Snopes

I told a few of you about snopes. They investigate urban legends and email forwards. It researches whether they are true or not and then documents their research.

http://snopes.com/

Examples

Claim: Monkee Mike Nesmith's mother was the inventor of Liquid Paper correction fluid.

Status: True.

Origins: Bette Nesmith Graham
A guitar's all right Michael, but you'll never make your living by it
Bette Nesmith and young Michael
(she was divorced from Michael's father in 1946 and remarried in 1964) came up with the idea of using a small bottle of tempera waterbase paint to correct her typing errors while she was an executive secretary with Texas Bank & Trust in Dallas in 1951. She supplied bottles of the fluid to other secretaries at her workplace (under the name "Mistake Out") for several years; then, in 1956, she improved the formula, changed its name to "Liquid Paper," and set out to trademark the name and patent her product. After IBM passed on her offer to sell Liquid Paper to them, Bette started marketing the product on her own. Liquid Paper, Inc., did not become profitable for several years, and it was not until the mid-1960s that Liquid Paper correction fluid began to generate subst...

http://snopes.com/music/artists/nesmith.htm


Claim: Static electricity is the cause of an increase in gas station refuelling fires.

Status: Multiple — see below

* Static electricity can cause fires at gas stations: True.
* Static electricity was actually the cause of a number of gas station refuelling fires: Undetermined.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2002]
....
http://snopes.com/autos/hazards/static.asp