Top 100 Hoaxes of All Time

Kaz Riprock writes "Did you know that Taco Bell bought the Liberty Bell? Or that Spaghetti grows on trees?? Here is a pretty interesting website that compiles 100 of the best hoaxes perpetrated through the ages."

Comments

Obviously.....

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

/. should be at the top of this list :)

Re:Obviously.....

[Politburo]

No.. these are meant to be good hoaxes.

Morons!

[NetMasta10bt]

#17: The Left-Handed Whopper
In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."

Re:Morons!

[unicron]

Bah, amateurs.

In college pulled one that people still talk about. Me, mostly.

A friend of mine had taken a real liking to online trading through Datek. I had the great idea to spoof their security division's email address and send him one accusing him of insider trading. Guess he didn't pick up on the fact that most emails of this type wouldn't contain the sentence "stick around there so we can arrest you when we get there."

He comes rushing into my dorm room(at a REALLY, REALLY bad time, mind you) screaming up and down about FED's and insider trading and this and that. My girlfriend and I can barely contain ourselves and luckily he took off again to call his father before we lost it. I go downstairs, and a mutual friend that was in on it tells me I've gotta tell him the truth, because he just called his father. Turns out his father is some fat cat attorney back in Cali. I come clean, he takes a swing at me, it was all in good fun. To this day I still say to him "remember that time I made you think you were going to spend the rest of your life in prison?"..good times.

Re:Morons!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats similar to a prank that was done on a friend of mine.

He has just got a "demo" copy of windows XP and had just connected to the net. His boss then sent him an email from "legal@microsoft.com" with the subject "Illegal copy of XP detected". Gave him a heart attack of course, but once he realised it was fake he replied to the email. It wasn't until just after he clicked the send button that he realised he hadn't changed the reply to address and he had just sent that email to MS.

It's about time

[seinman]

Finally, an April Fool's Day post that isn't annoying as hell!

One of the biggest hoaxes that site missed:

[Tofino]

One of the biggest hoaxes that site missed:

"News for nerds. Stuff that matters."

Re:One of the biggest hoaxes that site missed:

[neurostar]

One of the biggest hoaxes that site missed:

"News for nerds. Stuff that matters."

Well part of it's a hoax, part of it isn't. Here's the breakdown:

News for nerds. - Definitly not a hoax.
Stuff that matters. - HOAX! HOAX! HOAX!

neurostar

well...

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

at least it wasn't:

1) Slashdot posts story regarding IPv4 evil bit.
2) Slashdot posts story regarding IPv4 evil bit.
3) Slashdot posts story regarding IPv4 evil bit. ...
etc

Re:The biggest Hoax of them all!

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Micro$oft OS's are secure!"

Linux, the Gamer's Choice!

Hoax and Myth

[fm6]

In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

I'm reminded of that persistent myth about drains and the Coriolis Force. I'm told that in equatorial contries, tourists can find entrepreneurs who will "demonstrate" the precise location of the equator with a tub that drains clockwise in one location, and counterclockwise a few feet away. If you ask one of these guys about another entrepreneur that lives a few miles north or south that has the same demo, he'll gravely inform you that the other guy is a fraud!

It can be pretty hard to tell the liar from the true believer!

Slashdot IPO

[JWSmythe]

That was a joke? Cmdr Taco! Give me back my money!!! :)

Dihydrogen Monoxide

[shane_rimmer]

Where was Dihydrogen Monoxide?

Re:The biggest Hoax of them all!

[houseofmore]

"You couldn't hack a properly configured windows box if someone put a gun to your head."

Anyone would have to have a gun to their head to 'claim a properly configured windows box'.

"Oh, and installing redhat from a bootable cd and typing ls and startx all day does NOT make you a linux user."

Installing windows XP from a bootable cd and typing <CTRL><ALT><DEL> does make you a pretty typical moron.

MIT Hacks

[i22y]

While not directly related to April Fool's Day, one cannot forget MIT Hacks. Some of the best pranks I've seen in awhile.

Notable is the Campus cop car on the Great Dome...though they're all great.

Re:Copied directly from the article...

[localghost]

So register, post each of the 100 individually, get each modded to 5, and instantly you have +500 karma! Then sell the account on ebay. Then submit a story about it to slashdot. Then submit the story half a dozen more times.

Orson Wells

[jimson]

I'm really surprised to not find Orson Well's War of the Worlds in the top 20 anyways. That has to be one of the best hoaxes ever! War of the Worlds

What about the 100 best trolls?

[grumpygrodyguy]

Slightly off-topic, but interesting none-the-less. Would some industrious young slashdotter mind compiling a "Top 100 slashdot trolls of all time" list for the bemusement of the common reader?

It's highly likely that such a list would be modded into oblivion, so perhaps your could link the list in your sig? Title it something conspicuous like "The top 100 slashdot trolls of all time".

Would someone please do this? Is the troll community still alive and well on SD? In the 3 years I've been reading SD, I've seen some gems. Make this list, and let everyone share in your trolling glory! Make a new account, and link the top 100 trolls of all time to it. Pretty please, with sugar on top.

bah. you're the Amateur

[geekoid]

I pulled a similiar joke, but my friend is still sitting in prison. I can't wait for his release so I can see the look on his face when I come clean..
aahhh, good times.

Re:The BEST in my book

[fucksl4shd0t]

That's exactly the one I was looking for. I thought it should be #1, How could you beat the War of the Worlds?

Dudley, Bob, and Debra on the KLBJ morning show spent like 3 hours one morning talking about how Metallica got struck by lightning and they were all dead. Guys I worked with were calling their girlfriends and crying on the phone at them. It was funnier than shit. :)