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The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about dubious- sounding claims, and whatever else strikes our fancy. The site is also home to the Hoaxipedia (the museum's online encyclopedia of hoaxes), and the Hoax Forum.

The museum was created in 1997 by Alex Boese. He's assisted by a staff of deputy curators and docents. Alex is the author of three books, most recently Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments (which has nothing to do with hoaxes). Check out the list of the Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments of All Time for a preview.



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#95: Chunnel Blunder
In 1990 the News of the World reported that the Chunnel project, which was already suffering from huge cost overruns, would face another big additional expense caused by a colossal engineering blunder. Apparently the two halves of the tunnel, being built simultaneously from the coasts of France and England, would miss each other by 14 feet. The error was attributed to the fact that French engineers had insisted on using metric specifications in their blueprints. The mistake would reportedly cost $14 billion to fix.

Comments
Listed in chronological order. Newest comments at the end.
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 For those less clueful: Dates outside the US are written Day/Month. Therefore 14 is 01/04, or the first of April.

Cheers!
Posted by Scott  on  Wed Mar 24, 2004  at  08:49 PM
Years later and millions of kilometers in space a satellite was actually thinking it would only have to move a couple of centimeters when it should have been inches and it missed Mars by quite a few miles wink
Posted by Hugo  in  Belgium  on  Tue May 11, 2004  at  05:38 AM
Gee, this is the second one I definitely remember.
Posted by Bryan  in  Leavenworth, Kansas  on  Wed Apr 06, 2005  at  11:50 AM
I actually was suckered into a version of this one - until I read it here, I still believed it! (moral: beware publicity, it may be your undoing wink
Posted by Renee  in  Canada  on  Sat Apr 09, 2005  at  01:20 PM
What's not so funny of course is that this wasn't ever intended as a prank - "news of the world" was about as anti-european as a newspaper can be, and this story is a bit of political spin, wrapped in the plausible deniability of an april fools gag.
Posted by Ian  in  Glasgow, Scotland  on  Sun Apr 10, 2005  at  03:08 AM
There WERE many problems with the tunnel and the whole thing was blown abysmally out of budget but on this one occasion the News of the World (scummy, to say the least) were wrong.
Posted by Threep  in  UK  on  Thu Apr 14, 2005  at  03:28 AM
If you watch the Discovery Channel's "Superstructures" about the building of the tunnel, the two ends were slightly off.

Certainly not by feet, but enough to cause the engineers to sweat out some extra planning.
Posted by SicTim  in  Minneapolis, MN  on  Sun Apr 02, 2006  at  08:48 AM
i DEFINITELY remember reading this in my local Arizona paper quoted as fact, so it did get picked up and believed. i was taken in i admit.
Posted by naNcy  on  Mon Apr 03, 2006  at  12:30 AM
...and it was blamed on the French, of course. smile
Posted by calli  on  Tue Apr 11, 2006  at  07:03 PM
something like this actually happened. in 2004 a bridge over the rhine was built to connect the german and swiss part of the town lauffenburg. during the constuction became evident that the two parts of the bridge would join with 54 cm difference.

the error originated from the use of two different heights for sea-level - north-sea in germany and mediterranean in switzerland. this was of course known, and corrected in blue-print, but during construction something went wrong and 27 cm were added on the swiss side instead of being subtracted.

surplus costs were paid by insurance.
Posted by paule  on  Sun Jul 16, 2006  at  01:09 PM
There was once a Canadian plane that crashed because the people who calculated how much fuel they would need and the people who filled the plane were using different systems
Posted by bob  on  Fri Dec 29, 2006  at  04:10 PM
British builders have been using the same SI units as the rest of the civilised world since the 1960s, long before the Channel Tunnel project began.
Posted by AJS  in  UK  on  Wed Jan 03, 2007  at  02:15 AM
Invicta Radio played a similar joke around that time. Their version involved work stopping on digging the tunnel because the British drilling team had struck oil.
Posted by Soruk  in  Basingstoke, UK  on  Sun Apr 01, 2007  at  05:49 PM
This really did happen in Chicago. Several years ago they were trying to connect City Hall and the State of Illinois building via an underground tunnel. They were off by several feet in two directions, so they had to reengineer it to add a short elevator (for access for the disabled) and some stairs--it was otherwise supposed to be a straight-through tunnel.
Posted by Stacey  in  Chicago  on  Sun Apr 01, 2007  at  06:49 PM
Too funny--although I posted my comment on an April 1, I wasn't kidding. grin
Posted by Stacey  in  Chicago  on  Sun Apr 01, 2007  at  06:50 PM
I thought it was the convention center in Chicago...the corridor DOES have a sudden ramp of about 2 feet and a jog 4 feet to one side, for no reason.

Of course, Shicago being Shicago, it could easily have happened more than once.

No doubt Daley blamed either the Republicans or non-union contractors.
Posted by Michael Z. Williamson  in  Greenwood, Indiana USA  on  Mon Apr 02, 2007  at  09:52 AM
That Canadian plane did NOT crash. The pilot managed to glide it to a safe, fuel-less landing near Gimli, Manitoba, because he was apparently the best pilot ever.

Engineers make mistakes all the time. One once told me that nothing has to be right, it just has to be close.
Posted by greenie  on  Mon Apr 02, 2007  at  03:58 PM
History of tunnels. They always miss. Sometimes a little, sometimes quite a bit. Not a very good joke. Far too plausible.
Posted by Matt  on  Sun Apr 08, 2007  at  08:09 PM
I seem to remember reading this. I fell for it completely, for I didn't know it to be a hoax until just now.
Posted by Keith Coogan  in  Hollywood, California  on  Thu Apr 12, 2007  at  01:02 PM
I'm pretty sure the only people who would actually fall for this are Americans as most of the world adopted metric as standard measurement a long time ago. When are the Americans going to catch up to the civilised world?
Posted by Jay  on  Thu May 31, 2007  at  09:13 AM
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