5. Altoids Mints as Sexual Aid
This perennial crowd-pleaser has generated constant reader interest ever since the 1998 Starr Report revealed that Monica Lewinsky had flirtatiously handed President Bill Clinton an email printout of the Altoids legend during a secret White House rendezvous in 1997 (the president rebuffed her, by the way). I apologize for not being able to verify the rumored erotic benefits of chewing Altoids mints conclusively. As our reader comments show, there is considerable disagreement on that point even among those who have put it to the test.
4. Giant Human Skeleton Unearthed in Arabian Desert
If it surprises you that educated adults in the year 2004 would buy into a photograph of an archaeologist literally dwarfed by the gigantic humanoid skull he appears to be digging out of the ground, consider that a recent Gallup poll showed that two-thirds of Americans aren't convinced that the theory of evolution is supported by scientific evidence. One-fifth fully agree with the assertion that man was created by God in his present form only 10,000 years ago. It appears we live in an age when, for a great many people around the world, mythology still trumps science, so it should come as no great shock that some are open to the notion that there really were "giants in the earth" in the not-so-distant past. For the record, this much-circulated image was fabricated for entry in a Worth1000.com Photoshop contest in 2002.
3. Penny Brown Is Missing
Not a month goes by without tens of thousands of people forwarding this heartrending plea for information leading to the whereabouts of a 9-year-old girl named Penny Brown. The problem is, she never existed in the first place. This distasteful hoax was launched in 2001 by an anonymous prankster and has circumnavigated the globe many times over since then, with variants adding insult to injury by claiming that Penny Brown originally went missing in Texas, Australia, Singapore or Namibia. Stay tuned for next year's version.
2. World's Tallest Woman
Even if the strapping female depicted in this set of forwarded images were really 7 feet 4 inches tall as the accompanying text claims, she'd fall three inches short of stealing the title of "World's Tallest Woman" from the real record-holder, Sandy Allen. Still, at 6 feet 5-1/2 inches, Heather cuts a fine figure — especially when posed in 6-inch heels beside male and female models chosen for their diminutive stature.
1. Attack of the Camel Spiders
Thanks to the ubiquity of digital cameras and wireless Internet, the war in Iraq is the first to be documented instantaneously by soldiers on the ground. Among the earliest dispatches to make the rounds of inboxes back home was a photograph of a nasty-looking critter unfamiliar to most Americans (even though it can be found in the southwestern United States as well as in the Middle East) called a camel spider. "With a vertical leap that would make a pro basketball player weep with envy," the anonymously-written caption reads, "these bastards latch on and inject you with a local anesthesia so you can't feel it feeding on you." In reality, entomologists say, camel spiders are neither venemous nor a threat to human safety.
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