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?



![Rachel Clarke BIOGRAPHY New Clarke Rachel: The Story of a Heart [2024] paperback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/rachel-clarke-clarke-rachel-the-story-of-a-heart-2024-paperback-9780349145600-57205575450963_{width}x.jpg?v=1763200030)
![Lawrence, Felicity POPULAR SCIENCE Felicity Lawrence: Not On the Label [2004] paperback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/lawrence-felicity-felicity-lawrence-not-on-the-label-2004-paperback-1187314583_{width}x.jpg?v=1756206074)
![Shapiro, Beth POPULAR SCIENCE New Beth Shapiro: How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction [2016] paperback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/shapiro-beth-beth-shapiro-how-to-clone-a-mammoth-the-science-of-de-extinction-2016-paperback-9780691173115-58239924371795_{width}x.jpg?v=1729947171)

![Montague, Jules POPULAR SCIENCE Jules Montague: Lost and Found [2018] hardback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/montague-jules-jules-montague-lost-and-found-2018-hardback-60467559694675_{width}x.jpg?v=1734588665)