-- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 3:45 PM
Subject: CU16: Urban Legends Reference Pages Update #323
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| |  | Urban Legends Reference Pages:
Update #323 Hello again from snopes.com, where we shed light on the wild tales you've heard! This e-mail gives information about new articles recently added to the Urban Legends Reference Pages and provides pointers to older pieces about rumors and hoaxes still wandering into everyone's inboxes. Our last update mailing was August 4, 2007. If after this update you are left wondering about something newly arrived in your inbox, our search engine stands ready to assist you. Bookmark that URL — it's a keeper!
An RSS feed for our What's New page is available at the following URL:
http://www.snopes.com/info/whatsnew.xml
And now to the legends, the mayhem, and the misinformation!
New Articles
- Did Elvis Presley once say "The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes"?
- We look at the urban legend that a man cut off some of his fingers by attempting to use a lawn mower to trim hedges.
- Did actress Angelina Jolie say she hates Israel and wants "those people" eradicated?
- Warning: includes somewhat disturbing image: Photographs purportedly show a boy whose nose has been impaled with a fork.
- Genuine or not? On-line coupon offers free movie rentals, popcorn, and sodas at Blockbuster outlets.
- Did a disgruntled Random House employee sneak an unusual definition of 'mutton' into the publisher's 1999 dictionary?
Worth a Second Look - A legend for our times: Thinking he's the one being addressed, restroom user responds to cell phone user's conversation overheard from next stall.
Still Haunting the Inbox - No, Mars is not going to be of unusual size in the nighttime sky on August 27 of this year. That happened in 2003, with the e-mailed alert about it reappearing every summer thereafter.
- 1998 and 1999 warnings about rattlesnakes and heroin-filled syringes offing little kids who play in ball pits at fast food restaurants have returned. Still false.
- While it's true a consortium of wireless providers is planning to create a 411 (directory assistance) service for cell phone numbers, you need not register your cell phone with the national "Do Not Call" directory to prevent your number from being provided to telemarketers.
- We look at two eraser sponge rumors, that they contain formaldehyde or have caused chemical burns when rubbed on skin.
- Dialing #77 or *677 is not a surefire way of reaching the local highway patrol — the service is in place in some regions, but not in others. If in need of assistance, dial 911 instead for the sure thing.
- There was no letter to Starbucks from coffee-seeking G.I.s serving in Iraq, so no response from the coffee retailer saying it didn't support the war and anyone in it. As for Oscar Mayer refusing troops free hot dogs, the 2004 Starbucks e-mail was altered in 2007 to aim it at the blameless hot dog maker.
- No, the new dollar coin doesn't omit "In God We Trust" - that phrase has been stamped into its edge.
- Is Illinois Senator Barack Obama "ideologically Muslim"?
- The missing child alert about 13-year-old Ashley Flores of Philadelphia is a hoax.
- The entreaty to aid 7-year-old Amy Bruce who is dying of lung cancer and a brain tumor by forwarding an email and a sappy poem titled "Slow Dance" is a hoax.
- Is there a Wal-Mart check theft ring?
- The Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act (which seeks to ensure that insurance companies cover a minimum of 48-hour hospital stays for those undergoing mastectomies) is before the House again (which it has been every odd year since 1999).
- Images do show the USS New York, which is being built with steel from the Twin Towers.
- No, Jay Leno did not write the "Hits the Nail on the Head" essay — it was Craig R. Smith.
- Will pressing #-9-0 on your telephone allow scammers to make long-distance calls and charge them to your phone bill?
- 3-year-old Reachelle Marie Smith is missing from her Minot, North Dakota, home.
- E-mailed petition advocates denying social services to immigrants.
- No, Johns Hopkins Hospital has not issued a "cancer update" detailing how cancer spreads and recommending methods for treating the disease.
- No, reusing plastic bottles will not result in their breaking down into cancer-causing components.
- Yes, Bank of America has been offering credit cards to customers who lack Social Security cards.
- No, robbers are not luring female victims into sniffing ether-laced perfume in parking lots.
- While it is true that in 2004 a man in India was electrocuted when trying to use his cell phone as it recharged, it is safe to use your cell phone while it is charging.
- Hillary Clinton is the subject of many e-mailed items, and our "Clintons" section contains write-ups about a number of them.
- No, Bill Gates is not sharing his fortune with everyone who forwards a specific e-mail on his behalf. This tired leg-pull continues to romp through everyone's inbox, the most widespread incarnation swearing "This took two pages of the Tuesday USA Today!"
- Virus announcement and virus hoax e-mails are afoot! We try to keep current on them and do our best to point readers to authoritative links confirming or debunking them.
Fraud Afoot - Seems like everyone has become the recipient of mysterious e-mails promising untold wealth if only one helps a wealthy foreigner quietly move millions of dollars out of his country. The venerable Nigerian Scam has discovered the goldmine that is the Internet. Beware — there's still no such thing as "something for nothing," and the contents of your bank account will end up with these wily foreigners if you fall in with this.
- Likewise, look out for mailings announcing you've won a foreign lottery you don't recall entering.
- Or that because you share the surname of a wealthy person who died without leaving a will you're in line for a windfall inheritance.
- And be especially wary if, while trying to sell or rent anything online (car, boat, horse, motorcycle, painting, apartment, you name it) you're approached by a prospective buyer/renter who wants to pay with a cashier check made out for an amount in excess of the agreed-upon price and who asks the balance be sent to a third party.
- Aspiring work-at-homers promised big bucks for acting as intermediaries for international transactions wherein they cash checks for other parties or reship goods to them have been defrauded by con artists. Don't you be next.
- If someone telephones to announce you can have a $200 Wal-Mart shopping spree or $200 in gasoline coupons in return for a $3.49 processing charge to be debited directly from your bank account, hang up. You're being set up via the promise of "something for almost nothing" into authorizing a swindler to help himself to the contents of your bank account.
- If someone calls to announce you've failed to appear for jury duty and will be arrested, do not give the caller your personal and financial information in an effort to prove he's sending the gendarmes after the wrong guy. You're being tricked into giving up this information to an identity thief.
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by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
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