Hoaxes 11 Through 15
This group of five begins with a phony e-mail message promising money and other prizes from Disney, and ends with the classic deaf-to-reason arguments of the Apollo moon landing deniers.
11. Free Vacation Courtesy of Disney (1998)
Dear Goofy... Forward this e-mail chain letter to everybody under the sun and, once 13,000 people have received it, Walt Disney Jr. will send five grand each to 1,300 lucky people on this list. And "the rest will recieve a free trip for two to Disney for one week during the summer of 1999." Is that Disney World, Disneyland--or Walt's house? The "Jr." after Disney, in reference to a nonexistent person, ought to have been the first clue that this was a hoax. And the misspelling of "receive" was the clincher (remember, hoaxters, "i" before "e" except after "c"). Yet people forwarded the message around the world using the time-honored e-mail chain letter adage: I'm sending it to you... just in case it's true.
12. Sunset Over Africa (2003)
Now that's a dazzling photo of Africa and Europe,
taken right around sunset from the Space Shuttle Columbia. What makes the image
especially amazing is that, while London remains in daylight, night has fallen
in Italy (a little to the southeast) and the bright lights of Rome, Naples, and
Venice are blazing. Too bad
it's a digitally altered
photo, most likely layered from multiple satellite images. To see an
accurate, computer-generated illustration, check out the
World Sunlight
Map.
Image courtesy of Snopes.com.
13. Alien Autopsy at Roswell, New Mexico (1995)
Roswell, New Mexico: ground zero of UFO controversy. It's also where the movie of the Roswell alien autopsy was filmed 60 years ago. The story goes that a UFO crashed at this site, and the U.S. government performed a hush-hush autopsy on the dead alien. In the mid-1990s, unnamed individuals "discovered" the secret film and posted it for the edification of a disinformed public. Looks pretty real, right? Now fast-forward to 2006 and a conspiracy-deflating admission: The movie is a hoax created in 1995 by John Humphreys, the animator famous for Max Headroom, in his apartment in north London. ...Or was it???
14. Real-Time GPS Cell Phone Tracking (2007)
Have you heard about the Web site that can track the
location of your cell phone in real time? It uses satellite GPS in combination
with Google Maps, and it's amazingly accurate (not to mention a disturbing
invasion of privacy). Go ahead, check it out yourself by going to the
SunSat Satellite
Solutions site and tracking your own cell phone's location. Select your
country, type in your cell phone number, click the Start Searching button, and
wait for it. (This is one of the year's best pranks. And I won't give away the
ending.)
15. Apollo Moon Landing Hoax (1969)
You're aware that we never landed on the moon, right? It was all
just an elaborate hoax designed to score Cold War points for the United States
against the Soviet Union in a world of falling dominoes. The whole lunar
landing thing? It was a video staged at movie studios and top-secret
locations.
Okay, you can stop laughing now, but some sites, such as Apollo Reality and Moon Landing, still insist that the Eagle never landed. Of course, enemies of Flat Earthism will point to the Rocket and Space Technology site, which does an in-depth job of debunking the hoax. But true disbelievers should check out this terrific video spoof, complete with outtakes showing lights and cameras.
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