The Lawton Triangle Hoax: Was it a true UFO or a Microsoft Optical Mouse glowing in the dark? UFOlogists opt for the former option.

A deejay at a Montreal radio station made a successful prank phone call to Britney Spears. While pretending to be Celine Dion, the deejay got Spears to agree to sing a duet with Tiger Woods called Let's Make A Hole in One. All for charity, of course. Read about it here. Or visit the homepage of the radio prankster where you can buy a recording of the actual prank.

South African con artists recently set up a hoax website pretending to be the official website of the South African Reserve Bank. They used it to scam international investors out of thousands of dollars.

The LA Times reports that subliminal advertising is still widely used in Russian ads, even though the whole concept was revealed to be a hoax back in the 1960s. (Requires registration).

The growing phenomenon of mock weddings: the NY Times reports that across the country young people are throwing elaborate wedding ceremonies at which no one actually gets married. Apparently they figure that since they're probably not going to get married until they're much older, they might as well have the party now. As the Times puts it: "Across the nation, whether for artistic expression or just to have a good time, perhaps dozens of men and women in their late teens and early 20's have been putting on costly pseudo-weddings, complete with a ceremony, reception and festivities."

The Shroud of Turin is back in the news. It turns out that the Vatican has secretly been allowing a scientist to perform tests on it for the past few months. Apparently the scientist is trying to get a more accurate reading of the exact age of the shroud's fibers, following criticism of 1988 tests of the age of the fibers.

The movie SIMONE is coming out this weekend. It's about an actress who's not real, because she's just a computer simulation. But everyone thinks she's real, and so a director, who must maintain the illusion that his actress is real, gets dragged deeper and deeper into the hoax that he has created. It's getting pretty bad reviews. The New York Times calls it "tepid and vapid." So I'll probably skip it.

Many of you have probably received this e-mail before and know what the trick is. But for those who haven't it's worth looking at. Someone just forwarded it to me and reminded me about it. The text of the e-mail with the link is pasted below. Your browser needs to be enabled with shockwave to see the trick effect. Plus, it may take a little while to see it (give it half a minute):

Thought you might enjoy this photo. This is really bizarre. Apparentlythe owners of this house had been seeing images and hearing voices for quite a while.They did some research and found that a lady once lived in the house wholost her husband during the civil war. Legend says that she used to sit at thetable and look across the fields in anticipation of her loved one returning home. Henever came. So, they say she still waits. They caught this photo of what theyclaim to be her. This one was wild and a little spooky once you find the ghostin the picture. It took me a few seconds to find it, but when you do, it juststands out. Like one of those optical illusions.To save you some time, concentrate around the table. Best not to focustoo much on one spot. Look around the table and toward the window.Click on the link below for the picture. Best to enlarge. For an addedtouch turn up the volume, it's faint, but the low murmur you hear was whatgot the photographer's attention first.Click here or paste it into your url:http://home.attbi.com/~n9ivo/whatswrong.swf

The LA Times tells of a good samaritan who tackled an armed man who was chasing three people down an alley. Unfortunately the armed man turned out to be an actor who was shooting a scene from the upcoming movie "Hunter." (registration required to view story).

A decades-old time travel hoax has been unravelling in Ohio this past week. It started with an article about Chris Aubeck, a researcher who was investigating the case of Rudolph Fentz. Fentz was a man who had supposedly time-travelled from 1876 to 1950, only to get struck down by a car and killed. The story has gained wide credence in many European circles. But Aubeck tracked the source of the tale down to an Akron-based writer, Ralph M. Holland, who wrote a story about this incident in 1953.But when Rev. George Murphy read about Aubeck's research, he recognized that the tale had an even earlier source. It turned out that Holland had lifted the tale from a short story by Jack Finney that appeared in a science fiction anthology titled Tomorrow, The Stars edited by Robert Heinlein that was published in 1951. So a 1951 science fiction story had somehow become accepted as fact by many, until Aubeck and Rev. Murphy debunked it.