Thursday 13: My Favorite Hoaxes

Snopes is one of my favorite websites, and I’m always referring people to the site. Especially after I receive an e-mail with a photo or story that seems too good to be true. I love to debunk hoaxes and let the truth be known.

1. The 9/11 Tourist Guy – This photo made the e-mail rounds right after 9/11 and fooled a lot of people.

2. The Well to Hell - Scientists drilling in Siberia went too far and ended up punching a hole through to Hell, where the screams of the damned drifted up to them.

3. Gas Pump Prick –Gas station customers are getting stuck by HIV-loaded syringes affixed to gas pump handles.

4. Frank Zappa once won a gross-out contest by eating excrement on stage. "For the record, folks: I never took a shit on stage, and the closest I ever came to eating shit anywhere was at a Holiday Inn buffet in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1973."

5. The Dihydrogen Monoxide Scare. Dihydrogen Monoxide is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the unstable radical Hydroxide, the components of which are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol. (Note: Dihydrogen Monoxide is H2O, aka Water.) http://www.dhmo.org/

6. Nigerian E-Mail Scam Help a wealthy Nigerian move millions of dollars and you will get a percentage. - A fraud that has actually cost people thousands of dollars.

7. Y2K – We all remember sitting around in our living rooms, with stockpiles of water and food, generators at the ready, waiting for all the lights to go off, the cars to not work, and even our microwaves to stop working. Nothing happened except that I had to buy new checks because the 19__ part of the date was no longer valid.

8. Bert is Evil - Bert, the Sesame Street muppet, appears on posters carried by supporters of Osama bin Laden. Actually, the joke was on someone in Bangladesh who was looking for pictures of Osama and found this one with Bert. He actually USED this image on thousands of posters that were used in demonstrations. Pictures of the demonstrations were carried by credible news agencies. You go Bert!

9. BBC Interview Guy - A guy that was at the BBC for a job interview, was mistaken as an expert and actually got put live, on camera, in an interview about the Apple computers versus Apple music legal case.

10. Celebrity Mediums – Famous psychics such as John Edwards are using an age-old technique called cold reading where they obtain information by asking questions and guessing rather than "talking to the dead".

11. Movie Ghost #1 – I love to pause movies that are supposed to have dead people or ghosts in them. The Wizard of Oz supposedly captured a munchkin hanging himself and his death was captured on-camera.

12. Movie Ghost #2 - The Three Men and a Baby scene in question really does creep me out. A boy is rumored to have committed suicide a room where they filed the movie and his ghost is supposedly captured on film.

13. Music Hoaxs - such as the woman being murdered during the recording of the Ohio Player’s Love Rollercoaster, and the whole Paul is Dead thing in the Beatles recording.

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