When the space shuttle Columbia exploded upon re-entry on February 1, 2003, no cameras recorded the event. That didn't stop the circulation online of a dramatic series of images supposedly taken "from an Israeli satellite in space."

The pictures were actually screenshots from the opening scene of the Touchstone Pictures movie Armageddon (1998). In the movie the space shuttle Atlantis is struck by meteorite fragments. An unknown hoaxer lifted these images from a DVD of the movie, added the phony caption, and set the pictures loose on the web.