Hippo Eats Dwarf - Softcover

Boese, Alex

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330512919 ISBN 13: 9780330512916

Publisher: Pan, 2010

Synopsis

The following news story apparently first appeared in the Las Vegas Sun:

'A circus dwarf, nicknamed Od, died recently when he bounced sideways from a trampoline and was swallowed by a yawning hippopotamus waiting to appear in the next act. More than 1,000 spectators continued to applaud wildly until they realized the tragic mistake.'

And yet, of course, Od never existed; which doesn't stop the story appearing every few years as a news item, set in fictional circuses from Manchester to Thailand and Sydney. The hippo-eats-dwarf story is a) bizarre, b) almost certainly fake and c) masquerading as real, which describes a disturbing amount of what we hear and read about in magazines and on the web.

Scientific investigator Alex Boese, who has for ten years run the web's biggest myth-busting website www.museumofhoaxes.com, has collected together a wonderfully entertaining anthology of the best urban myths of recent years, from bonsai kittens reared in jars to keep them small to male lactation, and confirms or de-bunks them once and for all. So did Burger King really release a left-handed Whopper, with all of the condiments rotated through 180 degrees? Is dehydrated water available to buy online? Or are they just hippo-eats-dwarf urban myths?

About this title

Review:

`Alex Boese is a self-appointed arbiter of urban myths and media distortion. His amusing compendium runs from birth to death, taking in romance, the web, the news, advertising and politics.'
--Sunday Telegraph

`An interesting insight into today's global psyche.'
--Big Issue, Scotland

Book Description:

The world’s greatest urban myths, fakes and hoaxes, from Bonsai kittens to human-flavoured tofu

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0330512919
• ISBN 13: 9780330512916
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288