[url]http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34612,00.html[/url]
Lies and tall tales are intermingling with
facts and true stories as Americans try to
recover from the shock of the terrorist
attacks on the country.
Disseminated via e-mail and even news
reporters, a lot of false information has
surfaced since the devastating strikes
against New York and Washington on Sept.
11.
One story describes a Port Authority officer caught high up in a Trade Center
tower as it collapsed, surviving by riding the debris all the way down.
In one version of the story, he was on the 82nd floor and broke both his legs.
Frank Pita, a spokesman for the Port Authority, said Tuesday the report is
unconfirmed and the agency suspects it is not true.
Then there's the face in the smoke.
Some have claimed the profile of a face can be made out in dark smoke
along one side of the Trade Center in an Associated Press photograph taken
last week. This has been called "the face of Satan" on some Internet
postings.
Skeptics say the face is no different from someone seeing images in clouds
— they are seeing patterns where there is randomness. Vin Alabiso, an AP
vice president and the news cooperative's executive photo editor, has said
that the photo was untouched and that the AP has a strict policy that prohibits
the alteration of the content of a photo in any way.
E-mail is also playing a significant role in the spread of falsities. E-mails
about Nostradamus, the 16th century French soothsayer credited by some
with predicting Hitler's ascent and the French Revolution, now credit him with
foreseeing the Trade Center attack.
A version of one cited quatrain reads in part: "The third big war will begin
when the big city is burning." And another reads: "In the city of york there will
be a great collapse."
Critics say Nostradamus wrote his predictions so vaguely that it is easy to
retrofit facts to the prediction after an event. As for the quoted quatrains,
Barbara Mikkelson, who with her husband runs the Urban Legends
Reference Pages on the Internet, said Nostradamus didn't write either one.