PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY

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Hippo Eats Dwarf

Alex Boese

$40.95   $34.66

Paperback

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English
Pan Books
25 February 2016
The following news story apparently first appeared in the Las Vegas Sun:

'A circus dwarf, nicknamed Od, died recently when he bounced sideways from a trampoline and was swallowed by a yawning hippopotamus waiting to appear in the next act. More than 1,000 spectators continued to applaud wildly until they realized the tragic mistake.'

And yet, of course, Od never existed; which doesn't stop the story appearing every few years as a news item, set in fictional circuses from Manchester to Thailand and Sydney. The hippo-eats-dwarf story is a) bizarre, b) almost certainly fake and c) masquerading as real, which describes a disturbing amount of what we hear and read about in magazines and on the web.

Scientific investigator Alex Boese, who has for ten years run the web's biggest myth-busting website www.museumofhoaxes.com, has collected together a wonderfully entertaining anthology of the best urban myths of recent years, from bonsai kittens reared in jars to keep them small to male lactation, and confirms or de-bunks them once and for all. So did Burger King really release a left-handed Whopper, with all of the condiments rotated through 180 degrees? Is dehydrated water available to buy online? Or are they just hippo-eats-dwarf urban myths?

By:  
Imprint:   Pan Books
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 156mm,  Spine: 17mm
Weight:   449g
ISBN:   9781509823192
ISBN 10:   1509823190
Pages:   288
Publication Date:  
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Recognized as an expert on hoaxes by CNN and the New York Times among others, Alex Boese holds a master's degree in the history of science from the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Elephants on Acid, a fascinating tour through the weirdest science experiments ever conducted, and is the creator and curator of www.museumofhoaxes.com, which receives over a million page hits every month. He lives in San Diego.

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