Modern communication technologies, led by His Majesty the Internet, made us believe in the illusion of an "open information space". Often we do not even realize how naively gullible our mind is at the moment when it reads a newspaper, watches TV or soars over the vastness of the global network. Judge for yourself.
Fact # 1. Good joke
In 1848, the petty bourgeois Nikifor Nikitin "for seditious speeches about the flight to the moon" was exiled not just anywhere, but to the distant settlement of Baikonur! There are coincidences in life.
This funny legend looks very believable and sets in a sarcastic mood. It was first published in 1974 in the newspaper "Evening Dnieper". The author of the note is V. Pimenov, a researcher at the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum This "geler" asserted that the issue of the newspaper "Moskovskie gubernskiye vedomosti" for 1848, which mentions the fact of the bourgeois Nikitin, was preserved in the museum's library. After a while, some enterprising reader reported this article to the Izvestia newspaper, and went
rode … The story of the unlucky tradesman spread throughout the Union.
But there were meticulous people who did not take their word for it and decided to find the primary source in the archives - the same issue of the newspaper “Moskovskie gubernskiye vedomosti”. It soon became clear that there was no mention of the tradesman Nikitin, and Pimenov himself later admitted that he simply invented this story and did not at all expect that a few lines in a provincial newspaper could cause such a stir.
It is good that the deception was revealed quite quickly, because the habit of inventing facts could come to the taste of the museum employee. The history of journalism knows many resourceful authors who, over the years, have managed to describe in their articles what happened, as they say, on Russian bai-ram and Turkish Easter.
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Fact number 2. Success, Mr. Gorski
When American astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, the first thing he said was, "Good luck, Mr. Gorski!" As a child, Armstrong accidentally overheard a quarrel between neighbors - a married couple named Gorski. Mrs. Gorski scolded her husband: "Rather, the neighbor's boy flies to the moon, than you will satisfy the woman!"
Everyone knows that the first phrase of Neil Armstrong on the moon was the famous: "One small step for a person, but a giant leap for all mankind." It is a fact. Legend has it that he then added in an undertone: "Good luck, Mr. Gorski." This phrase is believed to have been cut and caused a lot of rumors among NASA employees who could not understand who this mysterious Mr. Gorski was. But is this story true? Unfortunately no.
The whole story about the hapless neighbor of "America's greatest hero" is nothing more than an indecent stand-up comedy joke. Neil Armstrong himself first heard it in 1994, performed by comedian Buddy Hackett, about which he later wrote. Apparently, he liked the joke, since in 1995, during a famous press conference in Florida, he retold it live on national radio.
It is this interview that is still considered proof that Armstrong actually said this phrase when he set foot on the moon. But he just voiced a famous anecdote, nothing more. Particularly convinced supporters of this legend can find on the Internet a recording of Armstrong's negotiations with NASA employees during the landing and see for themselves that they do not contain a single word about the unfortunate Mr. Gorski. It's a pity.
Facts # 3, 4, 5. Book of Miracles
Residents of the Scottish countryside watched the film "Around the World in 80 Days" in a local cinema. At the moment when the movie heroes sat in the basket of the balloon and chopped off the rope, a strange crack was heard. It turned out that a balloon fell on the roof of the cinema … the same as in the movies! (1965)
When "Titanic" collided with an iceberg in the film, which was broadcast on TV, an ice meteorite crashed into the home of an English family - a rare occurrence in itself.
In 1944, the Daily Telegraph newspaper published a crossword puzzle containing all the codenames of the secret Allied landing operation in Normandy. Intelligence rushed to investigate the "information leak". But the compiler of the crossword puzzle turned out to be an old school teacher, no less puzzled by such an incredible coincidence.
The primary source of all three stories is the popular collection of J. Michell and R. Ricard "The Phenomena of the Book of Miracles", published in Great Britain in 1977. Its authors are professional, very famous collectors of mysterious and mysterious stories. John Michell became famous for his books on Atlantis, megaliths, astroarcheology and sacred geometry. It's funny that the book by Michell and Ricard, which describes crying icons, glowing people, ghosts and frogs falling from the sky, was published in the Soviet Union in 1988 by the publishing house of political literature. True, it was accompanied by scientific comments in the spirit of Soviet materialism, which in itself looks quite amusing. But that's not the point.
We have no reason not to trust Messrs. Michell and Ricardo, but it is worth noting that they themselves do not claim to be one hundred percent authenticity of all the stories set out in their books. They are, rather, collectors than researchers, and therefore do not always indicate the source of this or that "fact". As, for example, in the story about an ice meteorite that fell on the house of a pious English family while watching a movie about the Titanic.
As for the balloon that hit the cinema, in the original version of Michell and Ricard, the balloon tried to land near the village and hit the wires, causing the lights to go out in the cinema. Here the authors point out the source - the weekly "Weekly News" of April 12, 1975. I don’t know if you trust weeklies … Personally, as a professional journalist, no.
But the story about the unlucky school teacher, apparently, is true. With only one significant clarification: the code words did not appear simultaneously in one crossword puzzle, but appeared one at a time in a whole series of crosswords over several months. The biography of a wonderful teacher named Leonard Dawe, who was a regular crossword writer for The Daily Telegraph, can be easily found on the Internet. Amateur footballer, WWI participant and crossword writer Leonard Doe has devoted no less than thirty-eight years to this business.
Facts # 6. Twin brothers
The two foster families who adopted twins, not knowing each other's plans, named the boys - James. The brothers grew up unaware of each other's existence, both received legal education, married women named Linda, and both had sons. They only learned about each other at forty.
This story, which happened in reality, was made public by the professor of psychology Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr. Bouchard's passion for twins is no coincidence, he is the director of the Center for the Study and Adoption of Twins at the University of Minnesota. A favorite practice case that made him famous concerns twins named Jim Springer and Jim Lewis.
The brothers first met at the age of thirty-nine. It turned out that their fates coincide surprisingly. Both married girls named Linda, divorced, married a second time to women named Betty, both named their sons James Alan and their dogs Toy. Professor Bouchard, thanks to the Jim twins, received a grant to study the influence of genes on medical and psychological performance of people. In fact, experts have long known the fact that some twins often have "similar" destinies, and that they are able to "feel" each other, even being on opposite sides of the Earth.
Fact number 7. Same names
In 1920, three Englishmen were traveling by train in one compartment. In the process of getting to know each other, it was discovered: the last name of one of them was Binkham, the second - Powell, and the third - Binkham-Powell. None of them were related to the other.
The story about namesakes was published in 1989 in the book "Mysteries of the Unknown", published by Reader's Digest. By the way, this book has no authors, only the editor is indicated. And in it the story of the English namesakes takes place not in 1920, but already in 1950, and in Peru. Should you trust Reader's Digest editors? You decide.
Fact number 8. Miracle from childhood
In 1920, the American writer Ann Parrish came across her favorite children's book in a second-hand bookstore. When she opened the book at home, she found on the title page the inscription: 209H Ann Parrish, Webber Street, Colorado Springs. It was her own children's book.
The source of this legend is credible. For the first time this interesting fact was mentioned by a contemporary of Ann Parrish - American writer, critic and journalist Alexander Woolcott in his book "While Rome Burns". It was published in 1934, and in 1954 it was named by critics as one of the best books of the twentieth century.
Fact number 9. Pregnant cashiers
In one of the supermarkets in the English county of Cheshire, as soon as the cashier sits down at the cashier at number fifteen, she becomes pregnant in a few weeks. The result is twenty-four pregnant women and thirty children born.
After a long search, we managed to find out the source of this piquant story - this is the newspaper "Vechernyaya Moskva" dated July 7, 1992. It seems that this article, reminiscent of a joke about Mr. Gorski, was published in the newspaper on the principle "in the end, readers need to be given something funny and spicy ". And if we consider that from the actual data we have only the name of the county in distant Great Britain, it becomes clear that it is not difficult to invent something like that.
Fact number 10. Unsinkable Hugh
On December 5, 1664, a passenger ship sank off the coast of Wales. All but one of the crew members and passengers were killed. The lucky one was named Hugh Williams. More than a century later, on December 5, 1785, another ship was wrecked at the same place. And again the only man named … Hugh Williams was saved. In 1860, again on the fifth of December, a fishing schooner sank here. Only one fisherman survived. And his name was Hugh Williams!
Many articles have been written about the unsinkable lucky ones named Hugh Williams. This story is pretty famous. For the first time, Hugh Williams is mentioned in the book of Charles Frederick Cliff "The Book of North Wales" in 1851 ("The book of North Wales", Charles Frederick Cliffe), dedicated to landscapes, monuments, rivers and other attractions of Wales. In it, the story of Hugh Williams is given as a footnote.
In fact, there is documentary evidence only in the case of the flooding in 1785. And in general, the whole story as a whole seems incredible only at first glance. I think if you say that a man named Ivan Ivanovich drowned in the Moscow River in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, you will not be mistaken. The story about Hugh Williams is from the same series, because the name was very common in those places. And there were a lot of shipwrecks on the coast of Wales for three centuries.
So trust, but check!
Naked Science Magazine February 2013