He bought houses for at least two of his black employees- a cook and a chauffeur- and raved about many black musicians who inspired him.
Although snopes.com seems to treat this as a myth, folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand describes in one of his books the process by which he learned that this is one of the two or three myths he’d ever seen actually traceable to a real incident. It happened in the 1960s, and involved trading stamps vice glitter. I believe the book was ‘The Choking Doberman’, referenced in the link.
I did that last week with my sister (“Microsoft is merging with AOL and if you forward this email Bill Gates will give you $150 or some such bullcrap”) and now she’s not talking to me.
I did add “That’s the oldest one on the entire internet!!!” which I don’t think went down very well.
I knew there was a thread somewhere that I could post this in 
Todays generations of teenagers are the most gifted kids ever,they are all I.T. genius’s and they have a lot more on their plate then previous generations.
Dyslexia is a scientifically proven,as against anecdotal,condition.
When Tammy Faye Bakker took her makeup off, they found Jimmy Hoffa.
The Netherlands has a lot less e-mail UL’s and political UL’s going round then the US, it seems. The only ones still forwarded are hoaxes about viruses.
The only UL I still hear on a regular basis in conversation is the rather harmless one about the Great Wall of China being the only man-made object visible from space.
About the “Obama is a Muslim”-UL. As people like Limbauch keep saying that with the clear intent to harm Obama, and it clearly isn’t true, isn’t that legally, slander?
More than one well educated person of my acquaintance (PhD’s in Math and other hard sciences) refuses to relinquish at least one UL they’ve believed since youth, apparently on the basis that the “debunking” of these concepts themselves are so convoluted that they sound too much like people stringing together big words the wrong way:
Water drains (counter)clockwise in the Northern/Southern Hemispheres due to the Coriolis effect. “OK, the effect may be slight, sure, but even this (Snopes/Cecil Adams) guy admits it’s non-zero, and the effect as described is observable as generally true. Sure, you could get the water to go the other way by setting up the right conditions, but on the whole, the idea is right in principle.”
If I object to the “generally observed as true” bit, they challenge me to cite first or even second-hand evidence of a significant sampling being done that would refute it (which I don’t have). And if I counter that they should provide a cite for a significant sampling that shows a correlation between the hemisphere and the drain direction, they say that “if you’re challenging accepted wisdom the burden of proof is on you”, followed by “everyone I know who’s traveled to South America and remembered to do this test came back and said it held true” (a sample size of 5-10 people), and finally followed by going over to a random drain or toilet to test the predominantly counter-clockwise draining behavior here in the Northern Hemisphere (which has always panned out).
Darn them and their Scientific Method! 
The spider in the cactus.
The husband in Batman costume, wife tied up and unable to free him.
One too long to summarize easily, but it ends with the EMT laughing so hard he drops the stretcher and the victim gets another injury. (If I were an EMT, I would hate that one so much.)
The black guy in the elevator. (I think it was Reggie Jackson when I heard it.)
Ozzy swallowing a bucket of spit.
Richard Gere and the gerbil. I know someone who will not be disavowed from that.
Carl Karcher (Carl’s Jr. and Hardees) was a KKK member/Grand Wizard. I debunked a guy from that. Later, he got someone else to state it to me just to wind me up. :rolleyes:
The roommate’s suicide/4.0 one.
I don’t know if this would be called an urban legend, and I have not tried to verify or debunk it myself, but I get a lot of Jesusy glurge from people at work, and a lot of them contain something along the lines of: If you agree, please pass this on. It is said that 86% of American people believe in God. Why don’t we just tell the other 14% to be quiet and sit down??? If you agree, pass this on, if not delete.
These also piss me off because of that last line. If you agree with me, tell everyone, if you don’t, shut up. :rolleyes:
One of the pastors of my church is obsessed with Exxon. Any UL having to do with oil companies or boycotts has been mentioned a few too many times for my liking.
I’ll be skipping the Sunday closest to Earth Day this year.
Exxon is headquarted here in the Dallas area.
Heck, I’m pretty sure I’ve even seen one of the “Lemonjello Orangello FeMAHlee” things repeated on these boards around three or four years back. I replied then with a Snopes link, but I can’t find the thread now (damn this lack of proof for my intellectual superiority).
We don’t really seem to have that many urban legends going around in Finland right now, apart from a few virus hoaxes. There’s one I’ve heard about four times from different people concerning things they supposedly overheard a couple shouting in a cruise ship cabin. A lot of the e-mails or wall posts or what have you are direct translations from English versions, sometimes adapted to Finnish (with Finnish celebrities or whatever) and sometimes not. One was a list of “amazing facts” which had “Donald Duck was banned in Finland because he doesn’t wear pants”. You’d think someone might have picked up on that one, seeing as we’re in Finland, and Donald Duck magazine is the highest-circulation weekly magazine here…
What, noone mentioned being able to see the Great Wall of China from space?
Yeah, but as I’ve shown, that number is pretty much true so, as far as parroted facts go, this one is supportable.
That one annoys the crap out of me, too. Yeah, the Coriolis effect is demonstrable in draining, but it requires building a rather large, perfectly constructed vessel with a pinhole-sized stopper, letting the water settle for hours after its poured, and then releasing the stopper from below and allowing the water to drain over the course of hours. Not exactly the conditions available in your average sink or toilet.
If anyone challenged me on this factoid in my flat, I would take them to the kitchen and then the bathroom, where one sink drained clockwise, the other counter. So, you can draw one of two conclusions: either the Coriolis effect theory is flawed, or the equator bisects my flat.
Do they have a tangible, concrete reason for this belief or is it merely speculative? The reason I ask, I was dating the administrator of Cedars-Sinai Hospital’s daughter shortly after this story came out. She was pre-med herself and we were pretty serious at the time. She asked him if it was true and he said yes.
Now this story puzzles me to no end. On the one hand, a couple of reputable people, one of whom would definately be in the know, say it’s true. On the other, I simply can’t imagine this procedure being a thrill for anyone. It’s gross, immoral and I can’t imagine it would be thrilling even for the most perverse of deviants.
I suppose it’ll always remain a myth. There are those who want it to be true but no reputable source will ever come forth publicly and demonstrate that a hospital willingfully divulged confidential and embarrasing information about a patient, celebrity or not. (A private conversation between father and daughter is worlds away from a public confirmation… yes?) And Richard Gere? He’ll neither confirm nor deny.
Timed out… so to add/clarify - please change “willingfully” to willfully or willingly. Also:
While my NSFW-restricted inquests have been pretty limited, I don’t see this as ever having been even remotely commonplace. Seriously, the man was dating Cindy dedgum Crawford. He needed her and a gerbil to get off? That doesn’t make a lick of sense.
Maastricht, post #67.
I must be doing something right, because I haven’t heard any of these from real people in a while. I think the last time was when one of the Bunco ladies tried to tell the group the one about the Pepsi can and the Pledge of Allegiance (year before last).
Email wise, my BIL sent the one about Kentucky removing teaching about the Holocaust from their curriculum. I sent him the Snopes link (yeah, I’m bad about that too).
Psst… post #67. Apparently the Great Wall is big in the Netherlands.
Every year around Halloween when the topic of novelty haunted houses comes up among friends my wife would always tell everyone about the one in Chicago (where she grew up) that was in an old warehouse that was was so scary that if you could make it all the way through to the roof there was a party with a live band waiting for you.
I always thought it sounded cool till years later when I found it to have never exsisted on Snopes.
Me: “Remember that warehouse haunted house in Chicago?”
Her: “Yeah, it was really cool. A band and everything.”
Me: “Did YOU actually go to it?”
Her: “Well, uh, no, but I know people that did…”
Me: “Well, uh, no they didn’t because it never exsisted (link)”
Her: :mad: