Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Fake Marriages Legally Binding — Saying that you were just pretending is now no longer an option. Luisa Holden-Cardozo tried to argue that her marriage should be annulled since the 100-guest ceremony was just a sham done for the sake of her boyfriend's (husband's) sick mother. The judge didn't buy this excuse, ruling that "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a duck." This verdict might put a damper on the mock wedding craze.

Banana Guard — JL wants to know if Banana Guard is real or a hoax. But first, what is the Banana Guard? From the website, it's a "unique, patented device [that] allows for the safe transport and storage of individual bananas letting you enjoy perfect bananas anytime, anywhere." In other words, it stops your banana from getting bruised. It's available in a variety of colors such as Mellow Yellow and Glow in the Dark. So to answer JL's question: Yes, JL, there is a Banana Guard. It was invented by two Vancouver ER doctors, Drs. Sunil Mangal and David Agulnik, over ten years ago. Agulnik noted in a 2003 Toronto Star article about their invention that, "Many people who see this for the first time do seem to make reference to its adult toy appearance, but once they see the practicality and usefulness of the product they are eager to try it for its intended purpose."

Who is the Hot Abercrombie Chick? — If you're a regular reader of Blogdex, as I am, then you'll recognize the name Hot Abercrombie Chick (aka Amanda Doerty). For some reason her weblog keeps rising to the top of Blogdex's index. I've never been able to figure out why. Her posts just don't seem that interesting or relevant. To be honest, I find them boring. Apparently other people have had the same thought, because now she's being accused of gaming Blogdex. But that's not all. Julia Set reports receiving an inside tip that Hot Abercrombie Chick isn't a chick at all. According to Julia, "Hot Abercrombie Chick is really a male college student capitalizing on cute pictures of his girlfriend (previously unbeknownst to her) in a rush of "beggars" trackbacks... Over the course of the last couple of months, 'Mr. Abercrombie' has played every text-book trick for raising his popularity on the blogosphere. The most recent flood of activity, which probably led to his bust, occurred by spamming comments on popular blogs all over the net." Kevin, over at Wizbang, says he's going to contact 'Amanda' to find out what the truth is. Until he reports back, I guess we won't know if the accusations are totally unfounded, or if the Hot Abercrombie Chick is actually another Kaycee Nicole Swenson. Normally I wouldn't pay much attention to random accusations like this, but there does seem something fishy about the Abercrombie chick's rapid ascent to blog stardom. (via Overstated)

Update:The Hot Abercrombie chick insists she's not a hoax. Though I guess one would expect her to say that. There's still no proof either way... but then, how do we know who anyone else on the internet really is?

Spacey’s Faux Mugging — Kevin Spacey has recanted on his claim that he was mugged in a London park at 4 am and had his cellphone stolen. What he meant to say was that he voluntarily handed over his phone to someone who asked if they could use it to call their mother, but instead ran away with it. Then Spacey tripped over his dog and cut his head. Not quite the same. But saying you were mugged sounds a little more respectable than admitting you fell for what is, quite literally, the oldest con in the book (the origin of the term con, or 'confidence scam,' dates back to the 1840s when a swindler named William Thompson would approach gentlemen on the streets of New York and ask them if they had enough confidence to lend their watch to a stranger. Upon being handed the watch, Thompson would simply walk away with it. Substitute cellphone for watch and you have what Spacey fell for.) (Thanks, Goo)

The Way Things Were: Overpriced Web Host — BoingBoing linked to this webpage, 1c4.net, advertising a 1995 web-hosting service. Back then you could apparently get a website hosted for the bargain price of $250 a month. That may seem a lot, but when you figure that you got a whopping 3mb of storage space with that, it suddenly seems more reasonable. Times sure have changed, but actually I don't think that this overpriced web host was ever real. First of all, did they have .net suffixes in 1995? Maybe they did, but I don't remember that. Second, the webpage 1c4.net was itself only created in 2003, according to its registration info. Finally, I just don't remember web hosts ever being that expensive, though in 1995 I was enjoying free web hosting via my university, so I wouldn't be in a position to know. But I'd assume that this ad is a joke of fairly recent vintage.

The Rogue Employee Tin — For almost a century Huntley & Palmers biscuit tins have been seen on the tea tables of well-to-do Brits. What few of those Brits realized is that the tins contained a surprise... not in the biscuits themselves, but in the illustration on the outside of the tin. Apparently a rogue employee, early in the twentieth century, hid various sexually explicit scenes in the illustrations. For instance, a tin now up for sale at Lawrences Auctioneers in Somerset shows two dogs having sex in the flowerbed, if you look very carefully. Reuters has rather pruriently prudishly blurred the cover of the tin in the picture accompanying their article, so you can't see the dogs, but luckily Lawrences' itself has a picture of the tin, in which you can just see the dogs. They're in the flowerbed on the right-hand side.

Shroud of Turin — BBC News has a good summary of the Shroud of Turin controversy, in light of the second face that was discovered on the backside of it. "Does this mean it is real after all? Or does it mean it's an even better hoax than was previously thought?" The answer: no one really knows. I noted in my book that the debate about the shroud rages on and likely will for the foreseeable future. The emergence of new evidence has simply made that more true than ever.

Petition to Stop the Godsend Institute — I talked about the Godsend Institute (the website of a cloning lab that's really a promo for an upcoming movie of the same name) a few days ago. I said that I really didn't think the site was that convincing. But maybe others have been fooled by it because someone started an online petition to ban the Godsend Institute. Of course, I'm not above suspecting that the petition was started by the movie studio itself as a way to generate faux controversy. This was a favorite ploy of P.T. Barnum. Back in 1835 he was exhibiting Joice Heth, an elderly black woman whom he claimed was the 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington. When attendance at the exhibit began to decrease, he sent an anonymous letter to a local paper angrily declaring that Heth was a fake, a "curiously constructed automaton, made up of whalebone, India-rubber, and numberless springs." Sure enough, attendance immediately picked up again as visitors returned to see if Heth really was an old woman or a mechanical automaton.

Virtual Trader — Wired News has an article about a guy, Julian Dibbell, who almost succeeded in making a living from trading in imaginary goods, namely virtual items from the game Ultima Online. Of course, it doesn't seem that extraordinary to me that someone could earn a good living from trading imaginary things. After all, isn't there a trillion dollar industry devoted to just this... i.e. the financial derivatives market? I mean, options and other financial instruments may have real value to people, but they're no more real, in a material sense, than the items from Ultima Online are.

Ground Control to Major Abacha Tunde — The Register has posted a great Nigerian Bank Scam email that it received. I get these emails all the time, and typically they come from people claiming to be either relatives of (or bankers of) deposed third world leaders who have huge amounts of money trapped in a bank account somewhere. They need your help to move the money out of the country. But this email that the Register received claims to come from a relative of a Nigerian astronaut trapped in space. He has a huge amount of back-pay accrued, and just needs your help to access the cash in order to get home. Very inventive. I wonder if the author of the letter actually expected to snare any victims with this, or just did it as a joke.

Celebrity Look-Alikes — Fake Faces is a UK look-alike agency that represents a huge number of celebrity impersonators. It's kind of fun to browse through its catalog. As John Robinson of Sore Eyes notes, some of the look-alikes are really, really bad. But some are surprisingly good. For instance, would you be able to tell if that's really Joanna Lumley (of Ab Fab fame) in the thumbnail? It's not. (via Sore Eyes and I Love Everything)

Hot Furniture-on-Furniture Action — I guess this site really isn't a hoax since it delivers exactly what it promises: furniture porn. Still, when you think of porn this isn't what most people have in mind. Very safe for work, unless images of pieces of furniture posed provocatively offend you. (Thanks, Goo)

Jackson isn’t dead, nor is he touring Namibia — Sam Nujoma, President of Namibia, eagerly waited for the arrival of Michael Jackson, whom he believed was launching a 12-day tour of Africa in his country. Unfortunately, he waited and waited, and Jackson never showed up. In fact, Jackson never had any plans to visit Africa. Nujoma was the victim of misinformation. Jackson isn't even allowed to travel abroad until the case against him is settled.

Michael Jackson Isn’t Dead — Despite the claims of this faux news story, Michael Jackson isn't dead.

Paris Hilton’s Pubic Hair — Celebrity body parts seem to be the thing to sell on eBay. A few weeks ago George Best's liver was up for sale. Now we have Paris Hilton's pubic hair. According to the description on the auction, "This bundle of Pubic Hair was taken from Paris Hilton's bathroom sink at one of her hotels when she visited Australia late last year, Surprise!!!!!!!!!!!!! She isn't a natural blonde!!!!!!!!!!!!" The auction was yanked by eBay soon after it was put up, confirming that it was almost definitely a hoax. But a screenshot of it can be seen over at Fleshbot (safe for work). I just watched American Wedding which has a scene involving pubic hair in a hotel bathroom, and I suspect this auction might have been inspired by that.

Million-Dollar Phone Number — The phone number 135 8585 8585 recently went up for sale on the Chinese internet auction site EachNet.com, and fetched the staggering price of $1.1 million. The appeal of the number is apparently that when spoken in Chinese it sounds similar to the phrase "let me be rich be rich be rich be rich." Well, whoever shelled out that much for the number is going to be a little bit poorer now (though it looks like the phrase worked for the previous owner). But you have to suspect that it was a hoax bid.

Japanese Magnetic Fan — Kohei Minato, a Japanese inventor, has built an incredible new kind of magnet-powered electric motor. As this article on Japan.com explains, "Minato's motors consume just 20 percent or less of the power of conventional motors with the same torque and horse power. They run cool to the touch and produce almost no acoustic or electrical noise. They are significantly safer and cheaper (in terms of power consumed), and they are sounder environmentally." Sounds really great. Until you read down a bit more and get to this line, "it is feasible to attach a generator to the motor and produce more electric power than was put into the device." In other words, it's another perpetual-motion machine. Lots of discussion of this over at Slashdot. (Thanks, James).

Soldier Guy — About a month ago a photo began to circulate around the internet showing an American soldier posing with two Iraqi boys. One of the boys was holding up a sign that read, 'Lcpl Boudreaux killed my Dad, then he knocked up my sister!' Needless to say, the photo caused a lot of outrage. The Council on American-Islamic Relations complained to the Pentagon about it. And it received coverage in publications such as Islam Online. According to the Marine Corps Times, "Investigating officers have spoken with Boudreaux and are working to determine whether the claims on the sign are true and what, if any, charges to bring against him." In the meantime, a second, more innocuous version of the sign began circulating that read, 'Lcpl Boudreaux saved my dad then he rescued my sister.' Everyone immediately assumed that this was, in fact, the real picture, and that the initial one had been a hoax. But this may not be the case, because even more versions of the picture are on the loose, including one in which the sign is blank. And then there are the inevitable spoofs of it. It's hard to know what the reality is here. We'll probably have to wait for the Marine Corps investigators to report before we find that out. But one observation to make is how easy it's become to photoshop text onto signs. As a consequence, this seems to be the latest trend in photo hoaxes. (via Balloon Juice)
Update: The Marines finished their investigation, but they haven't yet made the results of it public.

Demi Moore’s Wedding Dress Browns — I remember seeing the issue of Star Magazine with Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher on the cover, both wearing white, as I was standing in the checkout line at the supermarket. It had big headlines about their rumored engagement. Turns out they weren't actually wearing white. Demi Moore was wearing a brown dress and Ashton Kutcher was wearing a pink suit. But the editors of Star digitally changed the color of their clothes to make the image fit in with the whole wedding theme. In the thumbnail you can see Demi wearing the faux white dress on the left (on the Star cover), and wearing the same dress in its true brown color on the right. The Wall Street Journal has an article about this. Meanwhile, editors of rival magazines are clucking about how they would never stoop so low, conveniently forgetting that they stoop this low all the time.

Fake Tax Returns — Here's a story that's appropriate for April 15. Orange County tax preparer indicted for filing over 16,000 fake federal returns.