Written by Ladd Carlock Mitchell
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Whoa! Thanks! I’ll investigate further if I ever run into this mistake in the wild again.
Okay but false facts predate the internet. In one of his science columns in F&SF, Asimov mentions a constant (IIFC, it was the solubility of some iron compound) that was off by a factor of 10 in all the standard chemical reference books. He eventually tracked to a book published in the 19th that slipped a decimal point and had been repeated ever since.
When I fact-checked the 2nd edition of the travel guide I wrote. the only cite I could find online for the date of the building of a particular castle was my book. No idea where I found the original date (hope I got it right!).
The Internet sucks a little more and more each day. I’m getting close to being over it. But the ski resort web-cams keep me coming back…
True, but the internet has greatly increased the speed and ease with which incorrect facts can be picked up and propagated. It’s like laboratory DNA replication for factoids, and many of the factoids are blatantly false (but appear to be true). Back in 1931 the idea that “dord” was an actual word could be caused by an editor’s error, but it didn’t get very far before being spotted as an error by another editor eight years later ( Dord - Wikipedia ) Today that error would’ve been propagated through hundreds od websites in eight months.
Here are a couple of others:
If you google “who invented fluorescent paint?” you almost invariably get “The Switzer Brothers, in the 1930s.” Even Wikipedia says this. Twice. (In the “Day-Glo” entry and the “fluorescent paint” entry.
But it’s not true. There was fluorescent paint in the 19th century. There were two patents for fluorescent paint before the Switzers even started working on the problem. What they did was to successfully commercialize fluorescent paint, to find new colors and extend the range. Before the Switzers, fluorescent paint was a curiosity you had to blend yourself. After them, you had fluorescent boxes of Tide detergent on grocery store shelves. (I know this because I did an article on this one, too, for Optics and Photonics News)
Another case is the Boston-area amusement park Wonderland. Just about every internet site will tell you that it opened in 1906 and closed on Labor Day in 1911. They all say this because the one published book on the topic, Wonderland: Revere’s Mystic City by the Sea by the Nazzaro brothers says this. The Nazzaros got their information from the expert on Revere Beach history, Peter Macauley, who was right 99% of the time. The problem is, this is part of the 1%.
There’s no doubt that the 1911 closing date is wrong. Contemporary newspapers are unanimous in telling you that the park never opened in the summer of 1911. It had closed on Labor Day in 1910, and was partly torn down by 1911. I can’t find any contemporary source that even hints that the Park was open in 1911. The only indication I can find that might have driven Macauley into his error is the observation that stamps on several postcards from the park bear 1911 cancellation dates. But that would be the case if someone were selling overstock postcards from the Park (there were plenty) at Revere Beach souvenir stands and stalls, and people were still sending them, despite the fact that the Park was gone.
But the park was already closed. I’ve written a book about it, if only I can find someone to publish it.
I tried to find the details, but my google-fu is failing me today. A couple of teenage brothers were vacationing with their family in Brazil. They kept seeing an interesting type of animal, but they didn’t know what it was. When they got home, they found it via wikipedia. Then as a joke, they added to the wiki page, “also known as a Brazilian <something>.” I forget what the something is. About a year later, they saw a newspaper article that mentioned the animal, and the article noted that it is also known as a Brazilian <something>. They checked the wiki page, and their joke change was still there, and people had begun to reference it, and other people referenced the first group of people. I’m not sure if it has been scrubbed or not. I’ll try to find it again, but it was a humorous item. Upon further thought it may have all been made up too.
I’ll have to look into that. In cases of Wikipedia tampering I’ve seen, they fix it pretty quickly. Many years ago I read the Wikipedia entry on the Odes of Pindar, and someone had added the sentence “The Odes were written by Cats that ate Oatmeal.”
The line was gone within days of my encountering it.
This appeared as I was writing.
Of particular interest to this thread is the Wikipedia entry on Circular Reporting. It’s about as self-referential as Wikipedia gets:
Edited to add:
This one too – Wikipedia:List of citogenesis incidents - Wikipedia
I ought to mention Snopes’ The Repository of Lost Legends (note the acronym), although, as far as I know, none of these entries has sparked an Internet False Fact.
I found an article about a small island in Lake Gatun in Panama that was a complete hoax. All the information about it was completely made up. I had to send in a hoax report to get it removed.
I’m pretty sure most of the information about this island is also a hoax (I can’t independently confirm any of it, and the references they give don’t actually support it either), but I haven’t taken the time to make the case to remove it.
At least one of them has. If you Google Sing a Song of Six Pence Pirates… you will get about 119,000 hits. Some people saying it is false and others saying they had seen it several places other than Snopes. It also made it into a trivia board game and was even featured on a TV show.
I’ve kind of watched this one spread because I had a special interest in it… I wrote it (I’m listed as the author of one of the reference books). I was a regular there in the early 90’s when David had the idea of the Lost Legends section and he put out a challenge for us to come up with some ideas. A few hours later that was my submission.
I’ve definitely heard it used by Shiela Broflovski, in fact so much so, that I’ve learned to anticipate when she’ll say it.
There are still people who believe that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo.
I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that. Could you repeat it?
The release dates for all the old Motörhead albums are wrong on Wikipedia. I see exactly how it happened: somebody looked at the UK album charts and confused release date with chart debut date - those are NEVER the same date, the latter always follows the former. This error has found its way into various articles (and I would imagine books) over the years and would be hard to try to undo now.
The idea that a vomitorium is a room for vomiting is a peeve of mine. A vomitorium is an exit (particularly, an exit designed to allow easy egress of large crowds). The internet does generally have this right Vomitorium - Wikipedia though.
Just wait a second.
Possibly relevant web page: