Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Google April Fools — It's an entire search engine devoted entirely to April Fools. Put in a word and it pulls up every page related to April Fool's Day that contains that word. The Museum of Hoaxes seemed to figure prominently in the results for the few words that I picked at random, which I thought was cool. For a second I thought this was something that Google itself had created, but then I noticed the small disclaimer at the bottom: "This parody by Philipp Lenssen is unrelated to the real Google".

Last Resort Retrieval — A few of you have noticed the strange ad that is now running on my site (in the left-hand column) for a company called 'Last Resort Retrieval' that claims to specialize in recovering stolen art. Yes it is a hoax site, or rather it's part of a marketing campaign for a product other than a company that recovers stolen art. But that's about all I can say about it, because I'm supposed to keep the secret (since they're paying me to put the ad there).

The thing is, I really don't think it would be easy to guess what product they're marketing, though I think the ads are going to develop over time and offer more clues. If you go to the site and click on the 'login' screen, you'll discover it's possible to login without a username or password.

p.s. I don't get any extra money if you click on the ad. They pay a flat fee to put the ad there. I just thought it was worth pointing out the strangeness of a hoax ad running on a site about hoaxes.

April Fools 2005 — I'll try to post about April Fools Jokes here as I find out about them. Already I've found a few:

• Residents of Melbourne arrive at the beach to help save 'needle-nose dolphins' washed ashore, only to learn needle-nose dolphins are syringes.
• A Taiwanese university student posted a fake story alleging that China had launched a 'decapitation strike' against Taiwan. Taiwanese authorities don't find it funny.
• UnderGoos: Google underwear search engine (Google parody)
• Bare Bones Software announces new software that will record critical user data onto a "durable backup medium": punchout cards.
• UN votes to shut down the internet: the rapid and uncontrolled flow of information was destabilizing the governments of many of the member states... The Nigerian representative stormed out after the vote saying that the shutdown would destroy his country's largest source of income.
• THIS IS REAL: Miss Wheelchair Wisconsin stripped of her crown because she can stand.
• THIS IS REAL: BBC tries to interview Bob Marley; doesn't realize he's been dead for 24 years.
• The Sun reports that a 650-year-old law has allowed gypsies to set up camp on the lawn at Windsor Castle.
• The Sun also reports that "Barmy Brussels bureaucrats want to BAN April Fools' Day -- because it is too dangerous".
• The Independent reports that Jamie Oliver (the Naked Chef guy) is going to run as a Tory candidate in the UK's next election.
• The Mirror announced that sheep are going to be used to mow the lawn at Wembley Stadium: "the natural fertiliser of their droppings has reduced the need for chemicals meaning less allergic reaction on players"
• The Daily Mail has published pictures of Prince Charles visiting a lingerie shop to pick out things for Camilla: "he is caught pondering over a matching camisole and apparently seeking advice from his young son Prince Harry on the delicate question of how one should invite one's wife to turn one on".
• Giant Penguin: Tokyo Zoo announces the discovery of a new giant penguin.
• Left-Handed Golf Ball: The Birmingham Post reports that "Sports manufacturer Dunlop has announced its plans to mass produce a revolutionary new golf ball, designed specifically for left-handed players"
• The Melbourne Herald Sun reports that Virgin Australia has announced the debut of scratch 'n sniff barbecue-scented credit cards: "Virgin says the scratch 'n sniff card will be a hit with homesick Aussies travelling overseas."
• SpaceDaily reports that "Bush Cancels Space Shuttle Program": "US President George W Bush declared today that he had signed a rare presidential decree canceling any further expenditure of Federal funds on the US Space Shuttle program." (thanks to Gabe for spotting this)
• Network Working Group calls for Morality to be considered in the design of internet protocols: It has often been the case that morality has not been given proper consideration in the design and specification of protocols produced within the Routing Area. This has led to a decline in the moral values within the Internet.
• Texas Enacts Leviticus as State Law
• Uninvent The Wheel: BMW has an ad in today's Guardian, describing a new car they've developed that has no steering wheel. It's to make it easier for the British when they have to change the side of the road they drive on. Includes mention of a Dr. Bitt Fishi.
• Google Gulp: Google debuts a new 'smart drink', "a DNA scanner embedded in the lip of your bottle reading all 3 gigabytes of your base pair genetic data in a fraction of a second"
• See a graphic of a new Firefox extension
• April edition of the UK magazine Scootering (for Vespa and Lambretta enthusiasts) includes an article about a guy who lives near a former Lambretta factory. If you ship him your scooter's tires, he'll fill them with "Genuine Innocenti Lambretta Air". (Hmm. Could be real?)
• Astronomy Picture of the Day: Water Found on Mars
• Encyclopedia Britannica announces a semi-hostile takeover of Wikipedia
• From the Register: Apple founder Jobs joins IKEA
• Also from the Register: Bush twins to join Air Force tech unit in Iraq
• Slashdot joke: Stand outside and wave at 10 am to have your picture taken by the new Google satellite
• Opera SoundWave: Opera announces new technology that will allow "users to communicate in real- time without the use of computers or mobile phones"
• From Nature.com: Apollo bacteria spur lunar erosion
• ThinkGeek announces new products including a desktop USB fondue set, and the SkyTag - Green Laser Aircraft Tracker
• Creationists Win: Scientific American announces that it's giving up the Evolution vs. Creationism debate. The Creationists have won. (reported on SlashDot)
• Bad April Fool: A Croatian news service announces that Croatia will be banned from participating in the World Cup Finals unless the country hands over fugitive general Ante Gotovina. The announcement sparks massive street protests. The news service then admits it was joking.
• Bad April Fool: Man posts signs warning of mercury spill. Sets off hazmat scare, shutting down more than 10 businesses. Says it was an April Fool's prank.

Wageningen Liberation Monument — Here's a strange story. I'm not sure whether or not it's a joke. Supposedly the Dutch village of Wageningen commissioned the construction of a war memorial shaped like "a giant copper obelisk that rises and falls depending on the level of sunlight, and spurts flames out of the top during important festivals." Only after they built it did they realize it looked exactly like a giant penis and hastily decided to scrap it. There are two reasons I'm skeptical about this. First, the source is listed as Ananova. Second, there already is a National Liberation Monument war memorial in Wageningen that's been there since the 1950s.

Guardian’s April Fool’s Day Quiz — The Guardian has an April Fool's Day quiz that lets you test your skills at separating real news stories from April Fool's Day jokes. I got 9 out of 9, so I did very well. However, I also spotted a mistake in their test. Question Five asks: Telescopes belonging to the Chicago Times discovered a penal colony on the moon in 1876 (True or April Fool). The correct answer, according to the test, is that it's an April Fool. That's not totally accurate. The story was a hoax, but it wasn't an April Fool. It was published in February 1876, as I have noted here on my site (scroll down to the paragraph titled 'Prisoners of the Moon'). I figure that for finding the mistake on the test I really scored 10 out of 9. I also figure that I deserve a prize.

Government Records Your Phone Calls — Has the government been monitoring and recording your telephone conversations? A government contractor was able to copy 1 terabyte worth of phone calls recorded by the government. Enter your phone number to find out if they've been spying on you!

Garden Gnome Liberation Front — Wikipedia has a brief blurb about the Garden Gnome Liberation Front. This is a political movement dedicated to liberating gnomes from the gardens in which they are imprisoned. Members of the liberation front remove gnomes from gardens and either take them out to the woods to set them loose, or smash them to set their spirit free (personally I think taking them out to the woods sounds like the more humane option). I wonder if they've ever considered taking them to the underwater gnome garden. Anyway, this is an international movement. The American group calls itself Free The Gnomes. The Italian group calls itself MALAG, or the Independent Movement for the Liberation of the Garden Gnomes. One of those days I'm probably going to have to create a new category for gnomes.

April Fool’s Day Effect — The site seems to be loading very slowly today, and a few people have reported not being able to access it at all. This is the beginning of the April Fool's Day effect. Traffic to the site increases and causes the performance of the site to nosedive. I'm guessing this will last until April 2nd. There's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Bush Twins in Maxim — As an April Fool's Day prank Maxim magazine has printed a photo of the Bush twins doctored to make it look like they're decked out in lingerie. Of course, Maxim has also plastered a number of disclaimers on the image, just to make sure that no one thinks the picture is real. Most of the media avoids focusing on the twins too much, for fear of incurring the wrath of the White House. But Maxim evidently figured that the attention it would get by printing the picture would offset anything the White House could possibly do to it.

Plagiarizing for Laura — Hundreds of blogs have linked to this in the past week, so I might as well pay it some attention, even though I'm doubtful that it's a hoax. The basic story is as follows: Some guy was contacted out of the blue via IM by a college student who wanted to know if he would write a paper on Hinduism for her. She had searched for people who mentioned the word 'Hindu' in their AOL profile and came up with him. To make a long story short, he agreed to write the paper for $75, but all he did was slap together a paper by shamelessly plagiarizing texts found on the internet, and then he blew the whistle on her by posting what he had done on his blog. Boing Boing initially cried hoax, claiming that the story had been cooked up to promote the comedy troupe whose site the story is posted on. But then Boing Boing backed off this claim. Personally I have no idea whether or not it's a hoax. Nor can I think of any good way to find out. But it seems plausible enough to me that something like this could happen.

Curing Obesity Through Sterility — The website of the Pacific Northwest Medical Journal contains an article titled, "Curing Obesity through Sterility: California's Controversial Program Under the Microscope". According to this article San Francisco has a publicly funded program to allow obese men to get free vasectomies. The idea is to stop them breeding in order to eliminate the gene for fatness from the population. This cannot be real. I've never heard of such a program and can't imagine it getting funded. But if it's a hoax (which I assume it is), it's a curiously elaborate one. All the other articles on the site appear to be quite serious. Why go to so much trouble for one hoax article? When I did a search to find out who the PNMJ.org website was registered to, it listed KLAF Television in Shreveport, Louisiana as the owner. That doesn't really help explain anything.

Easy Millionaire Question — I'm a pretty loyal 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' viewer. It usually comes on after I'm done with dinner and I'm too lazy to get up, so I just sit there watching it. I've seen some viewers get some very easy questions wrong on the show, but I'd find it hard to believe that anyone would really need help on this question. I'm guessing that either the question has been changed in this screenshot, or answer B has been altered to make it the obvious choice.

Terrorist Catch and Release — This image has been floating around the internet for at least two years. It usually is accompanied by the caption: "In 2003 the US Navy initiates its new 'Terrorist Catch and Release Program.'" Obviously the caption is a joke, and I'm guessing that the car has been photoshopped in. But what would the crowd be standing there for? Would it be safe for them to stand there as a plane was taking off?

Getting Ready for April Fools Day — April Fool's Day is usually the day when this site gets the most visitors. In the past this has caused the site to crash... so if nothing on the site seems to be working on April 1st, it's not me playing a prank. It's just the server melting down. Though hopefully that won't happen this year since I upgraded to a better server.

April Fool's Day is also a time when this site gets some media attention (because I don't think any other site on the web has as much info about April Fools). Big Gary told me he saw something about the site a few days ago in the Dallas Morning News (aka the Boring Snooze). I also did an interview with Andrew Jacobs of the NY Times this morning. His article should appear in the Times on Thursday or Friday. The Times of India is publishing a summary of the top 5 of my Top 100 April Fools. The Toledo Blade will have an article about the site (that includes a picture of me) on Friday. Family Circle Magazine was supposed to have something about the site in their April issue, but I haven't heard from them in a few months so I don't know what became of that (and I don't read Family Circle so maybe it is there and I don't know about it). Finally, I did a one-hour radio interview last night with Morgan White, Jr. on WBZ radio (out of Boston), and I'll be on BBC Radio on April 1st (4 pm London Time) being interviewed by Vanessa Feltz.

Oh, and then there's the off chance something might appear in USA Today, though I have no idea what (I'm very curious to see if they do print anything). That's all the stuff I know about, but sometimes papers print things about the site without telling me (like the Dallas Morning News did), so there may be more.

Credit Card Prank, Parts I and II — Zug's Credit Card Prank was widely linked to a few years ago. This is the prank as he describes it: Every time you make a credit card purchase, they're supposed to match your signature against the one on the back of your card. Nobody seems to check anymore, so I tried to see how far I could push it with wacky signatures like "Mariah Carey" and "Zeus". Now Zug has posted a sequel to the Credit Card Prank in which he makes his signatures even wackier and tries to discover what he can get away with. He draws pictures of Shamu, diagrams of the large intestines, and musical notes. They're all happily accepted.

Zug's prank is amusing, but I think the reality is that signing the card and receipt only secondarily serve the purpose of verifying your identity. The primary purpose of the signatures is to demonstrate that you've agreed to the terms of the contract with the credit card company. As long as you sign something (doesn't really matter what it is), the credit card company can say that you've acknowledged and agreed to the terms of the contract, and therefore you have to pay them back. I found this out a couple of years ago when I got into an argument with a post-office employee who refused to take my credit card that had 'See ID' written on the back of it. Turned out that the post-office employee was in the right. If you haven't signed the back of the card, then technically you haven't finalized your contract with the credit card company, and the card shouldn't be accepted.

Watching Ringu — A video (in quicktime) shows a group of Japanese girls (members of the pop group Morning Musume) watching a video of the horror movie Ringu. There's a lot of shrieking, so definitely turn your speakers down. But wait until the end for the prank that's played on them. The video can also be found on other sites in wmv format.

Family Pranks for April 1st — FamilyFun has a list of thirteen pranks that can be played on family members on April Fools Day. The list includes:

• Wake the kids up at 3am and tell them it's time for school
• Sew shut the fly on Dad's underwear
• Create a fake coffee spill (includes a recipe for doing this: mix together equal parts white glue and brown puff paint and let the mixture dry on wax paper... I have no idea what 'puff paint' is)
• Fasten a rubber band around the spray attachment on the kitchen sink

Hidden Dangers — The website of the British firm Health and Safety Management Consultants offers a list of 'hidden dangers'. For instance, did you know that 10,700 people in the UK are injured every year while putting their socks on? That two women have been killed by lightning hitting the underwiring of their bras? That more people are injured by flowerpots every year than by hedge trimmers? And that "the number of injuries inflicted by vegetables remains unacceptably high, at 13,132"? Most of these statistics seem to come from the Home and Leisure Accident Statistics Report produced by the Royal Sciety for the Prevention of Accidents. So they're probably fairly credible. But obviously the figures don't give any indication of how serious these injuries were... or the context in which the accidents occurred.

Harvey Nichols Labor Giveaway — The Guardian reports that numerous pregnant women have been seen lurking around branches of the UK store Harvey Nichols. Why? Because the women heard a rumor that Harvey Nichols gives out £500 gift vouchers to women who go into labor in the store. Supposedly one woman who was going into labor in the back of a car even took the time to phone the store to find out if the rumor was true. I guess she would have directed the driver to make a beeline to the store. However, the rumor is not true.

The John Rhys-Davies Internet Rumor Experiment — Rubber Chicken has posted an interesting account of their experiment in spreading rumors and misinformation via their internet. What they wanted to do was plant one seed of misinformation, and see how far it would spread. As it turned out, it spread quite far.

Their seed of misinformation was this: they made up a rumor that actor John Rhys-Davies, of Sliders fame, was going to provide the voice for General Grievous, the new CGI villain in Star Wars Episode III. They emailed this rumor to Ain't It Cool News, where it was promptly posted as a hot new piece of movie gossip. They then sat back and watched the rumor spread, which it quickly did. Other movie sites quickly picked up the news, and newspapers such as The Guardian even reported it: "Later reports listed IGN and The Guardian - yes, the god damned Guardian - as sources, which effectively meant the news progressively got more reliable. Barely 48 hours after the original announcement, many were already discussing Rhys-Davies' role as if it were confirmed."