About the Museum of Hoaxes
The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about whatever dubious-sounding claims come across our path on a day-by-day basis. In our archives we have hundreds of articles about the most fascinating and notorious deceptions throughout history, from the middle ages to the present.
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Capsizing Boat
Status: Real
A series of photos of a ship being capsized by a large wave and then righting itself is doing the rounds. (That's a bit of a pun.) The photos are real. According to an article in the Mad Mariner (mirrored here), they were taken in California's Morro Bay Harbor by Gary Robertshaw on Dec. 4, 2007. The boat is a Coast Guard vessel on a training mission. From the Mad Mariner:In a sequence of 10 photographs, reprinted here with Robertshaw's permission, a towering wave tosses the boat high atop its crest, and then swallows it entirely. And for a few breathtaking frames, the vessel, dubbed "unsinkable” by the Coast Guard, disappears in the roiling surf.
Just as Robertshaw began to worry the boat wouldn't resurface, it popped up...
A Coast Guard spokesman in Long Beach said no one aboard the boat was hurt that day, although the crew did take a beating. The wave that battered the boat was estimated to be 22 to 25 feet high.
"Everybody was alright," the spokesman said. "That boat's made to roll."
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