Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

The Wolf of Sochi — Another Jimmy Kimmel hoax. His crew built a replica of an Olympic Village dorm in their LA studio, then shot footage of a wolf wandering through its hallway. They had US luger Kate Hansen post the footage on YouTube, and to her Twitter account, claiming it was a wolf outside her room. A play on all the reports of stray dogs loose in Sochi. And, of course, the footage quickly went viral.


The wolf was actually a North American timber wolf that Kimmel's crew hired (a rescue wolf named Rugby). Kimmel admitted to the hoax on Twitter, and then gave a full explanation on his Thursday night show.

17 going on 41 — Very odd. The controversy is that this guy, if the allegations are true, is too old to be playing in a youth league. And he really doesn't look like he's 17. But wouldn't a guy in his 40s actually be at a disadvantage playing against much younger guys?

Lazio threaten legal action after claims Cameroon 17 year-old Joseph Minala is actually 41
The Telegraph
Lazio have threatened legal action against anyone who questions the age of their 17-year-old Cameroonian player Joseph Minala. The Serie A club have even been forced to release his birth certificate, which they claim is "absolutely legitimate", following a report by Senagalese media that he is in fact 41.

Tunnel beneath the Strait of Messina (an Italian hoax) — Italian social media was buzzing recently with word of the discovery of a narrow tunnel, over 2000 years old, running beneath the Strait of Messina (the body of water between the mainland of Italy and Sicily).


The tunnel was believed to have been built by the Romans during the Punic wars (264-241 BC) as a passageway for troops. It was discovered by workers doing construction on a highway.

But the story turns out to have come from an Italian fake news site called Dangerous News. One of the tunnel photos came from an Aug 2011 Daily Mail article about the discovery of mysterious stone-age tunnels in Bavaria. [link: canicattiweb.com]

The larger context for this hoax is the on-again/off-again attempts to build a bridge over the Strait of Messina (plans to build such a bridge have been announced twice, and cancelled twice). So the joke would be that the Roman tunnel is nonexistent, just like the modern bridge.

It reminds me of the jokes that used to be made in the British media about tunnels beneath the English Channel, before the Chunnel was completed. Such as the supposed discovery of a "Napoleonic Chunnel" in 1988 (an April Fool's Day joke).

Optical Illusion Cow — This cow illusion has been circulating since at least 2011.


And here's the original, which, I believe, is a stock photo. Though I don't know which stock photo agency it's from.

Catching Up With Balloon Boy — The never-ending saga of Richard Heene, aka Father of Balloon Boy, continues. It's actually kinda sad. A guy who's completely destroyed his credibility, still giving interviews to the media, hoping to convince people he's telling the truth.

Oprah Catches Up with "Balloon Boy" Flying Saucer Family; Richard Heene Insists "It Was Never a Hoax"
Broward Palm Beach New Times
"It was never a hoax," Richard Heene tells Oprah's cameras. "I took a guilty plea to save my family." He pled guilty to felony charges of attempting to influence a public servant and was ordered to pay $47,000 and serve 90 days in jail, and Mayumi pled guilty to a misdemeanor. But outside of the courtroom both Heene parents have insisted that Mayumi, who is Japanese, didn't understand the meaning of the word "hoax" during an interview with authorities and the couple pleaded guilty only to put the episode behind them.

Did Chaucer Mention April Fool’s Day? —
The Nun's Priest's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales tells the story of a vain rooster, Chauntecleer, whose vanity leads him to drop his guard while showing off how splendidly he crows. As a result, he almost gets eaten by a fox. But Chauntecleer outwits the fox that carries him away in its mouth by taking advantage of the fox's own vanity. He persuades the fox to stop and mock his pursuers. As soon as the fox opens its mouth to do so, Chauntecleer flies to safety up into a tree.

The story is one of the most popular of Chaucer's tales, because of its playful humor involving talking barnyard animals, much like a Disney cartoon. But in recent years the story has acquired a different claim-to-fame, on account of an assertion that's circulated widely online stating that the tale contains a reference to April Fool's Day.

Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in the late 14th Century, so if the reference to April Fool's Day checks out, it would be the first time the celebration was mentioned in any language. In fact, it would predate any other reference by about 170 years, thereby offering strong evidence that April Fool's Day originated in England.

But does the reference check out? Did Chaucer actually mention April Fool's Day?


The possible reference occurs at around the mid-point of the Nun's Priest's Tale. The narrator pauses the story to mention when the events take place:

When that the monthe in which the world bigan That highte March, whan God first maked man, Was complet, and passed were also Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two

One way of reading this (and, as we shall see, not the only possible way) is that it's a roundabout, repetitive way of saying the story takes place on April 1, because this is the day you arrive at a) when March is complete, and b) when 32 days (thritty days and two) have passed since March began (i.e., April 1 = March 32).

However, it's also possible these lines indicate a date of April 2. After all, if 32 days have passed since March began, that would land us on the 2nd, not the 1st. The precise meaning is ambiguous.

But let's assume these lines are telling us the tale is set on April 1. If this is so, then it's reasonable to hypothesize that Chaucer chose this date because it's April Fool's Day. After all, the tale involves foolish pride and trickery. So what better day for such a story than the day of Fools? And as if to emphasize this point, Chaucer makes an explicit reference to folly at the end of the tale:

But ye that holden this tale a folly As of a fox, or of a cock and hen, Taketh the moralitee, good men.

A lot of people have concluded that Chaucer did set the Nun's Priest's Tale on April 1, and that he intended this as an allusion to April Fool's Day. Wikipedia, for instance, cites the tale as "the earliest recorded association between 1 April and foolishness," although it concedes that the reference is "ambiguous."

Unfortunately, the issue isn't that simple, because most Chaucer scholars do not believe the tale is set on April 1 or 2. Instead, the majority of them (almost all) believe the tale is set on May 3.

How can this be? It's because the four lines that yield the April 1 (or 2) date are not the only calendrical information that Chaucer provides. If one continues reading the tale, the narrator proceeds to give (in the very same sentence) more details, as follows:

When that the monthe in which the world bigan That highte March, whan God first maked man, Was complet, and passed were also Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two Bifell that Chauntecleer in all his pride, His seven wives walking him beside, Cast up his eyen to the brighte sunne (That in the signe of Taurus had y-runne Twenty degrees and one, and somewhat more), And knew by kind, and by noon other lore, That it was prime; and crew with blissful stevene.

In this passage, we're given some astronomical information. Or rather, astrological infomation. In Chaucer's time the two were one and the same. The narrator tells us that on the day the tale takes place the sun had run 21 degrees "and somewhat more" in the sign of Taurus. These details point us to a very specific date.


The language of astrology is still popular enough that most people are aware that the signs of the Zodiac (Aries, Taurus, Gemini, etc.) refer to times of the year. So if you're born between March 20 and April 20, you're an Aries; April 20 to May 21, you're a Taurus; May 21 to June 21, a Gemini; etc.

The tradition of dividing the year into 12 equal periods, each assigned to a different Zodiac sign, dates back several thousand years to when ancient astronomers divided the annual path of the sun across the heavens (the ecliptic) into twelve equal parts, 30 degrees each. These astronomers named each division after the constellation that, at that time of year, was visible in the night sky nearest to the path of the ecliptic.


The zodiac year began with the vernal equinox in March. (And according to ancient belief, the creation of the world also took place at the vernal equinox, which is why Chaucer referred to March as "the monthe in which the world bigan".)

Nowadays the springtime vernal equinox occurs around March 20. So the Zodiac year begins with Aries on that day. However, in Chaucer's time, because of the Julian calendar, the vernal equinox fell on March 12, setting the zodiac calendar 12 days back from our perspective.

So for Chaucer the sign of Taurus began on April 12. But he tells us that the sun had run 21 degrees "and somewhat more" in the sign of Taurus. If one day corresponds approximately to one degree, and if we count 21 days and 'somewhat more' from April 12, we arrive at May 3. Or possibly, May 2. But most scholars reckon it's May 3.

And that's why these scholars believe that The Nun's Priest's Tale is set on May 3.

As it turns out, the third of May crops up a number of times in Chaucer's work. The Knight's Tale is also set on that day (in the seventhe yer, of May / The thridde nyght". And in his work Troilus and Criseyde, the character Pandare is afflicted by love sickness "on Mayes day the thrydde".

May 3 is mentioned so often by Chaucer that scholars have taken to referring to it as his "favorite date".

Why did he like that day so much? John McCall, author of "Chaucer Among the Gods," has theorized it was because May 3, in Roman times, was the concluding day of the six-day Festival of Flora, the "ministress of Venus." It was a day to celebrate and be moved by carnal desires. So Chaucer may have felt it was a fitting day to portray the actions of characters moved by "the effects of irrational love or concupiscent desires."

McCall notes that in the Nun's Priest's Tale Chaucer makes an association between May 3 and flowers (i.e. Flora) when, a few lines after the astrological information that points us to May 3, Chauntecleer praises the "freshe flowres, how they springe" and tells how his heart is full of "revel and solas" (revelry and grace).

Madame Pertelote, my worldes blis, Herkneth thise blisful briddes how they singe, And see the freshe flowres, how they springe; Full is mine hert of revel and solas!

The take-home point here is that not only does Chaucer provide the reader with specific astronomical information that places The Nun's Priest's Tale on May 3, but also, when we consider Chaucer's entire body of work and how often he mentioned the third of May, it makes sense that he would set the Nun's Priest's Tale on his "favorite date."

The theory that the Nun's Priest's Tale is set on May 3 has a lot going for it. In particular, it's hard to argue with the specific zodiac information that Chaucer provides. But how do we reconcile May 3 with those four earlier lines that seem to indicate April 1 or 2?

One thing is for sure. It's impossible to fit April 1 into the sign of Taurus. So Chaucer seems to provide conflicting dates within the same sentence.

Resolving this apparent paradox isn't easy. Derek Pearsall, editor of the Variorum edition of The Canterbury Tales, adds a footnote after the phrase "and passed were also / Syn March bigan" noting that, "The method of computing the date here has caused scribes and editors a good deal of trouble." He then proceeds, for the next two-and-a-half pages written in small print, to elaborate on the long history of editorial angst caused by this passage.

The strategy employed by most editors has been to assume that because both dates can't be correct, one of them has to be wrong. And then they decide that since the reference to the sun being in the sign of Taurus is unambiguous, the earlier phrase, about 32 days having passed since March began, must be a mistake — perhaps a typo made by a medieval scribe given the job of copying Chaucer's work.

Going with the mistake theory, many modern editions of Chaucer replace the phrase "Syn March began" with "Syn March was gon," assuming that this (or something like it) must have been what Chaucer either originally wrote, or intended to write. This resolves all the difficulties, because if we count 32 days from the end of March, we arrive at May 3rd.

A rival theory is that Chaucer intended to write "Syn March began," but that people are incorrectly interpreting the passage. For instance, the English philologist Walter Skeat argued that the phrase "since March began" is parenthetical. In other words, that the reader should essentially skip over it when reading the text. He wrote:

"The date, May 3, is playfully denoted by saying that March was complete and also (since March began) thirty-two days more had passed. The words 'since March began' are parenthetical; and we are, in fact, told that the whole of March, the whole of April, and two days of May were done with."

The historian Peter Travis has suggested a third possibility. He argues that Chaucer didn't intend to provide a precise date at all, but instead purposefully used confusing language in order to parody the language of Medieval philosophy.

In late Medieval England, a genre of logic problems known as "incipit/desinit" problems had become popular. Hundreds of examples of them can be found. These problems always took a similar form. They posited a beginning condition (incipit, it begins) as well as an ending condition (desinit, it ceases) and challenged the reader to use logic to understand the condition of the subject at the instant of change. The popularity of these incipit/desinit problems grew out of the Medieval scholastic interest in motion, change, and limits.

For example, take the following problem written by Chaucer's contemporary William Heytesbury:

Assume that Socrates is now one foot tall, Plato two feet tall; and let each of them grow uniformly throughout the next hour, Socrates twice as fast as Plato, stipulating further that three feet is the smallest size that neither of them will have, since both cease to exist at the end of the hour at which moment both would have been three feet tall had they then existed.

In the passage from the Nun's Priest's Tale that begins with "When that the monthe," we find the same language of beginning, ceasing, and passage of time ("monthe in which the world bigan… Was complet, and passed were also / Syn March bigan"). Travis argues that Chaucer's contemporaries would have recognized this as the language of an incipit/desinit problem. However, whereas Medieval philosophers considered such problems to be extremely serious matters, Chaucer poked fun at them by placing his mock puzzle in a tale about talking barnyard animals.

Travis also notes that incipit/desinit problems very often had no solution. The idea was to force students to show how they would go about solving the problem, rather than to actually solve it:

"time and again students discovered that a final and correct answer had been thwarted or immobilized by a logical impasse... the unresolvable sophism is designed to force the reader into further and deeper rumination both upon linguistic and logical issues at hand, as well as upon phenomenological matters dealing with beginnings, endings, motion, change, and time."

In which case, it would make sense that if Chaucer intended to parody Medieval philosophy, he would provide the reader with a word puzzle that yielded no definitive solution, just as incipit/desinit paradoxes often had no solution. Travis explains:

It is irresolution, paradox, ambiguity, and confusion that are the most important consequences of the heuristic strategies of Chaucer's brilliant incipit/desinit sophism. It is very doubtful, therefore, that Chaucer ever expected his careful reader to determine the sophism's "right" day — April 1 or April 2 — and it is just as doubtful that Chauver ever expected that date to be successfully harmonized with the later date the remainder of the chronographia points toward — May 2 or May 3.

In other words, if we accept Travis's argument, the Nun's Priest's Tale isn't set on any specific date at all.

From all the above, it should be clear that it's problematic to claim that The Nun's Priest Tale takes place on April 1. It's far more likely the tale is set on May 3. Or perhaps on no date.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume that Chaucer did intend for The Nun's Priest's Tale to be set on April 1. What would be the significance of this? Could we really assume this was a reference to April Fool's Day?

That would be quite a stretch of logic, to put it charitably.

The reason it would be such a stretch is that all other evidence suggests that the tradition of April Foolery most likely originated in Holland and Germany during the sixteenth century, and that the celebration only made its way to England in the late seventeenth century.

For instance, the earliest explicit reference to April Fool's Day is found in a Dutch poem published in 1561. It refers to April 1 as "Fool's errand day."

But in English literature of that period, we find absolutely no references to any kind of April 1 celebration. Not even in Shakespeare. As Charles Dickens, Jr. (writing in 1869) observed:

Shakespeare, who photographs all the customs of his time with strict fidelity, nowhere mentions April Fools, although he delights in fools in general; there can be little doubt that had the custom existed, Shakespeare would have somewhere alluded to it.

It's not until the second half of the 17th century that we come across the first English-language references to April Fool's Day. In Francis Osborne's "Deductions from the History of the Earl of Essex," written around 1659, we find mention of "impertinent errands, as the Dutch youth do [put upon] fools on the second of April"

And John Aubrey, in his Remains of Gentilism and Judaism published in 1686, included the following note: "Fooles holy day. We observe it on ye first of April. And so it is kept in Germany everywhere."

Both these writers associated the tradition of April Fool's Day with foreign countries (Netherlands and Germany). And Osborne didn't even seem very familiar with the tradition, given that he placed it on the second, not the first.

So if English writers of the late seventeenth century weren't very familiar with April Fool's Day (and they thought it was a foreign custom), how could we possibly conclude that Chaucer, writing almost 300 years before, was familiar with an April 1 tradition?

That wouldn't make much sense, especially given the extreme vagueness of Chaucer's reference. Remember that he didn't mention April Fool's Day itself, only April 1. And actually, he probably didn't even do that.

To make a long story short: No, Chaucer didn't mention April Fool's Day.

My guess is that the claim that he did probably got started when some English literature students noticed the possible April 1 reference in the Nun's Priest's Tale, and because they were familiar with April Fool's Day, they assumed Chaucer must have been also. And so the claim started to circulate online.

But it's a claim that dissolves upon investigation.

So, sorry England. It looks like you were not the birthplace of April Fool's Day.

Bigot Mom Hoax — THE LATEST BIGOTED NOTE HOAX: Deejays for a New York radio morning show aired a story about two gay dads who had sent out invitations for their daughters birthday party and had received back a note from the mother of one boy saying, "Tommy will NOT attend. I do not believe in what you do and will not subject my innocent son to your 'lifestyle.' I'm sorry Sophia has to grow up this way. If you have an issue or need to speak to me: [number erased]."



Turns out the entire story was made up. The deejays explained that they were staging a publicity stunt to boost ratings "attempting to spur a healthy discourse on a highly passionate topic". Not many people are buying that explanation.

The two deejays, Steve Harper and Leeana Karlson, have now been canned by the station.

Miscegenation Hoax Anniversary — Philip Kadish, who's completing his Ph.D. in American Lit. at The City University of New York, notes that a 'neglected anniversary' recently passed by: the 150th anniversary of the Miscegenation Hoax of 1864, which, as he notes, was "one of the greatest and least remembered political media hoaxes in American history."

The old hoax is certainly evidence that bigotry has always been a part of American politics. As Kadish notes, the hoax foreshadowed modern political hoaxes that play to bigotry, such as the claim that Obama is a Muslim.

The race-mixing hoax that dogged Lincoln
By Philip Kadish
This year is the 150th anniversary of one of the greatest and least remembered political media hoaxes in American history, one with startling parallels to 21st century politics and the Internet age. It involved Abraham Lincoln, covert governmental programs for interracial sex, pro-slavery politicians and scheming newspaper editors.

Olympic Ring Malfunction Inspires Hoaxes —
During the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on Feb. 7, there was a scene in which five giant snowflakes hanging in the air were supposed to expand to form the Olympic rings, followed by fireworks going off around them. However, one of the snowflakes failed to expand, and the fireworks never materialized.

It was an embarrassing screw-up, since it was seen by millions of people around the world. And it quickly proved to be a focal point for hoaxes and parody.


People watching the games in Russia never saw the screw-up at all, because the Russian broadcaster Rossiya 1 quickly substituted footage from an earlier rehearsal showing everything working perfectly. The Russian producer said this was done in order to "preserve the imagery of the Olympic symbols." [washington post]


The day after the opening ceremony, the fake-news site DailyCurrant.com posted an article claiming that Boris Avdeyev, the technical specialist responsible for the Olympic Ring mishap, had been found dead in his hotel room, stabbed multiple times. Russian police had apparently ruled his death an accident, reasoning that he probably tripped and fell on a set of knives.

The article quickly went viral, despite the fact that every detail of it was false. There is a Russian painter named Boris Avdeyev, but there was no Boris Avdeyev responsible for making sure the rings worked properly.


A conspiracy theory quickly spread claiming that the non-opening of the ring was purposeful because the right-most red ring "traditionally symbolizes America," and its failure to open was therefore Russia's way of sending America a message. Though what that message was, I'm not sure.

There is an old belief associating each ring with a specific continent (Blue for Europe, Yellow for Asia, Green for Australia, Black for Africa, and Red for the Americas). However, this symbolism has never been officially sanctioned.

The creator of the Olympic symbol, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, intended for the rings to be an abstract representation of the five continents joining together. As for their colors, Wikipedia tells us that "According to Coubertin, the ring colours with the white background stand for those colors that appeared on all the national flags that competed in the Olympic games at that time [1912]."


Most recently, an image has gone viral that appears to be an ad by Audi that alludes to the ring mishap with the tagline "when four rings is all you need."

Audi claims it isn't responsible for the ad. Though, of course, it could be a "sub-viral" ad (i.e. an ad that a company's pr firm creates and covertly puts into circulation, which the company denies any knowledge of it).

Missing Love — A "missing love" flyer has been posted at various NYC subway stations. A note at the bottom of it asks, "Please help me find my missing love by uploading photographs of possible suspects to instagram and twitter using the hashtag #missinglove."


It seems romantic (and timed for Valentine's Day), and people have been Tweeting words of encouragement, hoping this woman finds her missing love.

However, it may not be real. Or maybe it is.

The person behind it is artist Maria Luisa Portuondo Vila who calls it an "art action" on the Facebook page she created for it.

In response to people on Twitter who are confused whether it's fact or fiction, she's responded that it's "the both!! art and reality!!" So take your pick.

[via gothamist]

Is Nessie Dead? — People who keep track of Nessie sightings are disturbed because last year there were no good sightings of her. The sighting from last year that got the most attention was an admitted hoax, and the other sightings were just feeble.

So what's going on? Some people are suggesting Nessie may be dead. Or maybe she's gone into hibernation.

The year Nessie went off the radar
The Herald (Glasgow)

THE Loch Ness Monster failed to make a single "appearance" in 2013 - for the first time in almost 90 years.
Last year there were just three possible sightings, but two were nothing more than waves or the wake from a boat. The third was a duck, said Gary Campbell, president of the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club.
The lack of possible appearances prompted William Hill to hold over its Best Nessie Sighting of The Year competition, which carries a prize of £1000. There will be £2000 for the best sightings this year.
Mr Campbell has checked past records and confirmed 2013 was the first year since 1925 that there had not been a registered sighting.

Blood Love Spell — In Japan, it's a Valentine's Day tradition for women to give handmade chocolates (Honmei choco) to men they have romantic feelings for.

This year there's a rumor circulating on Twitter, claiming that many young women are mixing their own blood into the chocolates, in the belief that this acts as a kind of love spell that will ensure their feelings are reciprocated.


The rumor gets even more stomach-turning, because there are also claims of mixing menstrual blood, saliva, fingernail clippings, and pubic hair into the chocolates. Japancrush.com has posted many examples of these Tweets.

Is there any truth to these rumors? That's hard to know. It's certainly possible people would do something like this. But one hopes that all the Tweeters claiming to have done this are just bluffing.

However, it's worth noting that the central premise of the rumor is correct. Blood has been used for centuries as an ingredient in love spells. It's part of Blood Magic. In addition, blood (as well as every body part imaginable) was used extensively as an ingredient in western medicine up until the Victorian period. The historian Richard Sugg recently published an interesting book about this widespread practice of medicinal cannibalism.

So it's plausible that some young women would act upon these ancient folk beliefs and add a little something extra to the chocolate.

Alligators Clean Pipes — This brief article ran in the Feb 1938 issue of Popular Science magazine.

Plumbers Use Alligators To Open Clogged Pipes
Alligators kept as specimens at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries aquarium in Washington, D.C., are being tried out as plumber's assistants to open up clogged pipes. Placed in a length of pipe that is stopped up with silt and sediment, the reptile digs his way through, opening up a small hole which water will widen by its pressure as it sweeps through.

A clipping of the article was posted on the Modern Mechanix blog in April 2007, with the comment, "I guess we know now where that urban legend about alligators in the sewer started." The clipping has subsequently circulated on various blogs.

By chance, I know the back story to this news report. The guy on the left was Fred Orsinger, Director of the (now defunct) National Aquarium in DC during the 1930s and 40s. He had a reputation for being the P.T. Barnum of the fish world and was always pulling bizarre, tongue-in-cheek stunts to get the National Aquarium in the news.

For instance, in 1940 he founded something he called the Association for the Prevention of April Fool Jokes (it was through this that I first came across references to him). The association didn't have anything to do with fish, but it got his name (and the aquarium) in the news.


Some of his other schemes involved promoting the A.F.E.O.I.A.M.Y.W.T. (Association for Eating Oysters in Any Month You Want To), which tried to convince people that it was okay to eat oysters in months without the letter 'R'.

He campaigned to dispel the notion that all Fish Tales (i.e. stories that fishermen tell) are tall tales. He claimed to have found that, on average, only 2 out of 9 fish tales are untrue.

He promoted the Association for the Abolition of Round Fish Bowls, arguing that "round bowls distort a small, harmless fish into a ferocious denizen of the deep, producing a bad effect on children."

In 1937 he claimed he was going to stage a "fish walkathon" featuring the Anabas Testudineus (the "walking or climbing perch").

In 1945 he claimed to have spotted a 20-foot sea monster in the Potomac River. He called it Percival.

One time he made a panther-skin coat for a Maine trout and claimed it was an actual fur-bearing trout. Supposedly this fooled some Russian ichthyologists before "someone dragged them aside and whispered, 'it's a joke, comrade.'"

As for the pipe-cleaning alligators, an Associated Press article from October 1937 (can't find a link to an online copy) explains the genesis of the idea:

Orsinger said he conceived the idea when a drain pipe became clogged at a friend's home and it appeared it would be necessary to rip up the kitchen floor.
An alligator was placed in one end of the drain. It worked its way through the pipe and emerged at the other end.
"Alligators, you know, don't do backwards," Orsinger explained.
Elated, he has developed a sort of alligator-pipe size arrangement.
A 14-inch alligator, for instance, should do the job in a 6-inch pipe.

Apparently it's a myth that alligators can't walk backwards. Although it's surprisingly hard to find authoritative information on this subject. A search of science journal articles turned up nothing. But pawnation.com offers this info:

The most common form of movement for alligators on land is called the “belly crawl,” and while an alligator cannot walk backwards on its belly, there is another form of movement that allows backwards motion: the “high walk.” When an alligator is high walking, its entire body and the majority of its tail is off the ground. This form of locomotion is used primarily when an alligator is getting out of water or moving over an obstruction, but it also allows alligators to move backwards.

So if this is true, Orsinger's scheme to use alligators to clean pipes might actually work, because the gators wouldn't be able to do the 'high walk' in a clogged pipe, and thus would have to move forward.

The ‘Japanese Beethoven’ admits he had help — When Japanese composer Mamoru Samuragochi went completely deaf at the age of 35, he continued to compose music, explaining that he was able to do so because of his "absolute pitch." Some of his most popular works were composed when he was deaf, such as his Hiroshima Symphony No 1. On account of this, people began calling him the "Japanese Beethoven."

But now he's admitted that when he started losing his hearing he relied on a "ghost composer" to help him create his works. Samuragochi would outline the basic concept of the work, and the other guy would produce the finished composition.

Samuragochi didn't say who the ghost composer was, but the Japanese media is pointing the finger at Takashi Niigaki.

This recalls the celebrated scandal from the 1930's involving the violinist Fritz Kreisler. The difference being that Kreisler said he was performing the works of other famous composers (although they were actually his own compositions), whereas Samuragochi said the works were his own, but they were really partially someone else's.

'Japanese Beethoven' admits he is a fraud
BBC News

A deaf composer who has been dubbed "Japan's Beethoven" has admitted hiring someone else to write his music for nearly two decades.
Mamoru Samuragochi shot to fame in the mid-1990s and is most famous for his Hiroshima Symphony No 1, dedicated to those killed in the 1945 atomic blast.
The 50-year-old has now confessed he has not composed his own music since 1996.

[Thanks to Bob Pagani for the link!]

Fresh Stone-Age Meat — Back in 2010, Bosch refrigerators ran an unusual ad campaign to promote its VitaFresh technology which, it promised, could keep food fresh longer. They created fake plastic-wrapped cuts of dinosaur legs, mammoth steaks, and saber-tooth filets, and placed these meats in supermarkets throughout Germany. The idea was that this meat is really old, but it's still fresh.

Check out the video below to see people's reactions.

Losing Big — Before the Superbowl, a rumor began to circulate alleging that boxer Floyd Mayweather, who's known to be a big gambler, had bet $10 million on the Broncos winning. If true, he would obviously have been a very unhappy man during and after the game, as the Broncos got a shellacking.


The rumor was reported by the Denver Post on Jan. 29, citing "multiple reports coming out of Las Vegas." The Post noted that the bet had not been confirmed by Mayweather himself, but seemed to feel the rumor might be true because, "it is well known that he likes to makes high-stakes wagers."

But after the game, Mayweather posted a denial on Instagram, insisting he hadn't bet on the game at all, but that he would have bet on Seattle if he had bet. I guess we'll have to take his word for it.
[link: mashable.com]

Stuck Together—can it really happen? — BBC News has delved into the mystery of "penis captivus," aka "cohesione in coitu," aka couples getting stuck together during sex. It tries to determine whether this can really happen, or whether such reports are just an urban myth.


Dr Aristomenis Exadaktylos of Switzerland, in a recent radio interview, declared it to be an urban myth. But other doctors aren't so sure. Dr John Dean, a "senior UK-based sexual physician," says that it's a rare phenomenon, but insists it can happen. Although he hastens to add that it's a problem that usually resolves itself within a few seconds as muscles relax.

However, most reports of the phenomenon are highly anecdotal and seem to be more myth than reality. For instance, the BBC offers a description of a 1372 case in which the problem supposedly lasted an entire day... a claim that stretches credibility:

In 1372, Geoffrey de La Tour-Landry related how a voluptuary named Pers Lenard "delt fleshely with a woman" on top of an altar of a church, and God "tyed hem faste togedre dat night". The following day the whole town saw the couple still entwined "fast like a dogge and biche togedre". Finally prayers were spoken and the couple's prolonged intercourse came to an end (although they were obliged to return to the church on three Sundays, strip naked and beat themselves in front of the congregation).

Accounts of the phenomenon also often mix in a moral message by suggesting that the problem only afflicts adulterers, because the fear of detection strengthens the force of the woman's muscular spasm. So "Recent media reports of penis captivus - in Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe and the Philippines - all concern adulterous couples." The notion that the problem is somehow a punishment for adultery is, of course, nonsense.

Finally, what would be the medical treatment for this problem? The 17th Century Dutch physician Isbrand van Diemerbroeck offered cold water as a cure:

"When I was a student at Leyden there was a young Bridegroom in that Town that being overwanton with his Bride had so hamper'd himself in her Privities, that he could not draw his Yard forth, till Delmehorst the Physician unty'd the knot by casting cold Water on the Part."

If cold water doesn't work, chloroform historically seems to be the next most popular solution. But I assume any muscle relaxant would remedy the situation.