump up and down with some weights.

Unfortunate student pranks — It's student-prank time, and every year we see some good pranks, as well as a few that don't turn out so well. Here are three of the latter kind.

Urinating in the ketchup
"A sophomoric prank put a 15-year-old Valhalla boy in a legal pickle after he was arrested for allegedly urinating into a ketchup dispenser in the Valhalla Middle/High School cafeteria... It was not known whether any of the 200 students in the cafeteria during the second lunch period ingested the tainted ketchup. All condiment dispensers were replaced with sealed individual packets the next day."

Dead cats hung from trees
"San Luis Obispo High School is home of the tigers, but on Tuesday morning it looked more like a cat cemetery. Over the Memorial Day weekend, the science shed was broken into and the bodies of 17 cats used in anatomy class for dissection had been randomly hung on various trees around the high school campus."

Massive foodfight
"Three high school students were arrested after a food fight by 200 students left a police officer with a broken foot, officials said. West Aurora High School students threw french fries, milk, sandwiches and pizza slices at each other Thursday during what administrators called a senior prank that went wild. 'It was just insane," said senior Zach Little. "Things like milk cartons, full pop bottles and blue slushies were flying around. Kids literally bought the food to throw it .'" A police officer who tried to stop it ended up with a broken foot, and another school official suffered minor injuries. (It's unfortunate that people got injured, but it actually sounds like it was kind of fun.)

The Ashera Cat — Want to own a leopard? That probably wouldn't be legal, but for $22,000 you can have the next best thing. A company called Lifestyle Pets is selling what it claims is a cross between an African Serval, an Asian Leopard Cat and a domestic cat. So it's like a smaller, tamer version of a leopard. They call this cat an Ashera. Their product page says, "Fully socialized, the Ashera gets along well with children and other pets and unusually for cats, the Ashera takes well to being walked on a leash."

At first when I saw the Lifestyle Pets website, I thought it was some kind of elaborate hoax in the vein of GenPets. But the Ashera seems to be real. At least, it's being widely reported in the news. And these cats look big! (Well, big for cats.) I don't think any other cats in the neighborhood would mess with them. Not many dogs would either, I would bet. It would look pretty cool walking one of these cats around the neighborhood, but for $22,000 they're a bit out of my price range.

Best of the Forum – 1st June 07 —
Botched Fax Prompts “Terrorism” Scare (MadCarlotta)
Police shut down a strip mall in Boston on Wednesday after a branch of Bank of America received a faulty fax. The fax, which had been sent out by the bank's corporate office, had left off some of the text, leaving some dubious clip art. The plaza was evacuated for around three hours.

Roswell Theme Park (Madmouse)
Roswell city officials plan a UFO-themed amusement park that could open as early as 2010. Local shopkeepers base a large proportion of their trade around the UFO craze, and believe that the theme park would give tourists more to do whilst visiting.

Dutch Reality Show: Win This Person’s Kidney! (Slender Loris)
Earlier this week, Dutch TV station BNN announced their latest reality show. The premise was that a woman who had been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour would choose which of three contestants to donate a kidney to before she died. The Big Donor Show immediately sparked international furore, with mixed attitudes towards the show's concept. Today, it was revealed that the show was a hoax. Whilst it still aired, the woman playing the potential donor was perfectly healthy and, although the three contestants were in need of replacement kidneys, they were fully aware of the show's real premise. The show was aired and advertised as it was to draw attention to the shortage of donor organs in the Netherlands. Judging from the international coverage, they succeeded.

Japanese Ghost Girl (Boo)
Youtube hosts yet another unconvincing 'ghost' video. Look for the point where the special effects kick in.

Car made of cake (Nettie)
Photos of a Skoda advertisement wherein they make a whole car from cake.

An intriguing and mysterious website (Beasjt's number is 669)
Can you decipher the code?

New Nessie Footage — Something is stirring in Loch Ness.

Earlier this month, amateur scientist Gordon Holmes filmed a mysterious shape swimming beneath the surface of Loch Ness. In the footage, you can see a dark shape gliding along. Unfortunately, whatever it is, it never breaks the surface of the water, thus denying us any easy way to identify it.

Holmes says that he filmed the creature at 9:50 pm from a layby on the A82:
The media is describing his footage as the best Nessie footage ever. The question I'm interested in is not whether or not this might be evidence of Nessie (I don't think it is), but whether this is some kind of intentional hoax. My hunch is that it's not. It's probably just a case of someone who happened to film something unusual. Maybe it's a fish, or a trick of the light, or a stray Museum of Hoaxes reader who didn't realize that the trip to Loch Ness was last year, not this year. If this footage came from anywhere else in the world other than Loch Ness, it wouldn't raise any eyebrows. But of course, it does come from Loch Ness, so it's receiving all kinds of media attention.

Credit goes to Stargazer for posting about this in the forum before I managed to post it here. However, this seemed like too big of a story for me not to put it on the front page. (And thanks to all the people who emailed me about it.)

You can see some of the video footage here, or on YouTube. (thanks to MadCarlotta for finding these links.)

And check out my list of Loch Ness Monster Hoaxes for some retrospective on sightings in the Loch.

Myexcusedabsence.com — Way back when -- almost four years ago -- I posted a brief entry about a doctor who was providing people with fake doctor notes. I titled the entry "Fake Doctor Notes," and soon, for some reason, that post became the number one result on google for the keywords "fake doctor notes." As a result, the comments began to fill with people asking me to provide them with fake notes. This went on for years. I'm sure the moderators remember it well. It only ended when we finally disabled commenting for that post, after the comments had grown to 46 pages and 911 comments in total.

I assumed that it would be illegal to actually provide people with fake doctor notes, but here's a site that's doing exactly that: myexcusedabsence.com. The site claims that, for only $24.95, it will provide you with a fake excuse saying that you've been at a doctor or a dentist's appointment, been to the emergency room, had jury duty, or been at a funeral. (I wonder who the note comes from in the case of a funeral? From the funeral director?) It looks like what you get for this money is a Word template formatted to look like an official note. For that amount of money, I think it would be a lot easier simply to create your own fake note in Word.

The site blatantly states that you can use these notes to get out of work or school, but then at the bottom of the page, in very small print, it says "For Entertainment Use Only." I'm guessing this is their legal cover for an otherwise shady operation.

Sunjournal.com has an article about a woman from New Jersey who tried to use an excuse provided by myexcusedabsence.com to explain why she failed to show up for traffic court. The court spotted the note as a fake, and is now considering filing contempt charges against her.

Chinese Killer Bananas — Back in 2000 an email rumor was going around here in the U.S. warning of bananas infected by a flesh-eating bacteria. The rumor read, in part, that: Because of this rumor, the Centers for Disease Control had to issue a warning assuring everyone that no shipments of killer bananas had ever arrived from Costa Rica, or anywhere else in the world.

It now looks like a variant of the killer-banana rumor has popped up in China. The BBC reports that: The Chinese Health Ministry has issued a statement, assuring everyone that there is no truth to the banana rumor and noting that, "There has not been a case in the world in which humans have contracted a plant virus, and there is not any scientific evidence."