Have you heard the one about the Texas lady who asked if she could have a copy of the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie recipe, then found she was charged $250 for it on her credit card statement?

To paraphrase an old Klingon proverb, "Revenge is a dish best served warm out of the oven."

Come to find out, that news story circulating for the past two weeks about a Polish dentist pulling out every one of her ex-boyfriend's teeth because he jilted her is one hundred percent bunk.

Police in Wroclaw, Poland, where the incident purportedly took place, say they have no record of it. Polish journalists have tried, in vain, to locate the alleged dentist, Dr. Anna Mackowiak, and her alleged victim, Marek Olszewski. Quite simply, it never happened. Read More...

P.T. Barnum would have loved the Internet. The renowned showman and serial hoaxer never actually said "There's a sucker born every minute" (a competitor did), but no one proved the point better than he. His spirit lives on in the "truthy" new world of do-it-yourself digital publishing and social media.

Take this hot item replicating furiously wherever folks share stuff online: "Abraham Lincoln Filed a Patent for Facebook in 1845."

It's an article by blogger Nate St. Pierre informing us of his discovery of a patent application proving that the Great Emancipator-to-be, then an itinerant lawyer based in Springfield, Illinois, invented a mid-nineteenth-century, paper-and-ink version of Facebook, complete with profile pictures, status updates, shared posts, and the ability for each participant to choose "if he shall make his page Available to the entire Town, or only to those with whom he has established Family or Friendship." Read More...

It's rare enough to read a forwarded email with anything nice to say about a politician; even rarer to find one that actually gets most of the facts straight. A viral missive circulating since the beginning of the year recounts the well-documented story of how Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney shut down his company and martialed its employees to help find the missing daughter of business partner Robert Gay in 1996. "That's just how he's wired," the email says of Mr. Romney's character. Read more...