Urban Legends
Written by Debra Miller (contact - e-mail) -- August 16th, 2006 |
Share - Save - E-mail
Did you receive the questionable email the other month about registering your cell phone number on the “Do Not Call” directory in order to prevent your number from being released to telemarketers? Are you unsure as to whether or not eating celery actually results in negative calorie intake? Still wondering if that gum you swallowed the other day will be in your system for another seven years?
Fear not! Barbara and David P. Mikkelson, founders of the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society and the creators of snopes.com, are on a mission to set the record straight about these and countless other rumors and urban legends. While some people spend their free time circulating stories about the deadly effects of microwaving food in plastic containers, snopes.com is devoted to eradicating such falsities. Armed with scholarly literature, reputable cross references, and more connections than Kevin Bacon, the Mikkelsons have researched thousands of rumors and folklore. For each claim, the website confirms or denies the statement, goes through a brief history of its origin, and details the research done in order to arrive at a conclusion. Their fact checking sources are even listed on each posting so users can verify their work.
To help snopes.com keep abreast of the lasted scoop, users can also email in questionable folklore they have recently encountered. While the Mikkelsons have a ways to go before they can close up shop, they have made a good dent in freeing the world from faulty tales and reports. 2.7 million people visited snopes.com in June, a 24% increase from site traffic in January. Interestingly enough, among the dozens of categories listed, including history, medical, and food, Disney is the most commonly searched collection. So if you are curious about the alleged hidden messages in Disney films, or about almost anything else you have heard or read, check out the website. And in order to do my part in fight against misinformation, calorie friendly celery is the only true bit of information in the first paragraph.
Did you like that post? You'll love these.
Done reading? subscribe: To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email enter your email address in the box in the right column.
Link to This Post:
Get the 
July 20th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Snopes has an article at http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/gascharge.asp about gas station charging an extra fee for using a Credit Card as being FALSE! If find your statement not based in fact. Read a portion of an article I just wrote:
As proof that this IS. In fact, TRUE – 7 weeks ago I filled up my gas tank and was charged $26.00 and put it on my DEBIT CARD – not CREDIT CARD. A DEBIT CARD transaction is the same as a CASH transaction. When I got my bank statement I found that the gas station had charged me $32.00 or an ADDITIONAL $6.00 – for this transaction – or .75 cents more per gallon!!! This morning, Sunday 07/20/08, I spoke to an employee at the gas station where I normally buy my gas – I asked if they charged extra for using a Credit Card. The answer was YES! I then asked if they charged extra for a DEBIT CARD transaction. And – was told NO. A Cash or Debit Card transaction is supposed to be the final figure. Be sure to check your Bank Statement – if you use either your Debit Card or Credit Card. In a court of law charging you $10.00 for using your credit card is called “USURY”! Known as “Excessive Interest” because you have used a Credit Card!
I strongly ask that you “call around” to see if the statement is true - or not. Apparently you did not as poeple are now being charged up to $10.00 for using their Credit Card. Adding a lot of cost to the price of gas. Ripping the public off!
Phil Kaiser - pkaiser@earthlink.net
September 20th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
How can I contact Snopes to send them my most recent questionable e-mail that seems to
be going around?
April 4th, 2009 at 2:41 am
I constantly receive e-mails warning of some rumour. I check it on your web site and would like to forward your results to the people who send them to me. However I can’t e-mail things because I get a fault message. I also can’t copy the information either.
Is there some way to send this information so we can cut down on masses of panicky warnings?
If there is, I would like to know about it.
Thank you for researching all these legends.
Roger Richardson
osoyoosguy@yahoo.ca
May 6th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Please check ths story I received via email for validity:
&nbs p; This is really, really amazing…..
LONDON TIMES REPORT ON IRAQ …….
The London Times reports…
What do you bet that when our troops all get sent home that our new President is going to take all the credit???? Ready for a shock? Below is an article from the London Times about our military. Interesting, it is!
Our media coverage is shameful!
Winning Isn’t News!!
By INVESTOR’S B USINESS DAILY
Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn’t tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we’ve defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.
London’s Sunday Times called it ‘the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.’ A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has in over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare.
We can thank President Bush’s surge Strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering. We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them
America was their friend and AQI their enemy.
Al-Qaida’s loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Pr ovince, which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there. Now, in Operation Lion’s Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended. Sunday Times (London) reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.
Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government has achieved ’satisfactory’ progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks ‘a big change for the better from a year ago.’ Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates , which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad, an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq .
But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the MediaResearch Center pointed out last week, ‘the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN’sAnderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks ‘that signaled political progress.’ The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because President Bush stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don’t seem to consider this historic event a big story..
Copyright 2008 Investor’s Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.
Addendum: The reason you haven’t seen this on American television or read about it in the American press is simple–journalism is ‘dead’ in this country. They are controlled by Liberal Democrats who would rather see our troops defeated than recognize a successful Republican initiated response to 9/11. Media probably were holding ’til after coronation of BHO in order to give BHO the credit. God bless our troops, God bless President Bush and God bless the U.S.A.
How many will you forward it to? We need to get it known around the country ASAP. Over 10 million people will have read this by March 30, 2009. With all your help we can reach well over 30 million world wide. Thanks,let the truth be known thru-out the world !!
May 19th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
hi, msj 455 wonderful blog 455 share
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:24 am
Advice From Snopes
By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with http://www.snopes.com and/or http://www.truthorfiction.com f or determining whether information received via email is just that: true/false or fact/fiction. Both are excellent sites. Below is their advice for us.
Advice from Snopes.com
1) Any time you see an E-Mail that says forward this on to ‘10′ of your friends, sign this petition, or you’ll get bad luck, good luck, or whatever, it almost always has an E-Mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and E-Mails of those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of ‘active’ E-Mails addresses to use in SPAM E-Mails, or sell to other spammers.
2) Almost all E-Mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of E-Mail is, a way to get names and ‘ cookie’ tracking information for telemarketers and spammers - - to validate active E-Mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.
You can do your friends and family members a GREAT favor by sending this information to them; you will be providing a service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam E-Mails in the future!
If you have been sending out (FORWARDING) the above kinds of E-Mail, now you know why you get so much SPAM!
Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound!
You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT in the long run. Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let’s don’t make it easy for them!
Always erase the headings at the top of your e-mails before you mail them on.
Also: E-Mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition.
True or false ??????????????????
August 18th, 2009 at 4:26 am
FYI. Do not publish my e-address:
Nilgiri/Eucalyptus oil helps prevent swine flu. Is this true?
August 19th, 2009 at 12:05 am
Still don’t know how to send a questionable email on to Snopes. I received a new one today that is heartwarming, but makes me wonder. Does Snopes have a forwarding address, or do they wait until they receive all the forwards that the rest of us receive?
August 26th, 2009 at 10:42 am
hi, my name is basan.com.tr BASSAN loadcell.your wonderful blog, 443 blog. tnx. Msj number . 443
August 30th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Hi, We have been manufacturing stair. 159 merdivenci 159
August 31st, 2009 at 11:05 am
A particularly gullible sister sends me a warning, approximately once a year, concerning the electrocution danger of a charging cell-phone. Her latest pass-along includes photos of a grossly damaged hand & burnt pillows & chair. Have you dealt with this in the past? I’ve explained to my sister that the output of a phone charger poses no danger, but she keeps wanting to believe this lu-lu (she’s the type who was certain Bill Gates was going to send out awards of ~$20K to all who tested some app).
Would we rightly call this an inexhaustible chestnut of scarelore?
I love your work. I’m a writer (movies, fiction, newsletters, you name it) with a PhD in neuroscience & several publications in the 70s & 80s. If there’s any way that I could help your cause . . . gratis . . . let me know.
Your biggest (blowin’ in the wind) fan
RWL
October 19th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
You may find this of great interest. It appears to me that Obama is NOT eligible to be our
man in the White House in which case whose responsibility is it to correct it?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/7817311/Obamas-Birth-Place
YOU do a super FANTASTIC job with your verification work.
Thank YOU!
Maxie Castilow