Lion 42, Midgets 0

Answering the age-old question, "In a battle royal between 42 unarmed little people and an African lion, who would win?" a news story purportedly issued by the BBC took the Blogosphere by storm this past week when it reported that just such a face-off took place in Cambodia on April 30, leaving all 42 midgets dead or injured.

Come to find out (I'm shocked... shocked!), the story isn't true, nor did it originate from BBC News.

"If you haven't already guessed, the article is fake," wrote the actual, anonymous author of the piece in an after-the-fact disclaimer. "It was created to 'settle' a dispute between a friend of mine [sic] in which he claimed that 40 weaponless midgets could defeat 1 lion in a hypothetical fight," the prankster explained. "The link to where the article was posted was not intended to spread outside of the initial group of guys in the argument, but as I was alerted it had been posted on collegehumor.com, fark.com, and several other web forums, it has spread far beyond that." And how! Unfortunately, the site containing both the original "news story" and disclaimer has disappeared.