My favourite is the story that there was mass panic over a radio broadcast of War of the Worlds where everyone thought a real alien invasion was happening. I heard this story as a kid and really thought this was a cruel prank played by the radio station.
In reality, they made it clear at the beginning of the broadcast, and twice during, that it was fictional. Not that many people were listening and most of the people who were, were aware it wasn’t real. A few idiots freaked out and it somehow turned into a story of mass panic. It was propaganda by newspapers to discredit radio.
That one story about NASA supposedly spending millions developing a pen that would work in space, while the Soviets just used a pencil.
What actually happened IIRC is NASA bought the pens from a private company that had already developed them. And they didn’t pay millions. Pencils were a hazard in space, so NASA adopted this new pen soon afterwards, with the Soviet Space Program following suit soon after.
The idea that eating carrots helps your eyesight came from WW2 Britain. It was an intentionally spread lie to cover up for the fact that they had radar.
Some poor young girl got knocked up and she didn’t want to say who the father was so she made up a story about how a spirit had impregnated her.
I think that one got way out of hand
NASA spending millions to develop a zero-gravity pen while the USSR used a pencil. It’s funny, believable, and false.
One thing you definitely don’t want when your floating through microgravity a thousand miles from the ground is fragments of graphite flying into your incredibly sensitive electrical equipment.
So crayons instead?
What they were actually using prior to the space pen, and what the soviets used, were grease pencils, which really basically are crayons
