The situation is calling attention to the changing state of the news media: As information online moves faster and comes from more sources, it's more difficult to verify what's true and what may be shockingly false...
Others say the fake deaths, or "death pranks," show an inherent problem with the decentralization of news on the Internet.

From the late 19th century onwards, stories of werewolf encounters tailed away significantly, says Regal. "The spread of the idea of evolution helped kill off the werewolf because a canid-human hybrid makes no sense from an evolutionary point of view," he says. "The ape-human hybrid, however, is not only evolutionarily acceptable, it is the basis of human evolution."

The unanimous verdict of the Jury is that Steorn's attempts to demonstrate the claim have not shown the production of energy. The jury is therefore ceasing work.

Flood of Rumors Gives City Jitters
Legitimate and Ludicrous Calls Swamp the Switchboards in Wake of Roosevelt Death

Widespread jitters bordering on mass hysteria seemed to sweep New York yesterday in the wake of Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, as rumors of killings, accidents and deaths involving prominent persons flooded the city.

Newspapers, radio stations, government offices, banks and corner drugstores were deluged with thousands of telephone calls asking "is it true?" that such and such a person had been killed. The telephone calls in some cases followed patterns so closely that some harassed switchboard operators were convinced the wave was organized as a possible attempt to hamper communications. But the prevailing theory was that irresponsible and flighty persons had fallen prey to their own gullibility.

The names of Van Johnson, film actor, and Comdr. Jack Dempsey were linked by the majority of callers, including two that Commander Dempsey and the actor had been killed together in an automobile accident. Other names mentioned were those of Mayor La Guardia, Harry Hopkins, Robert Taylor, Herbert H. Lehman, Charles Chaplin, Frank Sinatra, Al Jolson, Errol Flynn, Babe Ruth, Jack Benny and Jimmy Walker.