Email Hoaxes

Have you received the forwarded email warning about the woman at the shopping mall who is almost victimized by a man offering to fix her flat tire? In one variation, the man is disguised as an elderly woman in need of a ride, but his big hairy arms give him away.

Well, that story has been going around since before the Civil War. Originally the vehicle was a stagecoach!

This one goes all the way back to the 15th century: A saint was going through the canonization process (well, SHE wasn’t—she was dead, but church officials were verifying her miracles so they could make her a saint), and a story was widely circulated that a mother chopped up her baby and would have cooked it and eaten it, but the saint-candidate miraculously put the baby back together.

True story, I mean true hoax. Laura Smoller, a professor in the history department at UALR, is writing a book about it.

Here’s a direct quote from her. “It always kind of amuses and fascinates me how many people who are really quite intelligent pass on these things.”

She said it, I didn’t.