Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

‘The Can’ — It all began when Bill and Diane Finc bought a can of tomato juice. When they shook it before opening, they heard a metallic thud. There was something inside.

Now, instead of doing what I would do and very hesitantly opening it, trying not to let the possibilities of what could be in there run through my mind, the Fincs, residents of the somewhat eccentric town of Jarbridge, kept it for a year. Over that time, bets were placed on what the mysterious item could be.

After a day of impromptu partying and picnicking, the can was ceremoniously opened to reveal... a smaller can.

I can't have been the only person desperately hoping that, if someone had shaken the smaller can, there might have been a metallic clunking...

(Thanks, Phred22.)

Quick Links: Bonsai Contortionist, etc. — Bonsai Contortionist
Hugo Zamoratte is known as 'The Bottle Man' and has the ability to dislocate almost every bone in his body.

Playing Astronauts
The Haughton Mars Project's research and development of ways to survive in space seem like a dream come true for big kids.

Cardboard Office
Mike, a keen prankster, pushed his co-workers too far. It was probably a mistake to then take a few days away from the office.

Lobster Pinches Wallet
A man who lost his wallet during a late-night swim was surprised when it turned up in the claws of a lobster caught by a diver.

Giant Baby Born in China — Xinhuanet.com reports on a "giant baby" born in China's Hubei Province a few days ago. The baby looks pretty big in the photos, but the photo captions state that the baby "weighs 5.5 kilograms and is 57 centimeters tall." That would be about 12 lbs and a little under 2' tall. I think the height is more unusual than the weight. From what I understand, babies weighing 12 lbs aren't that unusual, especially if the mother is diabetic. Babycenter.com notes that:

Quick Links: Banana Phone, etc. —
Banana Phone
Disguise your mobile phone as a banana. Admittedly a pretty stupid product, and yet I want one. Too bad I'm one of the last people on Earth not to own a mobile phone. (via OhGizmo)

5Lb Fat Replica
Amazon is selling a "A grossly dramatic replica of 5 lbs. of fat." However, gift wrapping is not available for this item, so you can't send it as a mean gift to someone you don't like. The one reviewer for this item gives it "Bonus points for the realistic blood vessels!" I don't know if this is at all related to the Pet Fat gimmick that someone was marketing a few years ago. (via J-Walk)

Hodag Search
The town of Rhinelander, Wisconsin is holding an open casting call "for people who have the best Hodag stories or "sightings" of the mythical creature." Video of people telling the stories will be used in an upcoming TV ad campaign. For some reason, I have a vision of Ellen Feiss doing these ads: "And the hodag was going, like, bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep."

Digital Beautification
Researchers have developed a "digital beautification" algorithm that, when applied to a photograph of a human face, can make that face look "more attractive in just a few minutes without significantly altering the person's appearance." The algorithm and software was developed by Tommer Leyvand of Tel Aviv University in Israel. My problem when anyone takes my picture is my complete inability to smile on command for the camera. If I try to fake a smile I get a maniacal grimace look. If this algorithm could do anything to fix that, I'd definitely use it.

Self-Watering Miracle Tree — Lucille Pope's oak tree has sprung a leak. Water is pouring out of it at the rate of a tenth of a gallon every minute, and no one knows where the water is coming from.

It all started back in April when a little sap started oozing out of the tree. The sap progressed to a dark stain, that eventually turned into a steady trickle of water. Lucille Pope thinks it's some kind of miracle tree, and that the water has special healing properties. However, her son Lloyd says "I ain't with that superstitious stuff ... There's no crying Mary here." (Good for him.) However, the specialists from the local water board are baffled. It doesn't seem to be a leaking pipe since Mrs. Pope's water bill isn't going up. Hydrologist George Rice said: I can't imagine how this phenomenon could easily be faked, so I doubt it's a hoax. I'm going with the underground spring that somehow forced its way up through the tree theory.

Naked Civil Servants Fired — The Rural Payments Agency have fired four staff and disciplined five others after reports of naked filing cabinet hurdling, amongst other pranks. The Register reports that:


I am so very, very glad I don't work there...

Quick Links: Taco Sauce Pranksters, etc. —
Taco Sauce Pranksters Strike
Fifteen masked men entered an Indiana Taco Bell and returned 25,000 packets of taco sauce that, so they said, had been accumulating in the trunk of their car for the past three years. It required 40 trash bags to carry all the packets of sauce into the store. Maybe they thought that if they saved up enough packets of sauce they could win a free Liberty Bell.

Unwise Grenade Opening Technique
Reuters reports that "A Brazilian man died Tuesday when he tried to open what police believe was a rocket-propelled grenade with a sledgehammer in a mechanical workshop on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro." Big Gary notes: "The Darwin Awards have a new emblem."

Lonely Heart Calls Operator 37,760 Times
A Japanese man has been arrested for repeatedly calling information hundreds of times a day just to listen to the voices of the telephone operators. He called so often, 37,760 times to be exact, that it began to creep the operators out. In his defense the man said, "When I made a complaint call once, the operator dealt with it very kindly, so I wanted to hear these women's voices." This guy really needed an Imaginary Girlfriend. (Submitted by Alex from Colombia)

Fake Hearse Scam
The latest scam in New Zealand is to reduce your car registration by up to two-thirds by claiming your car is a hearse. "The scam ... came to light last in July when a woman told a radio station she justified her action by saying she carried dead chickens home from the supermarket." I assume she drove her car home slowly in honor of the frozen chickens in the back.

North Korean Defector Sells Fake Aphrodisiacs
A North Korean defector now living in South Korea has been charged with selling unlicensed aphrodisiacs. He claimed that Kim Jong Il had been a user of them. This is where the story gets a little weird: "The stimulants were sold to blind people, most of them owner of massage centers." Huh? How many blind massage center owners can there be? But this is the part I like: The police said, "Some who took the stimulants suffered from swelling." So I assume the stimulants actually worked.

Frog Salad Surprise — A lot of sites have been linking to this photo of a frog inside a bag of salad. Could the photo be real? Well, I don't think it's photoshopped, this being a case where it would be a lot easier to stick a frog inside a bag rather than go to the trouble of photoshopping it in. But there have been reported cases in the past of frogs showing up inside packaged salads. For instance, a few months ago (April 12, 2006) The Daily Telegraph in Australia reported a case: I don't think the photo here is from the Australian case. Also note that in the Australian case the frog was dead, which is a lot more believable. The frog here looks alive. However, I think it is possible that this is real. Although I'd be more comfortable listing this as real if there were some contextual details (such as when and where this photo was taken.) (Thanks to Doug Nelson for the link)

World’s Smallest Cat — There's been so many giant cats in the news, it's good to see a munchkin cat make headlines. This tiny cat named Heed is 14 weeks old and is currently in the running to grab the record for Smallest Cat Ever. It's only 3 ¼ inches tall. In that picture he looks bigger than a roll of toilet paper to me. Anyway, Potrero is just a few miles east of where I live. Maybe I should drive over and check Heed out. Greg writes: "I had never heard of the Munchkin breed of cat. Quite amazing how small these cats are, and cute too. =) Going to need a really small bottle to Bonzai them 😉"

Quick Links: Perishing Penguins, etc. —
Penguins Perish in Freak Texas Truck Accident
A truck carrying zoo animals to a new home overturned on a Texas highway. Four penguins died as well as some exotic fish. The octopus got away unharmed. The person who emailed me this (they didn't give a name) writes : "The story itself isn't all that interesting, but the headline is a classic. Possible sequel to Hippo Eats Dwarf?"

Beware of Eyeball-Sucking Red Lamprey
A prankster in northern Wisconsin has been placing hoax signs around lakes. The signs are decorated with the logo of the Department of Natural Resources and claim that a) a bounty is being paid for crayfish if you deliver them to a DNR office; and b) There's an invasion of red lamprey who like to attach themselves to the optic nerve of swimmers. I assume that red lamprey do not attach themselves to eyeballs. But do they attach themselves to any part of the body? Big Gary's knowledge is needed here.

Chinese Create Robot Secretary
Chinese researchers have created an attractive robot secretary. She can greet visitors, act as a tour guide, and is equipped with advanced voice and movement control. Her name is Rong Cheng. This reminds me of that John Hughes movie Weird Science. (Thanks, Kathy)

Zaky Infant Pillow
Now you can fool your baby into thinking that you're there holding it as it falls asleep, while you're really out in a bar getting drunk. "The Zaky is an ergonomic infant pillow designed by a mom to mimic the size, weight, touch, and feel of her hand and forearm to help her baby with comfort, support, protection, and development." Kids raised on this thing will be natural customers, later in life, for the Boyfriend Arm Pillow. (via Must Have Gizmos)

Weird Scottish Myths — The Scotsman has published an article on a number of slightly bizarre (well, very bizarre) myths about Scotland, ranging from Jesus holidaying in the Hebrides to Jerusalem actually being Edinburgh. Mostly avoiding the Da Vinci Code furore, the newspaper has given each theory their own marks out of ten on the probability scale.


(Thanks, Dave.)

Quick Links: Animal Antics — Transsexual Chicken
Anne Boleyn the chicken is causing uproar in her henhouse, ever since she grew a comb, tail and wattle.

Marauding Goats
Nantgwynant, in Wales, is suffering an invasion of wild goats. The goats' antics include, according to some passing motorists, playing "chicken" with passing cars before running off.

Flying St. Bernard
A St. Bernard dog has been placed in care after being thrown out of a second storey window and landing on a man passing below.

Hanging Munchkin set for Stage Debut — The well-known and much maligned Wizard of Oz urban legend – that of a scene in the film where one can ‘see’ one of the munchkins hanging himself at the back of the set – is the centre theme of a show opening in Dublin this week. Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh has focused the play, depicting the lives of the actors who portrayed the munchkins, around the premise that the legend is true.
The BBC quotes him as saying:

Bizarre Japanese Porta Potty Prank — Japanese TV (especially their game shows and reality shows) is notorious for airing some pretty bizarre and cruel stunts. Here are two good examples of that. These videos come from a candid-camera style show. I don't know it's name. In the first video an outdoor porta potty is equipped with a hydraulic lift that, ten seconds after the door is shut, lifts the bewildered occupant high into the air. And as NetNewsAsia points out, "for many people, ten seconds is evidently more than enough time to get down to the job at hand."

In the second video a massaging chair at a ski resort is rigged to send the occupant flying backwards through a trapdoor into the snow. The prank is then updated to make the chair jet-powered. Now its terrified occupants are sent blasting at top speed down the ski slope in a runaway chair.

If these pranks were done in America, I can't imagine someone not getting sued. Assuming, that is, that the pranks haven't been staged (i.e. that the victims aren't really actors). I think there's a good probability that they are. The Japanese have a term for staged events on shows like this: Yarase. Yarase is so common over there that many viewers just assume that most of the weird stuff they see on TV is fake.

Flower Urinals — Kathy Johnston sent along a link to these pictures of artistic urinals created by urinal sculptor Clark Sorensen. (I would love to be able to tell people at cocktail parties that my job was a 'urinal sculptor'.) Yes, they're real urinals, although I don't know if they're actually installed and being used anywhere. Check out more examples of Sorensen's art at clarkmade.com. I think a fake fly would be the ideal addition to his urinals.

Quick Links: Card Trick, etc. —
Card Trick
YouTube video of a well performed card trick. I think it's a version of the "ambitious card" trick, in which one card keeps coming to the top again and again. I don't know how it's done, but I'm guessing it involves double-lifting cards and using a false shuffle to keep certain cards at the top (or bottom).

Tom Dundee Condoms Banned in Thailand
Thai authorities have banned a line of condoms named Tom Dundee, since Dundee in Thai means "Good Penetration," a phrase that they regard as "ambiguous, boastful and provocative." Big Gary notes: The only interesting thing about this story is that country singer Tom Dundee's real name is Puntiva Poomiprates, but "Dundee" is the name the authorities thought was "too suggestive."

Dalai Lama Moon
People throughout India and Tibet have been reporting seeing "the reflection of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the halo of the moon." The Dalai Lama's office would not confirm whether he was really the man in the moon.

Fake Fish
The St. Petersburg Times visited 11 restaurants featuring grouper on their menu, and found that 6 of them were surreptitiously serving cheaper fish instead. "One Palm Harbor restaurant charged $23 for "champagne braised black grouper" that actually was tilapia." This doesn't surprise me at all. As I noted in Hippo Eats Dwarf, snapper is another often-faked fish. PoynterOnline writes that the National Seafood Inspection Laboratory found, after testing samples from random vendors, that "80 percent of the red snappers tested have been mislabeled.

Crackheadz Gone Wild — The Miami New Times have reported on the publicisation of the lives of crack cocaine users through Headliners Productions' range of Crackheadz Gone Wild DVDs. Crackheadz Gone Wild Miami will be the fifth such film.

Debatable is the motives behind these films:

The guys who run Headliners Productions deny this claim - having previously spent time in prison on drug charges, they now work as counsellors and donate 'a portion' of their profits from the DVDs to an anti-drug counselling centre. They say that:

Although the Miami edition isn't out yet, Crackheadz Gone Wild New York is still available through their website and, unlike most hoax websites, there's actually a method to buy them.

(Thanks, Cranky Media Guy.)

Quick Links: Square Watermelon, etc. — Flora and I have decided on a more efficient way to post links that really don't need (or don't deserve) an entire post of their own. We'll just dump them together in a "quick links" post whenever we accumulate a bunch of them. Should mean more stuff gets posted. Here's the first such set of links:

Square Watermelon
Soon to be on sale in Britain. Really. "Boxes are placed around the growing fuit which naturally swells to fill the shape." Buy two and get a bonsai kitten free! (Thanks, Lou)

Reuters admits altering Beirut photo
Bloggers spot repeating symmetrical patterns in Beirut smoke. Cry photoshop.

Amazon Milk Reviews
Amazon now selling groceries. I suspect some of these user reviews for "Tuscan Whole Milk" might not be completely serious. (via Metafilter)

Tom Cruise Can't Throw a Baseball
YouTube video offers slow-motion analysis of the scene in War of the Worlds where Tom Cruise throws a baseball. Or rather, pretends to throw a baseball.

The Ring Prank
Annoying online prank inspired by "The Ring." Enter your friends phone number and email address in the online form. Your friend will receive an email with a link to "The Ring" video. Once they watch the video, they'll then receive a phone call with a computer-generated voice telling them "You will die in seven days." The best way to get revenge on someone who does this to you is to fake your death after seven days. They'll feel guilty then.

Popularity Dialer
Mobile phone application allows you to pre-plan excuses to escape from unpleasant meetings. "Via a web interface, you can choose to have your phone called at a particular time (or several times). At the elected time, your phone will be dialed and you will hear a prerecorded message that's one half of a conversation. Thus, you will be prompted to have a fake conversation and will easily fool those around you." Reminds me of Escape-a-date. (via Boing Boing)

Is the “End of Serenity” Photo Fake? — I think what follows is an example of the truism that "we are most gullible when we are most skeptical."

When United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, a woman named Val McClatchey, who lived nearby the crash, managed to get a picture of the cloud of smoke from the crash rising above the trees. Her photo, which she subsequently titled 'The End of Serenity,' became quite famous, but now conspiracy theorists are suggesting that it's a fake: Good grief. Why would the photo be a fake? The woman really did live near the crash, and she doesn't seem to have possessed the kind of skills needed to create a sophisticated photo forgery. Plus, the FBI examined the photo and vouches for its authenticity.

It's an interesting phenomenon when people became so suspicious that they start seeing evidence of fakery everywhere. It goes to show that doubting everything can be just as bad as believing everything.

Al Gore’s Penguin Army — A video posted on YouTube, supposedly created by a 29-year-old guy from California calling himself Toutsmith, showing a caricature of Al Gore boring a group of penguins by lecturing them about global warming, has been revealed to be a creation of lobbying firm DCI Group, one of whose clients is Exxon Mobil Corp.

The fraud was exposed, surprisingly, by the Wall Street Journal. It's not clear to me exactly how they did it, since I haven't been able to access their article, but from what I can piece together they sent the creator of the video an email, and he must have responded to them. This gave them his IP address, which they promptly traced to the DCI Group.

As all the articles about this have been pointing out, the video is an example of "astroturf": The creation of a fake grassroots campaign. The London Times lists a few other recent examples of astroturf: However, the penguin video also seems to be an example of Subviral Marketing, which refers to the practice of companies creating viral content which they then deny any association with. (See the Fake Puma Ad.) So maybe this video represents the creation of a new hybrid: Subviral Astroturf.