Category: Planes

2007
Oscar Mayer Wiener Jet
This fake image was probably created as a joke by the graphic designers whom Boeing commissioned to create the livery for the 747-400 Largo Cargo Freighter. The plane's unusual shape evidently reminded the designers of a hot dog. It initially appeared online in early 2007, but it gained a new boost of popularity in mid-2009 following the death of Oscar Mayer, the retired chairman of the Oscar Mayer corporation.
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August 5, 2006
Fake Smoke Over Beirut
A freelance photographer heightened the drama of this image distributed by Reuters by adding additional smoke.
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2003
Shuttle Columbia Explosion Photos
When the space shuttle Columbia exploded upon re-entry on February 1, 2003, no cameras recorded the event. But online, a dramatic series of images of a space shuttle exploding began to circulate. They were said to have been taken "from an Israeli satellite in space." The pictures were actually screenshots from the opening scene of the movie Armageddon (1998), in which the space shuttle Atlantis is struck by meteorite fragments.
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Circulating online since September 2001.
Tourist Guy
Created by a Hungarian man as a bit of dark humor to share with his friends, this photo became one of the most widely viewed images online in the weeks after 9/11.
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Circulating online since Aug 2001
Helicopter Shark
Despite what this photo shows, a Great White shark has never attacked a helicopter in San Francisco Bay.
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April 1, 1934
Lung-Powered Flying Machine
The Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung ran this photo in its 1934 April Fool's Day edition to illustrate a spoof story about a flying machine powered by the breath from a man's lungs. International News Photo then distributed the photo to its American subscribers, without identifying it as a fake. As a consequence, it appeared as factual news in many American papers, including the New York Times.
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Published in 1933; debunked in 1984.
Death in the Air
Spectacular images of World War I dog fights were eventually exposed as photos of model airplanes.
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Undated. Possibly from the 1920s.
Raised Runway
An April Fool's day image shows a raised runway in a German city.
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