麻豆传媒

THE internet was young once 鈥� 麻豆传媒 witnessed its birth. And it wasn鈥檛 long before the World Wide Web itself gave birth to the particular genre of apocryphal stories and urban myths that it has become known for. Typically, our Feedback column was all too eager to give them a second airing. At the time, we couldn鈥檛 authenticate them, but they were too good to ignore. Indeed, most were preceded by the words 鈥渨e haven鈥檛 been able to verify this, but鈥︹��

On 20 July 1996, we printed an instance of 鈥渕isplaced technological optimism鈥�. An Arizona highway patrol found a crater in the side of a cliff. Smouldering metal was embedded in the rock. Apparently, the owner of a Chevrolet Impala had acquired a Jet Assisted Take Off engine, a solid-fuel rocket used by the military. The driver had found a stretch of desert road and attached the rocket to the vehicle. Scorched tarmac 7 kilometres from the crash site indicated the point of ignition. Just 30 seconds later, the car would have been travelling in excess of 500 kilometres an hour. After 5 km there were long skid marks; 2 km later and 50 metres above the road the Chevy hit the cliff.

Is that more likely to be true than the following, which appeared on 13 April that same year? Alexandra Donahue鈥檚 friend had been to a supermarket in Arkansas. In the parking lot, she saw a woman in a car holding the back of her head. 鈥淚 have been shot, and I am holding my brains in,鈥� she announced. When paramedics arrived they found the woman was clutching a lump of bread dough to her head. A tin she had just bought had exploded, making a noise like a gunshot and spattering dough everywhere 鈥搃ncluding the back of her head. What else could she do but hold her skull to keep her leaking brains in?

Lastly, from even deeper within the internet鈥檚 apocryphal vault, on 28 August 1993 we reported the UK鈥檚 NatWest bank had entered the realm of personal abuse. It had decided to mailshot its richest customers, inviting them to buy additional services. A programmer wrote an algorithm to search the databases and select customers automatically. He tested it with an imaginary customer called Rich Bastard. You can guess the rest鈥�

True or not, 20 years on is anyone prepared to vouch for their veracity or otherwise?