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Category: Hoaxes

Challenging the Knockout Game Hysteria

December 3, 2013 Ken Newquist Half-Truths, Hoaxes

The “Knockout Game” has repeatedly made headlines on CNN, but it has all the makings of an urban legend to rival gang members killing people for flashing their high beams or hiding underneath cars to slash their victim’s ankles.

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Hoax Central, May 2013 edition

May 15, 2013 Ken Newquist Hoaxes, Hoaxes and Urban Legend News, Uncategorized

In this edition of Hoax Central we review hoaxes spawned by the Boston Marathon bombing, evaluate Joel Osteen’s religious identify crisis, debunk a sexually transmitted disease, and learn the true story beyond Mr. Roger’s advice to “look for the helpers” during a crisis.

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snopes.com: Eagle Scouts

June 12, 2010 Ken Newquist Hoaxes, Hoaxes and Urban Legend News, Uncategorized

An email making its way around the internet is claiming that President Barrak Obama turned down the traditional presidential role of leader of the Boy Scouts of America and refuses to sign Eagle Scout congratulatory letters. Snopes.com explains that the[…]

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snopes.com: The Lost Day

June 5, 2010 Ken Newquist Hoaxes, Hoaxes and Urban Legend News

The thing I love most about urban legends is how they mutate over time. Snopes.com has an excellent debunking of one such debunking: “The Lost Day.” It recounts a tale in which NASA scientists doing orbital calculations are startled to[…]

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Bad Astronomy: Is Betelgeuse about to blow?

June 2, 2010 Ken Newquist Half-Truths, Hoaxes, Hoaxes and Urban Legend News

Is the red supergiant Betelgeuse about to go supernova, giving Earth a second sun and half of its inhabitants a nasty burn? The short answer according to astronomer Phil Plait, is that yes, Betelgeuse could go tomorrow, but if it[…]

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snopes.com: Acid Rain Warning

May 29, 2010 Ken Newquist Hoaxes, Hoaxes and Urban Legend News

Snopes.com debunks the claim that a “dark ring around the moon” presages a cancer-causing acid rain storm. The myth starts off claiming that this is an event that happens once every 750 years but mutates to say that the volcanic[…]

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Revenge of the Mars Hoax

May 24, 2009 Ken Newquist Hoax Debunkings, Hoaxes, Hoaxes and Urban Legend News

Mars is invading. Or so claims a resurrected hoax that claims that the Red Planet will soon appear as large as the Moon in the night sky. It’s a tweaked version of an earlier hoax from 2003, when Mars really[…]

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Attack of the Back(seat)-Stabbing Driver!

May 27, 2008 Ken Newquist Hoaxes, Urban Legends

It’s like a scene out of a horror movie: an unsuspecting woman pumps gas into her car, only to be summoned inside by a gas attendant who informs her that — horrors! — a knife wielding lunatic is lurking in[…]

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Anti-Harry Potter Email Confuses Satire with Satan

September 4, 2007 Ken Newquist Hoax Debunkings, Hoaxes

It was a big summer for Harry Potter. The seventh and final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released, as was the fifth movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. After reading the[…]

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Can Preshoolers Get Drunk on Hand Sanitizer?

August 28, 2007 Ken Newquist Hoax Debunkings, Hoaxes

Can a prescooler get drunk and even die from drinking hand sanitizer? The short answer is … yes, they can. The following e-mail describes swallowing a squirt of hand sanitizer was enough to make a four-year-old loopy and while it[…]

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About Nuketown

Nuketown is a speculative fiction website that’s been published continuously since 1996.

It’s publishing focus is articles, reviews and editorials about science fiction, fantasy, and horror with heroic overtones. It covers a variety of topics within the speculative fiction genre, including games, movies, soundtracks, books, and websites.

Radiating from Easton, Pa.

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