I'm incredibly depressed. Sucker Day has been cancelled this year. That's like cancelling Christmas (well, not quite, but almost). In case you don't know about it, Sucker Day is a celebration held every year in the small town of Wetumka, Oklahoma, usually in the late summer. It commemorates the day in 1950 when the entire town was suckered by the con man J. Bam Morrison. Morrison arrived in town claiming to be the advanceman for a circus that would be arriving on July 24. People would be coming from miles around to attend this circus, he promised, presenting Wetumka merchants with a potential chance to make lots of money. He claimed that if the merchants bought advertising space on the circus grounds, the circus, in return, would buy their supplies exclusively from Wetumka merchants. And he assured everyone that there would be a huge amount of supplies being purchased. Pretty soon all the advertising space was sold (cash paid directly to Morrison, of course), and then, (surprise, surprise) Morrison split town. July 24 arrived without any circus. So the residents of Wetumka, realizing they'd been taken for a ride, decided to hold their own celebration anyway, with a parade and street fair. Thus the tradition of Sucker Day was born, held every year since, until now. I called up the Wetumka Chamber of Commerce to ask why they cancelled it, and the man on the phone said it was due to a lack of sponsorship. But he promised that they'll be holding it again next year, though they're probably going to move it to the early summer. For more info about Sucker Day, check out this Sucker Day Song. Plus, here's the schedule from last year's Sucker Day, as well as a newspaper article about the day (evidently prepared before they cancelled it). If you feel like celebrating your own Sucker Day (perhaps you got suckered somehow this year... lost a bunch of money on a sure-thing investment, or realized your girlfriend/boyfriend was cheating on you), then July 25, this Friday, would be close to the historical anniversary. An appropriate form of celebration would be to drink yourself into a pleasant state of numbness as you dwell on what a sucker you are.

Being a San Diegan I appreciated this hoax history of San Diego from the San Diego Hysterical Society.

A visitor pointed out to me that I had neglected to include Lake Michigan Whale Watching in my list of hoax sites. Plus, while we're on the subject of whale watching in the midwest, let's not forget the web page devoted to the wonders of Mankato, Minnesota, where the temperature never drops below 70 degrees fahrenheit, even in the dead of winter, thanks to the presence of hot springs that heat the air. Mankato boasts a thriving whale watching industry on account of the annual summer migration of the whales up the Minnesota River. And to return to Lake Michigan, who can forget the case of the Viagra spill that temporarily revived its flagging spirits.

Come next April (2004) the town of Cedar City, Utah will be celebrating the Festival Royale of Himmelsk, a four-day event to honor the group of Vikings who founded the town in 956 AD. The entire story of this strange festival is told here. (Thanks to Lansin Carmean for forwarding this story to me).

Now here's an odd story. An article in the Guardian tells the tale of Takako Konishi, a Japanese girl who apparently believed that the movie Fargo was real (perhaps because it says it's a true story at the beginning, though it isn't) and went off to North Dakota to find the million dollars that one of the characters buries during the movie. Unfortunately Takako died trying to find the money. Or so everyone thought. The reporter who went to investigate finds out the real truth behind what happened to Takako.

Does Idaho really exist?

Elaine Dutka, writing for the LA Times, notes a minor prank that occurred on ABC's 'Good Morning America' show:

Producers of ABC's "Good Morning America" inadvertently served up a plug for a new drama-reality series airing on the network, Variety reports. As weatherman Tony Perkins was chatting with folks outside the studio, he encountered some fellows who claimed to be members of the Push, Nev., hockey team. As it happened, there is no such town--except in ABC's new series of the same name, executive-produced by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey. The athletes in question were really actors hired by ADD--a company employed by ABC to mount a guerrilla public relations campaign for the show. No one at ABC News had been advised of the prank, and Perkins was unaware of the show. "This is a show that is very different and we are trying to market it in a different way," an ABC spokesman said. "ADD didn't take into account the kinds of questions that could arise by enacting this sort of strategy within the same company."

The Mystery of Shoe Corner: "Thousands of shoes have been dumped there over the years, and residents can't figure out how or why."