Hippo Eats Dwarf by Alex Boese
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 bizarre, almost certainly fake and 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 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?
Alex Boese holds a master's degree in the history of science from the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The Museum of Hoaxes, Hippo Eats Dwarf and Elephants on Acid and the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes website. He lives near San Diego.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780330512916 |
| ISBN 10 | 0330512919 |
| Title | Hippo Eats Dwarf |
| Author | Alex Boese |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan |
| Year published | 2010-02-09 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |