Mega-billionaire superstars Beyoncé and Jay Z, fresh from a trip to Iceland, are currently vacationing at a $25,000-a-night resort in Thailand, Page Six reports. God damn these two are good at vacations and knowing how many vacations to take in succession.

According to Page Six, the two were spotted at the "$35 million villa" at Amanpuri resort in Phuket, Thailand, where they were seen "making sandcastles on the beach with daughter Blue Ivy" and where Jay Z was seen riding a motorcycle, a dangerous activity. Also they went to a boxing match, apparently.

Would I go on an all-expenses-paid vacation with Beyoncé, Jay Z, and Blue Ivy? A good question. Personally, I would.

[image via Getty]

Wow! It is amazing how many Gawker readers went to middle and high school and have the yearbook photos to prove it. Thank you for sharing your celebrity yearbook photos with us, except for those of you who just posted the Wikipedia lists of famous people who went to your high school. That was really lame.

Below, behold the best celebrity yearbook photos you posted, whether you actually took a photo of your yearbook or just stole a photo from somewhere else on the internet. Click over to the original post to see more.

I gotta say, Eric Holder was pretty hot. That side part—yeah. A side part of justice.

Beyoncé

Submitted by wcada

Kris Jenner

Submitted by bdoll

Amy Poehler

Submitted by fingerpuppet

Martin Lawrence

Submitted by Vaguely Distant

Jessica Szohr

Submitted by fiorven2

Rachel Maddow

Submitted by shark72

Rachel Zoe

Submitted by nycinoc

Robert Downey Jr.

Submitted by Ruddigore4

Chris Evans

Submitted by big_ole_nate

Josh Hartnett

Submitted by weirwoodtreehugger3

Eddie Vedder

Submitted by Mad4Mod, who writes: "Eddie Mueller in Drama Club 1980 under the direction of Clayton Liggett. You know him as Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. Liggett's passing was the inspiration for the song 'Long Road.' Happy 50th Birthday Eddie!"

Joe Flacco

Submitted by Kaiser Troll

Ari Fleischer

Submitted by Ned Frey

Nicole Brown Simpson

Submitted by missypoo500

Chris Farley

Submitted by FenbyFiles

Joanne Woodward

Submitted by Apt-Zero

Zac Efron and Harry Shum

Submitted by cheezelikethebri

Seth MacFarlane

Submitted by Clem_Fandango

Eric Holder

Submitted by The Ghost of Chico Walker

We debunked a lot of fake viral photos this year. Eighty-six, to be exact. And that doesn't even include all those fake toilet photos from the Sochi Olympics, those fake Ebola cures, and all the lies that UberFacts helped spread. It was a busy year for fakes.

Below, a recap of 2014's fake viral images, all in one place for your perusing pleasure.

1) Is this a photo of John Lennon playing guitar with Che Guevara?

Can you believe John Lennon once sat down and played guitar with revolutionary Marxist icon (and world-renowned t-shirt logo) Che Guevara? Well, don't. Because he didn't.

The photo is a photoshop job in which someone plastered Che's face on top of the body of guitarist Wayne "Tex" Gabriel. Below, the actual photo of Lennon and Gabriel.

Inaccurate fun fact photo via @HistoryInPics

2) Is this a photo of JFK and Marilyn Monroe cuddling?

No, that photo on the left doesn't depict an unguarded moment of affection between President John F. Kennedy and actress Marilyn Monroe. It's the work of artist Alison Jackson, who's known for her photos using lookalikes of famous people. And it's a damn good lookalike.

The real photo on the right is from a May 19, 1962 party that followed a Democratic fundraiser in New York. Monroe and Kennedy were never actually caught in a secretive embrace—not on film, anyway.

Inaccurate fun fact photo via @HistoryPixs

3) Are people in smog-choked Beijing watching fake sunrises?

A photograph represents a single moment in time. So even an honest photo can lie when you don't have enough information.

This Getty photo was passed around last week by the Daily Mail as a peek into a dystopian world where Beijing's only glimpse of the sun comes from digital screens. And yes, the smog is horrible in China right now. But the story is misleading.

In reality, the photo shows a Chinese tourism ad for Shandong province playing on a giant video screen in Tiananmen Square. As the Tech in Asia blog points out, the sun only appears on the screen for a brief period of time as part of a longer ad. The ad also plays year-round, no matter how bad the smog might be.

Inaccurate fun fact photo via Mail Online

4) Is this photo from a Soviet mental institution in 1952?

No, that bizarre photo on the left isn't some supernatural weirdness from a Russian mental institution in 1952. It's from Pina Bausch's performance art dance show, Blaubart. A screenshot from a 1977 performance is on the right.

The photo did inspire some freaky fiction though: American Horror Story recreated the scenefor an episode in season 3.

Inaccurate fun fact photo via @DisturbingPix

5) Is this a photo of JFK and his daughter Caroline?

HistoryInPics recently tweeted the image on the left, claiming that it showed President John F. Kennedy with his daughter Caroline. According to this enormously popular (and frequently incorrect) Twitter account, the young girl is wearing a mask made to look like her father.

But if something doesn't look quite right, that's because this, of course, is a face-swapped version of the original photo. That'd be one hell of a mask though, right?

Inaccurate fun fact photo via @HistoryInPics

6) Were these children actually mailed through the US Postal Service?

They're adorable photos. And horrifying stories. Did people actually used to toss a few stamps on children and send them through the mail? Not exactly.

There are indeed a handful of documented cases of Americans "mailing" their children in the early 1910s. But there are two important caveats to this oft-repeated fun fact. First, the photos that have been making the rounds on historical Twitter accounts don't actually show children being mailed. According to the Smithsonian, they were gag photos meant as a laugh. And secondly, this isn't what they mean by "mailing" a child.

For instance, when 6-year-old May Pierstorff was "mailed" February 19, 1914 from Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents house 73 miles away, she was in the care of a relative who worked for the train company. Essentially, it was cheaper to call the young girl "mail" and send her on the train with her relative than buying a full-priced ticket.

Back in 2009 Catherine Shteynberg over at the Smithsonian wrote a follow-up clarifying the baby mail story, which had gone viral:

Clearly, many were startled and amazed by this photo of a postal carrier with a child in his mail bag, and so for some clarification, I spoke to Nancy Pope, historian at the National Postal Museum. She reiterated the information from the Flickr caption for this photograph: first, that this photo was actually a staged piece, and second, that there is little evidence that babies were sent through the mail other than in two known cases in which children were placed on train cars as "freight mail" as this was cheaper than buying them a regular train ticket.

There are no doubt authentic stories of children being put in the hands of U.S. postal workers between 1913 and 1915. But when you dig a bit deeper, most of these stories have caveats that make them slightly less horrifying.

Inaccurate fun fact photo via Retronaut

7) Is this a young Syrian child sleeping next to the graves of his dead parents?

The photo on the left has been making the rounds with the caption: "In Syria, sleeping between his parents."

It's a heart-wrenching photo. But it's actually just part of an art project from Saudi Arabia. The photographer is a 25-year-old, named Abdul Aziz al-Otaibi, who wanted to create a photograph that showed how a child's love for his parents is eternal. And it has nothing to do with the current humanitarian crisis in Syria.

"Look, it's not true at all that my picture has anything to do with Syria," Al-Otaibi told a Dutch reporter who works in the Middle East. "I am really shocked how people have twisted my picture."

Inaccurate photo description via Imgur

8) Was Ella Fitzgerald denied a gig at the Mocambo night club in 1954 because she was black?

According to the HistoryInPics Twitter account, the Mocambo night club in West Hollywood refused to book Ella Fitzgerald in 1954 because of her race. That is, until Marilyn Monroe said she'd reserve a table in the front row for Fitzgerald's show.

At least one part of the story is true: Marilyn Monroe did indeed help Ella Fitzgerald land a gig at the swanky hot spot Mocambo in 1954. But in fact, race wasn't the reason that Charlie Morrison, the club's manager, didn't want to book Fitzgerald. Black performers had played Mocambo plenty of times in the early 1950s. But unfortunately for Fitzgerald, Morrison didn't think she was "glamorous enough." Monroe was a huge fan of Fitzgerald and was able to change the manager's mind.

In her 2012 book, Marilyn Monroe: Private and Undisclosed, biographer Michelle Morgan explains:

...a variety of black entertainers had been booked there long before Ella, including Dorothy Dandridge in 1951 and Eartha Kitt in 1953. The truth is that while [club manager] Charlie Morrison encouraged and applauded performers of all races in his club, he didn't see Ella Fitzgerald as being glamorous enough to bring in the crowds. It would take Marilyn to change his mind, and once Ella had her foot in the door she successfully played at the Mocambo on a variety of occasions.

Fitzgerald and other black entertainers of the 1950s experienced appalling discrimination in the United States, which is what makes the original story so believable. But in the case of Mocambo, Monroe's intervention wasn't about race.

Inaccurate fun fact photo via @HistoryInPics

9) Was this man making death masks for soldiers in WWI?

Those masks hanging on the wall in this WWI-era photo aren't death masks, as some historical Twitter accounts would have you believe. They were for WWI veterans who had suffered facial disfigurements during battle.

In a 2007 article for Smithsonian magazine, Caroline Alexander explained the valuable work that was going on at the time to give soldiers a bit of confidence. She quotes Francis Derwent Wood, who founded a mask-making unit in 1916 for men returning from battle: "My cases are generally extreme cases that plastic surgery has, perforce, had to abandon; but, as in plastic surgery, the psychological effect is the same. The patient acquires his old self-respect, self assurance, self-reliance... takes once more to a pride in his personal appearance."

Inaccurate fun fact photo via @HistoryInPix

10) Is this a carving of Buddha at the Ngyen Khang Taksang Monastery?

No, the photo on the left doesn't show a monastery you can actually visit, despite what Top Dreamer magazine might insist. The photoshopped image comes from an online art collective called Reality Cues and their Graffiti Lab Tumblr project. The un-altered photo on the right actually shows the Wulingyuan Scenic Area in China's Hunan Province.

UPDATE: You can read my interview with the creator of this image here.

Inaccurate fun fact image via Top Dreamer Magazine

11) Is this device from 1922 the world's first mobile phone?

Does this short film from 1922 actually show the world's first mobile phone? No, no it doesn't.

When this British Pathe archival video titled "Eve's Wireless" first went viral, even respected media outlets ran with the story that it was footage of a mobile phone. But what the film actually shows is a crystal radio.

Back in the early 1920s, "wireless telephone" was still an accepted term for radio technology. Radio was relatively new to the masses, and the tech was still making its shift from a primarily point-to-point communications medium to a broadcast medium. But the women in the film are simply listening to a radio, and there's no indication that the device has transceiver capabilities. You can read a more detailed dissection of the film here.

Inaccurate fun fact photo via Metro UK

12) Does this photo show the Fairy Pools on the Island of Skye in Scotland?

No, that photo on the left isn't from the Fairy Pools of Scotland. As it turns out, the photo is actually an altered image from a river in Queenstown, New Zealand where someone has for some reason made all the trees purple. The unaltered image is still absolutely gorgeous. But obviously not "viral-gorgeous," since the purple-soaked image is the one that's currently making the rounds.

Inaccurate fun fact photo via Planet Earth

13) Is this a photo of the Northern Lights in Alaska?

The real Northern Lights in Alaska are supposed to be absolutely gorgeous. But sadly, that's not what this photo is showing. It's actually a panoramic image of the Orion Nebula, taken from the Hubble telescope.

The image is understandably quite popular on Tumblr and Twitter. But it's a Photoshop mash-up that dates back to at least 2009. DeviantArt member Jeddaka claims to have created the mountains from scratch, though the jury's still out on that one.

Still can't quite spot the artistry of this beautiful fake? Check out Attila Nagy's wonderful GIF explainer below.

Inaccurate photo via @SciencePorn

14) Is Marlboro actually going to make marijuana cigarettes?

After both Washington and Colorado legalized recreational marijuana last year, news spread far and wide on social media that the makers of Marlboro wanted to become the nation's first major weed brand. Do Big Tobacco companies like Philip Morris actually want to become Big Weed? No. No they don't.

The source for this particular fake image is a website called Abril Uno, one of those terribly unfunny Onion-wannabes with stories that ultimately gets passed around not because they're funny, but because they're somewhat plausible.

But the Marlboro-marijuana association is an extremely old meme. Similar images have been mocked up on everything from t-shirts to phone cases over the years, even though the cheery cancer-peddlers behind Marlboro have no intention of getting in on the wacky tobacky game.

Inaccurate photo via Abril Uno

15) Were these women being punished for witchcraft in 1922?

Contrary to what you may have read on Twitter, these women weren't being punished for witchcraft, the photo isn't from 1922, and they probably weren't even real prisoners.

I emailed Jamie Carstairs, who works on the Historical Photographs of China project at the University of Bristol to ask about the photo. Carstairs described the Twitter caption as "way off the mark."

For starters, the image actually dates back to between 1870 and 1880 and was taken by a man named William Saunders, a British-born photographer who died in 1892. The women probably weren't prisoners at all. Experts in 19th century Chinese photography believe that the women pictured are probably just people on the streets of Shanghai who were posed in that cangue by Saunders.

Castairs directed me to a 1999 paper by Regine Thiriez, who takes a deeper look at the photo and explains why even some reputable photography books from the 1970s had misdated the image as being from 1907. Both the "witchcraft" angle and the later date of 1922 appear to be an internet fabrication.

Inaccurate photo description via @HistoricalPics

16) Is this really Audrey Hepburn dancing?

Have you ever noticed someone from a block away and thought you knew them, only to realize when you got closer that it wasn't who you thought it was? That seems to be the case with this supposed picture of Audrey Hepburn that keeps getting passed around on social media.

The photo actually comes from a Russian stock images site. And no, that's not the star of the classic 1957 musical Funny Face. But it is a pretty striking resemblance when you don't have access to a higher resolution image.

Still not convinced? Take a closer look at the woman in the photo.

Inaccurate photo description via @HistoryInPics

17) Does this photo show the recent snow in Florida?

Yes, Florida did get some snow recently. But no, that photo being passed around by climate change deniers wasn't it. This year's snow was a bit less intense in the Sunshine State, as you can see from the Instagram photo on the right. The photo on the left dates back to at least 2010.

And no, snowstorms in the South don't disprove the overwhelming scientific evidence that shows climate change is really happening.

Inaccurate photo description via @massSNAFU, real Florida snow pic via @munchkinnn11

18) Is this "Sad Putin" after Russia lost to Finland in hockey?

You may have seen this photo getting passed around yesterday showing a dejected Vladimir Putin after the Russian Olympic hockey team was defeated by Finland 3-1. Russia was bumped from medal contention, so it would be an understandable reaction.

But the photo isn't actually from that game. It's a Getty Images photo that was taken two days earlier when Russia played Slovakia. Amazingly, the Russians actually won that game 1-0. Yet another lesson that we should all be skeptical of just about every image coming out of Sochi right now.

Inaccurate photo description via the @DailyMirror

19) Is this really a double-decker bus race from 1933?

No, that's not a real photo of a double-decker bus race in 1933. It's a pre-Photoshop photo collage, despite what sources like Retronaut and @HistoryInPics might claim.

The National Archive of the Netherlands clearly archived the photo in its Flickr account under fakes, photo montages and retouched images. On the right, an actual double decker bus being tested circa 1933 to prove its stability.

Fake photo via Retronaut

20) Is this a super moon from Sequoia National Park?

Is this a photo of the "super moon" in Sequoia National Park? No. But even the experts can be fooled when it comes to beautiful fakes of nature.

The Twitter account for the National Parks Conservation Association sadly tweeted this photo from Imgur as if it were real. But as Twitter fakes sleuth @PicPedant points out, it's actually a photo from Europe with a gigantic, glowing "moon" photoshopped in.

Fake photo via Imgur

21) Is this a photo of Civil War soldiers with a tank?

Could this really be a color photo of Civil War soldiers posing in front of a tank? Of course not. It's clearly a modern photo of Civil War re-enactors. But that didn't stop one of the web's biggest history Twitter accounts from tweeting it out as real.

Someone recently started an account called @AhistoricalPics, poking fun at the inaccuracies of accounts like @HistoryInPics and @HistoryInPix. The parody account tweets out obviously false facts, and silly photoshopped creations. But amazingly, the folks behind @HistoryInPix didn't get the joke. They took that obviously mislabeled photo from the parody account and presented it as real.

Confederate General Benjamin Franklin must be rolling over in his grave.

Inaccurate photo via @HistoryinPix by way of the parody account @AhistoricalPics

22) Was this a place for disposing of ugly children?

That's not very nice, is it? No, that cruel photo of an "ugly child" making the rounds isn't real. It's a poorly rendered photoshop. Well, at least the sign is. The original photo can be found at the Getty Images and clearly shows that the sign actually reads: "Please Keep Off The Grass."

Admittedly, it's still not clear why that young girl is stuck in a trash bin. But we can hope that it's just a momentarily posed joke by a weirdo photographer in 1928. The past was pretty weird on its own. One wonders why so many people keep trying to make it even weirder.

Fake photo via @History_Pics

23) Is this a photo from the International Space Station?

No, this isn't a solar eclipse as seen from the International Space Station.

Space photo researcher @FakeAstropix keeps debunking this one, but it keeps popping up in every corner of the internet. Which is why it's earned our top spot today. It's actually a rendering from DeviantArt user A4size-ska. Beautiful, but totally fake.

Fake image via @planetepics

24) Did these women cause an accident wearing shorts in 1937?

According to Twitter accounts like HistoricalPics, the sight of two women wearing shorts in public for the very first time in 1937 was scandalous enough to cause the car accident above. Except that it didn't. And it wasn't the first time women wore shorts in public.

I contacted the City of Toronto Archives, and asked them about the image. They confirmed the date of the photo (1937) and said that it was not only staged, but that they have plenty of other photos of women wearing shorts that predate this one. Shorts weren't common quite yet, but they were certainly around.

And if you spend even half a second looking at the image, you'll notice plenty of clues that it's a staged photo. The car doesn't have a single dent. Those cheeky Canadians could've achieved a much more authentic look by plowing that car into a light pole at high speed. Go big or go home, historical photo spoofers! 23

Inaccurate photo description via @HistoricalPics

25) Did Steven Seagal give Vladimir Putin bunny ears?

No, Steven Seagal didn't actually give Vladimir Putin "bunny ears" at a recent press event.

Despite getting to the front page of Reddit — an internet website that men's rights activists keep telling me is the "front page of the internet" itself — this is a poorly done Photoshop job. The original image is from Getty and was taken back in March of 2013. But yes, Steven Seagal really does hang out with his bro Vlad. I bet they're big fans of Reddit.

Fake image via Reddit; real image via Getty

26) Is this Marilyn Monroe and JFK in a private embrace?

If it feels like we've been down this road before, it's because we have. There are no known photos of JFK and Marilyn Monroe in a tender, romantic embrace. The photos above were taken by Alison Jackson, an artist well known for using lookalike models for photo-fakes of everyone from the Queen of England on the toilet to Bill Gates using Apple products.

Fake photos via @ClassicPix

27) Is this a security camera outside George Orwell's house?

No, that's not actually a CCTV camera outside George Orwell's old house. It's a photoshopped image by Steve Ullathorne that first took the internet by storm in February 2012. And it's making the rounds yet again.

Ullathorne has an entire series of these photoshopped images that juxtapose buildings of historical significance with modern day flourishes — like that image on the right, showing a Che Guevara shirt hanging near a plaque about Karl Marx.

Inaccurate image representation from @PharmaGossip

28) Is this 1950s "Rocket to Uranus" album real?

No, this isn't a 1950s album cover for "Rocket to Uranus" made by oblivious people of a more earnest and naive era. It's a fake.

Kids of the 1950s couldn't get enough space age stories. Tom Corbett, Space Cadet was just one of many space age characters that young baby boomers were obsessed with. Corbett was everywhere: in comic books, on radio, plastered on lunchboxes and starring in an incredibly popular TV show during the 1950s.

In 1951, a Tom Corbett record was released called "Space Cadet Song and March." But that "Rocket to Uranus" version on the left is a modern day Photoshop job.

Fake photo via @BadAlbumCovers; real photo via Scoop

29) Is this real candy that was branded by the Nazis?

In the 1930s and 40s, the Nazis put swastikas on everything. But this image actually isn't a photo from that period. It's from a 1983 movie.

To investigate this image I first contacted Dr. Nicholas O'Shaughnessy at Queen Mary University of London, who has studied the Nazis' use of the swastika as a branding tool. He explained that he'd never seen this particular image but that, "it is quite possibly genuine as German businesses outdid each other in excesses of kitsch, including the Horst Wessel song in barbershop harmony and a butcher who sculpted Hitler out of lard."

I was ready to call this photo "probably authentic" and move on, until Twitter photo sleuth Joe Kname uncovered the real story behind this image. Kname discovered that it's a film still from the 1983 movie Eine Liebe In Deutschland (A Love in Germany). It's still plausible that Nazi-branded candy was produced, as O'Shaughnessy notes that they really did put swastikas on everything. But this particular image isn't from that era, as so many historical photo accounts online claim.

Inaccurate image description via @HistoryInPics

30) Is this a Captain America war bonds poster from World War II?

It wouldn't be a fake viral image round-up without a visit to Retronaut, and this time we have a real doozy. No, that Captain America war bonds poster from their site isn't real.

Captain America first debuted in 1941, which makes it possible that he would've helped with the war effort through various propaganda posters. But no, the image on the left isn't from World War II. It's a 21st century artist's interpretation of what a faux-retro Captain America war bonds poster might look like. The big give-away — aside from the style itself — is the ScorpioSteele.com logo right next to Captain America's boot.

The image on the right, however, is real and comes from a 1943 cover of the " World's Finest" comic book. Thanks to Kinja user A.Hippo for pointing out the fake.

Fake comic via Retronaut, originally by ScorpioSteele; Real comic from ComicVine

31) Is this a real pilot selfie?

No, this isn't the world's greatest selfie. Though it might be if it were real.

As you can see from the original untouched photo on the right, this selfie is totally fake. It literally says "perspective" on the plane, so despite the fact that so many people are taking this as real, one has to believe that the creator clearly made it as a joke not to be taken seriously.

Fake photo via Reddit; real photo via DeviantArt

32) Is this a real giant grasshopper from 1937?

Thankfully, the image on the left doesn't show a real grasshopper from 1937. Pre-Photoshop fakes showing impossibly large food and animals were incredibly popular on postcards and tongue-in-cheek promotional materials in the early 20th century. But alas, Montana doesn't have grasshoppers that big.

Now that woman riding a rabbit, on the other hand...

Fake grasshopper photo via @ClassicPix; Fake rabbit photo via CardCow

33) Is this Los Angeles during the 1994 blackout?

Much of Los Angeles suffered a power outage after the city's devastating 6.7 earthquake in 1994. The blackout decreased the city's light pollution and residents got a rare look at the stars as they hadn't seen them before. But no, the image above doesn't show that blackout in 1994.

Photographer Thierry Cohen creates photo mash-ups depicting the night sky over major cities, as if all the lights had gone out. And Cohen's image above (just one in a series) is now getting shared online to tell the story of how some people in L.A. reportedly called police to ask about the "strange sky" they were seeing after the quake.

But the story of panicked Angelenos who were supposedly terrified of the stars seems to become more and more exaggerated with each passing year. It may have actually happened, but I have yet to actually verify one case of someone calling 911 about any strange lights in the sky. However, the local Griffith Observatory has confirmed they got calls with questions about the stars. The naive, freaked out Angeleno makes for an amusing story. But much of it, like the image above, is a bit of an exaggeration.

Inaccurate photo description via BestOfCosmos

34) Is this a real underwater train in Denmark?

No, this isn't an underwater train route in Denmark. According to a photo-sleuth on Reddit, the train stop that this purports to be actually looks like this. Perfectly pleasant indeed, but far less impressive than an underwater train.

Fake image via GooglePics

35) Is this George Orwell holding a puppy?

Yes, George Orwell did serve as a soldier during the Spanish Civil War. But no, the man holding the puppy above isn't George Orwell.

Orwell wrote an entire book about his experiences there, titled Homage to Catalonia. And the photo above has spread far and wide online. But the man holding the puppy doesn't even look like Orwell. However, as photo debunking site Hoax of Fame points out (and Getty Imagesconfirms), that really is Ernest Hemingway in the background wearing glasses.

Below we have an actual photo of Orwell from the Spanish Civil War. That tall man with the mustache standing in the back? That's him.

Inaccurate photo description via Historical Times

36) Do these photos show Leonardo DiCaprio 20 years apart?

According to HistoryInPics, the photo in the middle shows actor Leonardo DiCaprio at 19, while the one of the right shows him at 39. What did Leo actually look like at 19? The picture on the far left is from the premiere of What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Inaccurate photo descriptions via HistoryInPics

37) Is this an elephant rock carving?

No, that image on the left isn't a real carving of an elephant. It's computer-generated, much like the one we looked at a few months ago. The image on the right is a 1995 Associated Press photo of Packy the elephant at the Portland Zoo, which I've included just because I like elephants.

Fake image via GiveMeInternet

38) Does this image show all the satellites orbiting Earth?

It's a stunning image of the world completely surrounded by satellites. It even looks like something straight from WALL-E — so much so that it doesn't look real. And that's because it isn't.

Some people posting this viral image have been writing things like "the image speaks for itself." Well, no. It doesn't. Because the image gives people the impression that if you took a photo from space, this is what earth's satellites would look like.

It's an artist's impression of the number of satellites, but it's virtually useless because it's not at all to scale. The European Space Agency includes a disclaimer that's almost always cropped out when people pass this computer-generated image around online:

Note: The debris field shown in the image is an artist's impression based on actual data. However the image does not show debris items in their actual size or density.

Inaccurate image description via ValaAfshar

39) Is this the first ambulance ever?

According to the National Archive, the photo above was taken around 1865. But no, it's not the first ambulance ever, as some history-focused Twitter accounts would lead you to believe. The photo probably shows the very first ambulance that the U.S. Navy Yard on Mare Island, CA had available for its use.

But in this bizarre game of telephone we call the internet, that context has been lost completely. You only need to read the title of the 1992 book From Farmcarts to Fords: A History of the Military Ambulance, 1790-1925 to quickly realize that ambulances certainly predate 1865.

Inaccurate photo description via @HistoryPix

40) Is this a real underwater hotel?

Could this be a real underwater hotel in Katafanga Island, Fiji? Sadly, no.

The images are from a 2008 proposal from Poseidon Undersea Resorts for an underwater hotel. The mock-ups do indeed look amazing. But they're not real hotel rooms and probably never will be. At least not on that private island in Fiji. Even if the hotel finally does get built, a vacation there will set you back a pretty penny. Reservations for a week's stay were reportedly going to cost $30,000.

Fake photo via AMAZlNGPICTURES

41) Is this the tallest statue in the world?

This statue of Buddha in Ushiku Daibutsu, Japan is claimed by some people online to be the tallest statue in the world. Except that it's not. It's actually the third largest statute.

The one in Japan is 110 meters tall (360 ft) while the second tallest is in Burma standing at 116 meters (381 ft). The tallest statue in the world is actually in China, towering over the people of Lushan, Henan at 128 meters (420 ft).

Inaccurate photo description via Imgur

42) Are these the dumbest firefighters ever?

Notice anything wrong with the photo above? If you answered "possible train derailment," you win!

When firefighters put down a hose that cars may need to drive over, they can use those little ramps so that it doesn't restrict the flow of water. Of course, that wouldn't work with a train and as the debunking site Hoax of Fame points out, the set-up was a joke.

The firefighters were just having a chucklegoof, according to their Facebook. Apparently those particular train tracks weren't even in service, and (thankfully) those firefighters weren't actually that dumb.

Joke photo via Facebook

43) Is this a full moon as seen in Brazil?

People on the internet love landscape photos with giant moons. They're right up there with cat pictures and videos of hamsters eating tiny versions of Mexican food. Unfortunately, many of the giant moon photos you'll find online are fakes. As the photo debunking Twitter account FakeAstroPix points out, the photo above can also be tossed on the fakes pile.

Fake image via FascinatingPics

44) Is this a photo of the supermoon over Rio de Janeiro?

Everybody loves a good " supermoon" photo. But sadly, so many of them are fake. Like this one, which gets passed around all the time as a supermoon shot from Rio de Janeiro.

Buzzfeed even included it in a sponsored post titled "20 Amazing Photos You Don't Want to Miss." Feel free to miss this one. The original photo of Rio de Janeiro at night (seen below) is from 2008 and was taken by Mexican photographer Horacio Montiel. It's a gorgeous photo. Too bad somebody had to ruin it with a goofy supermoon.

Fake photo via Buzzfeed and EarthBeauties; Original photo by Horacio Montiel

45) Is this Hunter Thompson and Bill Murray on a boat?

Yes, Bill Murray and Hunter S. Thompson used to hang out—especially during the lead-up to the 1980 movie Where The Buffalo Roam. And yes, this photo is real. Well, except for all the photoshopped parts.

The real photo is on the right. The photoshopped image is on the left, and it shows Thompson wearing a t-shirt with a naughty word and Murray asking for some hypothetical person to purchase him a brunch-time meal under the threat of gun-based violence. Not very nice at all.

I suspect neither Thompson (RIP) nor Murray would approve of this fake photo sullying their angelic reputations.

Photoshopped image via HistoryInPics

46) Is this what happens when lightning strikes sand?

As Scientific American points out, this photo doesn't actually show what happens when lightning strikes sand. It's an art project designed and photographed in Puerto Rico by Flickr user SandCastleMatt. Interestingly, it's only the left half of a much larger sand sculpture that can be seen in context below.

When lightning strikes sand it can form what are called fulgurites. But they tend to be much smaller and penetrate into the sand, rather than pulling sand upward, as this art project might imply after getting run through the great internet confusion machine a few dozen times.

Inaccurate photo description from LearnSomething; Photos by SandcastleMatt

47) Is this Mahatma Gandhi dancing?

Despite what the infamously terrible Twitter account HistoryInPics might want you to believe, that's not actually a photo of Gandhi dancing. Apparently it's an Australian actor.

Inaccurate photo description via HistoryInPics; Real photo of Gandhi via Getty Images

48) Is this really a sex education class in 1929?

As one photo-sleuth from Reddit points out, this isn't a photo from a sex-ed class in the 1920s. It's actually from a 1929 movie called The Wild Party, directed by Dorothy Arzner and starring Clara Bow. It's unclear precisely what's going on in this shot from the film (sadly, I've never seen the movie) but you can watch clips from it on YouTube.

As a pre-Code film, it probably does have more than its fair share of sex and debauchery. If anyone finds a link to where we can pick up a copy of The Wild Party, please do share it with the class. The movie appears to be unavailable in any form.

Inaccurate photo description via HistoryInPics; Other film stills from DoctorMarco

49) Is this [Warning: disturbing image] a newborn elephant?

Yes, that is an elephant in the photo on the left. But it's not the adorable newborn photo that so many are making it out to be. It's actually a dead elephant fetus.

We've blurred the photo above, which is being circulated by accounts like ThatsEarth as a cute baby animal photo. Sadly, as PicPedant points out, they're passing around a photo of a dead fetus.

You can read more about the dead elephant and its exploitation on Facebook and Twitter over at Snopes. People are commonly asked to pray for this "newborn" elephant, or are claiming it's the smallest elephant ever born. But for the record, the photo on the right is a baby elephant that was very much alive when the photo was taken: two-year-old Nayan at the Chester Zoo in England back in 2012. Sadly, Nayan died last year.

Inaccurate photo description via ThatsEarth; 2012 photo of baby elephant Nayan via Getty

50) Are these babies really for sale?

No, these babies aren't being put up for sale by desperate parents. But as HoaxofFame points out, they're part of a series of postcards from the turn of the 20th century that were intended to be humorous. Poor kiddos don't look too happy to be participating in the joke.

Inaccurate photo description via History_Pics

51) Are these sunken ships in the Bermuda Triangle?

No, these aren't sunken ships washed up on a sandbar near the Bermuda Triangle. The photo actually shows the Tangalooma Wrecks in Queensland, Australia. The 15 boats were intentionally sunk back in the 1960s to create an artificial reef and are now a tourist attraction.

Inaccurate photo description via Reddit and BEAUTIFULPlCS

52) Is this actually Alfred Hitchcock floating in a river?

No, that's not actually Alfred Hitchock floating down the Thames. It's a dummy that was used to film the trailer for his 1972 film Frenzy. On the right we see the real Hitch holding his own fake head.

There's been a trend recently where historical pictures accounts have simply started posting old photos of celebrities. But even those aren't a safe bet for them to be accurate.

They've posted fake photos of Audrey Hepburn, a few of JFK, and lots of fake Marilyn Monroes. At this point it's clear that many are just treading water until they're eventually sold to the highest bidder for their follower counts.

Inaccurate photo description via @HistoryInPics; Photo of Hitchcock holding his dummy head viaVintag.es

53) Is this tarantula actually missing in New York?

No, there isn't a deadly, pregnant tarantula missing in Park Slope. As Gawker's Antiviral points out, lots of sites (including Gawker) fell for this prank poster. Let's just hope this doesn't turn into one of those boy-who-cried-tarantula situations.

Fake poster via Reddit

54) Is this really the pyramids of Egypt at sunset?

People love taking photos of the pyramids in Egypt. They've aged so gracefully they deserve their own mansplained Esquire profile or something. But that picture you may have seen recently of the sun setting behind the pyramids is a total fake. As internet photo-fakes sleuth@PicPedant points out, the original photo is most likely by Mario Moreno.

Fake photo via AmazingPicx; real photo via Mario Moreno

55) Is this a real ad for veggie burgers made with real beef?

"At last! A veggie burger that contains REAL BEEF!" Well, no. Slate points to Reddit detectives who have determined that as much as the internet wants this one to be some hilarious mix-up, it's actually a fake ad from the British humo[u]r magazine Viz. Oh, those cheeky Brits.

Fake ad via Imgur and Grubstreet

56) Is this a Soviet-era beach?

The image above has been passed around with the caption, "Many old Soviet photos look like science fiction film posters." Unfortunately, it would indeed be more appropriate for a sci-fi movie poster, because it's a fake.

The beach scene is actually from Copacabana Beach in Brazil. As for the space age building towering above? That's the National Library of Belarus, opened in 2006, which is notably nowhere near a beach. Below, a proper photo of the library.

Fake image via JoushaFoust; Real beach image via Brazil Travel Guide; Real Library image viaWikimedia

57) Is this the first selfie ever taken?

No, this isn't the first selfie ever taken, despite what some internet history sites insist. Not by a long shot. They're real photos from around 1920 submitted by a Quora user, purportedly of his grandfather and friends. But they're not the first selfies.

Here in the early 21st century we seem obsessed with what is and is not considered a selfie. The word alone evokes a "get off my lawn, you damn kids" reaction in so many people, and some cultural commentators even insist it's a sign of our increasingly narcissistic times. But self-portraits are as old as photography itself.

Below, a photo of the December 1920 photograph in question with some more context on the left, and a much older "selfie" taken by Robert Cornelius dating back to 1839 on the right.

Misleading image description via ClassicPixs; Robert Cornelius selfie from 1839 via Public Domain Review

58) Will Mars and the moon appear to be the same size on August 27th?

If you look up into the night sky tomorrow will you see Mars appear as large as the moon? Sadly, no. This dumb hoax is passed around nearly every year, often with the promise that no one alive today has ever seen this phenomenon and that it won't happen again for hundreds of years. It's obviously bullshit (and raises the question of why Mars would suddenly look exactly like the moon?) but sometimes even the most obvious bullshit needs to be called out to help stop it from spreading online. Ignore this one in your Facebook feeds today.

Fake image via HempandHerb

59) Is this a New York City traffic jam in 1909?

Poor Chicago; always the Second City to New York's fame. Even in history, Chicago can't seem to get its due. Like in this photo that's getting passed around on Imgur, Reddit, and Twitter, purporting to show a New York City traffic jam in 1909. It's actually from Chicago. Specifically, at the intersection of Dearborn and Randolph. A colorized postcard version of the image appears on the right.

A minor correction in the grand scheme of things? Sure. But a necessary one as incredibly popular Twitter accounts like HistoryInPics continue to amass thousands of followers (that one alone is up to 1.8 million total), and continue spreading misinformation.

Inaccurate photo description via HistoryInPics; Black and white image via Chicago Past; Color postcard via Connecting the Windy City

60) Is this a KKK member treated by an all-black emergency room staff?

No, this photo of an emergency room filled with black doctors and nurses saving a member of the KKK isn't real. As Snopes discovered, it's from a series of staged photos which ran as a magazine ad campaign that was ostensibly about restoring faith in humanity. Or something.

However, throughout history there have been plenty of cases of idiotic hate-mongers being saved and protected by the people they hate. The photo below of a black woman in 1996 defending a white supremacist from being physically beaten is real. Keshia Thomas used her body as a human shield to protect a suspected KKK sympathizer at a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Inaccurate photo description via RocketNews24; Real photo via AP

61) Is this a photo of the Supermoon?

Nothing brings out the photoshopped landscapes quite like supermoon hype. No, the photo above isn't real. Even the real "supermoon" isn't that impressive to the naked eye. A supermoon occurs when the moon is about 6 percent closer to Earth than average. Not a big deal—it happens three times this year alone—and not enough to make images like the photo above without a heavy dose of photoshop.

And if it helps give you some perspective on the science-full-ness of the entire supermoon concept, remember that the term was supposedly coined by an astrologer, not an astronomer.

Fake image via Stephen Stanton

62) Are these strange clouds over Mount Fuji real?

Lenticular clouds sure are cool looking. But the image on the left is just a Photoshop job. This fake image has been around for at least a couple of years now, but it keeps getting passed around as real again and again. Stop it, guys. Just stop.

Fake image via @BrilliantPosts

63) Are these the founders of Harley-Davidson?

In the early 1900s William Harley, his friend Arthur Davidson and many of Davidson's family members all teamed up in Milwaukee to create one of the most iconic companies of 20th century America: Harley-Davidson motorcycles. But is the photo above really of William Harley and Arthur Davidson in 1914? Nope.

The always amazing PicPedant did a little research on this photo only to discover that (surprise! surprise!) it's not what so many people on the internet claim it to be. Turns out the photo is just two random motorcycle enthusiasts from Minnesota.

From a Harley-Davidson fan page where the image first appeared online:

I was enjoying your page with all the old Harleys and remembered that I have a photo of my cousin's grandfather and his grandfather's brother each sitting on the brand new 1914 Harleys that they purchased in 1914. I am not sure, but I believe the photo may have been taken at the dealership (probably not realy a dealership back then, but the guy must have been an HD distributer) in Wanamingo, MN.

Below we have a photo of William S. Harley (right) and William A. Davidson (in sidecar, and father of Arthur Davidson) in 1924 from the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame.

Inaccurate photo description via @HistoryInPics and @HistoricalPics

64) Is this the Heart River in North Dakota?

People pick on North Dakota. So it's nice when the state gets a little love. But sadly the love heaped upon it by the internet recently is for something not real.

The Heart River is very much a real river in North Dakota. But the image above was created by the Vienna Paint digital art studio. The real Heart River looks nothing like that from the air.

Fake photo via @Alluniques

65) Is this lightning striking a tree?

Nope. This is a long-exposure light manipulation photo with a lightning bolt photoshopped in. As the Museum of Hoaxes points out, this image was created by Darren Pearson, who also goes by the name Darius Twin. Pearson does some very cool work, but they're all heavily manipulated photos in some form or another.

Fake image via @MindBlowing

66) Is this the space shuttle breaching the clouds?

It's a cool image, but of course it's too good to be true. The creator of the image on the left, Richard Silvera says quite plainly, "This image is a composite of 2 pictures." An almost equally cool photo that shows the space shuttle Challenger still on the ground in November of 1982 is on the right and is definitely real.

Fake image via @EarthPix

67) Is this a picnic on an American highway during the 1973 oil crisis?

I've always wondered about this photo, since I've seen it pass through my social media streams at least a dozen times in the last year. It purports to show Americans having a picnic on a major freeway in 1973. The 1970s oil crisis was devastating to American motorists. There were shortages and Americans often had to wait in long lines to fill up their tanks. But the highways didn't suddenly become empty.

Well, as Hoax of Fame points out, the photo isn't American at all. The image actually comes from The Netherlands. It was taken in 1973 when the country imposed "Car-Free Sundays" which would occur periodically during the 1973-74 oil crisis.

Below, another photo from a car-free Sunday in 1973.

Inaccurate photo description via @HistoricalPics

68) Is a this a meteor over Stonehenge in England?

No, that's not a meteor over Stonehenge (or Stonehedge, as this misleading tweet calls it). For whatever reason this image just won't die, getting passed around on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr again and again. The photo shows a very real fireball meteor over Oklahoma in 2008. But some jerk put it behind Stonehenge and suddenly it just won't go away no matter how many times astronomy sleuths like FakeAstropix debunk it.

Fake image via @Globe_pics

69) Is this photo of "kissing islands" in Greenland real?

No, those aren't islands that just happen to look like they're human faces tenderly kissing. It's yet another ad campaign. But strangely, some people are cropping out the Pfizer logo and claiming that they're real islands. The Italian branch of international ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi appears to have come up with this one.

On the right, another image from the campaign that appears to show some kind of brain/headache message. And since Pfizer makes Viagra, we might safely assume the one on the left is for that little blue pill? Either way, it's as fake as they come.

Fake photo via Tumblr

70) Is this Europe and the United States at night from space?

No, these aren't photos of Earth's lights from space. As PicPedant points out, they're actually visualizations of Flickr and Twitter geolocations. But even this assertion is hard to confirm. The red dots are supposedly locations of Flickr pictures. The blue dots? Tweets.

There's an entire Flickr album with more images, though again it's hard to be sure precisely how the maps were created since there's no explanation. The only thing we can say for certain: These aren't pictures of Earth's lights from space.

[Update: HoaxofFame points us to a 2011 Washington Post article about Eric Fischer and his maps project.]

Fake image claims via ThatsEarth and Reddit; Real image explanations via Flickr

71) Is this Marilyn Monroe reading a book in Spanish?

Marilyn Monroe was a voracious reader. She had an impressive personal library and there are lot of photos of her reading. But the photo of her on the left is a photoshop job. She wasn't reading Confesiones Silenciosas (translated: Silent Confessions).

The real photo on the right shows her reading Arthur Miller's adaptation of the Ibsen play, An Enemy of the People. Monroe was married to Miller from 1956 until 1961.

Fake image via Open Culture and the New York Public Library

72) Is this NASA announcing that we'll have 6 days of complete darkness in December?

"Comedy" sites like Huzlers have run with the story that there will be six consecutive days of darkness in December due to a "solar storm" that will cause "dust and space debris" to block out the sun. But don't believe it.

The coming days of darkness will supposedly last from the 16th until the 22nd of December and the Huzlers story even has fake quotes from NASA officials. Other sites have claimed there will be three days of complete darkness. Neither of these claims is true (unless you live in Minnesota, where you actually won't see the sun until April*). But the lie is spreading quickly on both Twitter and Facebook.

The freak "days of darkness" prediction is a common internet hoax and variations spread so far and wide that NASA has even had to debunk these claims sometimes, like they did in 2012.

*I kid, Minnesota. Just telling a chucklegoof, as a former Minnesotan.

Fake image via Huzlers

73) Does Monsters, Inc. really have a hidden naughty picture?

Have you seen that screenshot from the 2001 Pixar film Monsters, Inc showing a stick figure drawing of "uncel roger" and "mommy" having sex? Totally fake.

As the debunker website Waffles at Noon points out there's even a YouTube video of the scene that someone has concocted. But again, it's not real. The actual footage shows that it's clearly not there.

Below, the original screenshot from the film sans-naughty stick figures.

Fake screenshot of Monsters, Inc via Reddit

74) Is this a real black lion?

No, that's not a black lion. But for whatever reason you can find lots of black lions photoshopped from your standard Simba-style lion (and even albino lions) all over the internet. They look pretty badass. But sadly they're not real.

Fake photo via @AmazingPicx and Reddit; Real lion via Serengeti Book

75) Is this manta ray captured in 1933 real?

Enormous manta rays like this do exist. But the photo above depicting Captain A.L. Kahn in 1933 with a giant manta is almost certainly a fake. The big clues? The manta ray pictured is far too rigid (real giant manta rays are floppy when hoisted up), there's a seam that you can see running through the middle, and the biggest hint: the thing doesn't have an anus.

Postcards and news photos, (like the postcard below) didn't show the seam and whatever that little bit of light-colored fabric might be near the tail. It's hard not to conclude that there's something fishy going on here. Get it? Fishy.

Below, a photo of an actual manta ray caught in 1932 off the coast of Hollywood, Florida by Captain Jay Gould. The June 1932 issue of the Louisiana Conservation Review also includes the photo. Notice that it looks a lot more floppy and life-like.

Deep Sea News has done a bit of digging to investigate the suspicious Captain Kahn photo. They discovered similar looking fake manta ray construction photos at the American Museum of Natural History from 1917, pictured below. And though they're not the same fake manta from the 1930s, they show you just how one could construct such a thing. James Bell made all kind of models for the Natural History museum, like this giraffe in 1928.

My own guess is that it's the Captain Kahn manta ray is a plaster cast of a real manta that he indeed captured. There's sufficient evidence that people have made plaster casts of real giant mantas, like in this photo from 1964. And it's the most logical way to put the manta on tour with a circus company, which Kahn did for at least a couple of years.

I searched through newspaper archives from the mid-1930s and found that the manta ray photos of Captain Kahn were making the rounds in 1933 and that eventually the "Great Manta" was traveling throughout the U.S. in 1934 and 35 as a sideshow act amongst "World's Fair Freaks."

Below, a flyer for the "Great Manta" exhibition in 1934 from Mike's Maritime Memorabilia. Notice that the manta pictured is a bit more floppy than the photo we see getting passed around on Reddit and Twitter, and more like the manta captured in Florida.

Fake image via @HistoricalPics; Real images from American Museum of Natural History, the Florida Museum of Natural History, and Mike's Maritime Memorabilia

76) Is this a photo of the Statue of Liberty during Hurricane Sandy?

Some people commemorated the anniversary of Hurricane (or, more accurately Superstorm) Sandy this week. But no, that image of the Statue of Liberty being inundated with waves isn't real. It's from the 2004 movie, The Day After Tomorrow. Shockingly, a number of reputable news sources still ran with it on social media.

Fake photo via NYCAlerts

77) Is this a bike on Vashon Island that was abandoned for 100 years?

The kids' bicycle embedded into a tree is a bit of a tourist attraction on Vashon Island, Washington, just outside of Seattle. But it's not a century old, as so many social media accounts are claiming.

It's actually from the 1950s. As PicPedant and Snopes point out, the bicycle is believed to have been abandoned on that tree in the mid-1950s. The tree is believed to have grown around it. A local sheriff named Don Puz claims it was his bicycle, but nobody knows for certain. All that we do know is that it's not from the 1910s. It's almost certainly from the 1950s.

Inaccurate image description from @OldPicsArchive; Photo via the Sierra Club

78) Is this a leopard with bright blue eyes?

No, that photo of a leopard with bright blue eyes is a lie. Well, the blue eyes part is at least. Pedantic picture sleuth PicPedant points out that the original was most likely taken in 2010 by someone on Flickr who goes by the name Flash-Joerg—though the fact that they misspelled "leopard" as "lepard" gives me pause.

Fake image via SWildlifepics; Real image via Flash-Joerg on Flickr

79) Is this a real Halloween costume for dogs?

At first glance, this "Lifelike Baby Costume for Dogs" on Amazon looks horrifyingly legit. But upon further inspection you'll clearly see that it's an amazing hoax. It's actually part of a much larger parody Amazon listing which may or may not have been created by Adult Swim. You can see the entire fake product listing below in all its fake Halloween glory.

Fake image via @pablogotobed and Adult Swim's Tumblr

80) Is this a hitchhiker from Woodstock in 1969?

According to HistoryInPics and your aunt's Pinterest board of hippie nostalgia, the photo on the left shows a woman at Woodstock hitchhiking. Except that it's not. The photo was staged for an ad campaign in 1971.

The naked hitchhiker ad was one of many in a campaign for Landlubber Clothing Company featuring people wearing nothing but their birthday suits. More ads featuring a woman on a bike and a man at a desk appear below. Apparently the idea was that if these people couldn't find Landlubber clothes, they didn't want to wear anything at all.

Or, more accurately, the idea was that they could turn their ads into a profitable side business selling posters that would hang in college dorms across the country. In the mid 1970s Landlubber was pulling in about $100 million.

Inaccurate photo description via HistoryInPics; Ad in the November 1971 issue of National Lampoon magazine via Flickr; Ad with woman on bike via Imgur

81) Is this a photo of JFK after he'd been shot?

Nope. It's a reenactment that was filmed for the 1977 TV movie The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. There was no photographer hovering over the car immediately after JFK was shot. Believe me, Oliver Stone would've been all over those photos.

Fake photo description via HistoricalPics

82) Is this Barack Obama in 2009 and 2014?

The presidency certainly ages most people. But this photo from the HistoricalPics Twitter account isn't quite true. The photo on the left which purports to be from 2009 is actually from 2005. That means that the difference between the two pictures is closer to nine years, rather than five. I can tell you I look a lot different in photos from nine years ago, and I don't even run the country.

The weird thing: If you use a photo that's actually from 2009 it has a similar effect, if slightly less drastic. Below on the left, a photo of Obama shortly before becoming president in January 2009. On the right, the President last week. The depressed expression on his face certainly doesn't help him look any younger.

Fake photo description from HistoricalPics; Bottom photos via Getty

83) Is this the Christmas Truce of WWI with German and British troops playing football together?

As PicPedant points out, the photo actually just shows British troops in Salonika, Greece in 1915 playing football — known by Americans as "racquetball" if I'm not mistaken. There are no Germans in sight.

And it's definitely not the Christmas truce of 1914 where a handful of British and German troops emerged from their trenches to meet, exchange presents, and yes, even play a little soccer.

Inaccurate image description via HistoryInPics

84) Is this really what happens when you put a cell phone in the microwave?

Nope. This is actually an old viral video from 2008 that just won't die. It was created by a prepaid wireless company called Net 10.

Their viral campaign was hosted on No-Evil.net and was meant to illustrate how terrible the competing phone companies were by forcing you to stick with contracts. Notice how the bubbling cellphone turns into what looks like a demon? That's no accident. It's all computer generated imagery.

Fake gif via Learn_Things

85) Are these two happy owls?

Sadly those aren't two happy owlets. They're brooches, as noted by the eagle-eyed PicPedant. They were made by a Russian crafter out of wool, plastic, and glass.

Adorable, sure. But not real owls. Unless the clasps below are simply an owl trait that I'm unfamiliar with. You never know.

Fake photo via EARTHPlCS

86) Is this a Woodstock poster from 1969?

We started with some Woodstock fakery so we may as well end with some Woodstock fakery. Is that Woodstock poster you've seen circulating the Real McCoy? Sadly, no. It's a modern day fake.

The fonts on the poster on the left are simply too modern. And they've even spelled Joan Baez's name incorrectly! If you're going to do a fake at least make an effort to use typefaces that predate the 1980s.

Fake image via ClassicPixs

Factually is Gizmodo's new blog of fun facts, interesting photos, and weird trivia. Join us on Twitter and Facebook.

Did you get cancer recently? You did? Uh... sorry. I'm very sorry. I thought you were going to say "no." Jesus. Uh... take heart in your many fellow Americans who have not gotten cancer recently—thanks to science, etc!

New data from the American Cancer Society says that 1.5 million Americans have been spared from dying of cancer in the past 20 years, as the cancer death rate has declined by 22% due to various things your doctor can do, and also due to the 22% decline in American Coolness which has caused fewer people to be smokers. This is unalloyed good news, particularly for those Americans who did not die of cancer.

For the millions of Americans who did die of cancer during the past 20 years, there is little comfort to be found in this statistical progress.

Also, in the developing world, cancer rates are getting worse.

[Photo: Shutterstock]

With just hours left to make 2014 an even shittier year, classy porn site Bangbros has released the latest film in its celebrated Bang Bus series, "Protestor Exercises Her Right to Take Cock!" Yes, it is a parody of the protests in the wake of the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

Unlike some brands that shoot themselves in the foot by hastily jumping on trends they don't understand, Bang Bros knows exactly what it's doing here. It just doesn't care.

With all of the police brutality cases that you see on the news nowdays, you know the streets of Miami are going to get crazy! We come across this blonde babe named Marsha May, and she is in full protest mode. Holding up a sign and everything! We offer her a ride, and offer a lending hand.... or should we say, offer her a HARD DICK!!! Hahaaaa!

Hahaaaa! Good one, bros!

"It's cool that this babe wants to fight for her rights and all that, but all we care about here at Bangbros HQ is picking up fresh gullible pussy," they continue, quite accurately.

The "babe fighting for her rights" is white, incidentally, and she's holding a sign that reads "I Can't Breath [sic]," something the bros pause to make fun of before they bang her in another totally believable scenario.

"She wants equality? Well, she fucking got it! Hard cock down her throat and up her sweet lil cunt. Her perfect pink snatch got drilled while she thought she was doing it for the right cause," Bangbros philosophically muses.

Amateur, Big Ass, Blonde, Blowjob, Cumshot, Enhanced Tits, Facial, Handjob, Hardcore, White.

Meanwhile, the New York Police Department is in open revolt against a mayor who dared to suggest, after police killed an unarmed black man with a chokehold, that perhaps not all cops treat the city's black residents equally.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

[h/t DLemonComedy]

Dogs can do a lot of things: run, bark, etc. One thing they can't do, however, is hula hoop. Obvious? Not to this lady.

Girl, of course that dog can't hula hoop. Give me a break!

[h/t TastefullyOffensive]

We wrote a lot of posts on Gawker.com this year. We also abandoned a lot. Here is a peek behind the curtain.

What follows is a list of titles of posts that were saved as drafts in Gawker's CMS but never actually published. The pitches, content, and kill orders behind many of these posts are lost to time. Those that I can remember something specific about are annotated. Read and imagine... what could have been.

• sex
  
• Save the Children Gay TK
• South Park Does Cock Magic tktk
• New York Times Sections, Ranked [We should still do this one — Ed.]
  
• Woman Raises $15k to collect dead fiancé's sperm oh god tktk
• Celebrities Are Not People [We might get to this one in 2015?]
  
• Justin Bieber Brought His X-Box to the Club
  
• Inside a Cheating Scandal at Duke [This was a good story, I have no clue what happened]
  
• Jimmy Johns Drivers Are Freaky Fast... But At What Cost?
• What Did Lena Dunham Do [This was going to be a regularly updated post]
  
• Cat Serial Killer is the Fucking Worst tktk [:-(]
  
• French President Loves Enormous Butt Plug No Matter What the Haters Say
  
• Michelle Obama HUH
  
• Can You Match Lo Bosworth's Food Diary Descriptors to Their Objects? [I made Kelly do this and then it turned out the post we were basing it on was like months old]
  
• Brave Louis C.K. Finally Speaks Out on ISIS [The joke was too opaque. "Puts ISIS on Blast" would've been funnier.]
  
• Inset Testing
  
• Who Was Dapper Laughs? (An Explainer) [This was that shitty Limey asshole who made bad videos]
  
• TKTKTK
  
• boob bongo tk [No clue]
  
• DO NOT PUBLISH [Has no text]
  
• "shit thrown in your mouth" correction officers union tk
  
• I Wanna Talk About My Penis [A joke for people looking through the drafts folder]
• The Plight of the Humble Internet Commenter [This was Andy trying to generate sympathy for commenters. I can't remember why I killed, probably out of spite.]
• teens NBA
• Your Guide to Surviving New York's New 25 MPH Speed Limit
• The Internet's Worst Robin Williams Tributes [Too soon]
• Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer: Screech Is "Full of Shit"
• These Turtles Smell Like Dogshit: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• How Long Did It Take These Celebrities to Delete Pro-Palestine Tweets? [This was good data visualization, I think I just forgot about it]
• weed thing
• why won't this embed work
• Let's All Stop Going to Bars [Jordan Sargent]
• Frank Bruni
• Omaha Casanova Booked for Being Too Groovy
• Duck Crime tk
• Nate Silver Paul Krugman [Were they fighting or something? What a long fucking year.]
• Justin Bieber Is A Sith Lord
• Dog Driving a Motorcycle tk tk
• rob ford run

Sausage is a new blog about how Gawker is made.

An upstate New York couple who sued their neighbor and complained about him to a District Attorney ended up arrested for stalking after they filmed a veritable "reality show" of evidence against him.

Paul Sohacki and Katherine Gannon's feud with their neighbor, Gene Ellis, started when Ellis built a driveway that they said encroached on a small piece of their land. They sued their neighbor, reaching a settlement that forced him to move the driveway.

But that apparently wasn't good enough for the couple. They went on ABC's 20/20, where this delightful snippet was revealed:

The couple said that they had to film Ellis to document what they say was trespassing and menacing behavior. Soon cameras covered their property, and they supplemented their security cameras with cameras in their cars and wore body cameras everywhere they went.

"It was a reality show," Sohacki said.

When they brought their insane home video collection to Otsego County DA John Muehl, he agreed that they had gathered some very strong evidence. In a case against themselves. For stalking.

:clap emoji: :clap emoji: :clap emoji:

"It showed them actually committing a crime against him," Muehl told 20/20.

The stalking charges were eventually dropped, but the D.A. believes the weird couple were obsessed with their neighbor, who eventually moved to get away from them.

Now the friendly couple and their friendly CCTV system are also moving, leaving behind the property they so vigorously defended against a "bully."

A classic American tale.

[h/t and image via ABC News]

When your TV show's writing staff includes folks with PhDs in maths and sciences, you're bound to end up with some spectacularly nerdy jokes. And if you dig a little deeper into some of the jokes in Futurama, you won't just laugh — you may actually learn something.

The Futurama writers had a rule that the show's more obscure jokes couldn't be central to the plot. So the background is stuffed with nods to mathematics, science, history, and literature. Numbers are often translated into math problems (instead of Studio 54, the crew visits Studio 1²2¹3³). Robot information is conveyed in binary ("The Honking" references the "Redrum" scene in The Shining, when Bender is perplexed to see "0101100101" written in blood on a wall, but then realizes that it reads "1010011010" in the mirror, a series of digits that translates to "666"). And of course, there's the Alienese language. But the writers also built entire episodes around the Banach-Tarski paradox and the premise of three-dimensional characters entering two-dimensional space.

Some of Futurama's smaller jokes require a bit more context to understand, and if you're not already familiar with the mathematic and scientific principles or historical context needed to get the joke, learning a bit more about them can be fascinating and quite rewarding. Here are just a handful of those jokes.

1. "No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!"

In "Luck of the Fryrish," the Planet Express crew goes to the racetrack, where two horses finish a race neck and neck. In order to determine the outcome of the race, the officials use an electron microscope and announce Number 3 is winner in a "quantum finish." The Professor, incensed, shouts, "No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it." There's a reason this joke is a classic.

The Professor is referencing the observer effect, the impact of observation on the phenomenon being observed. In quantum mechanics, when we measure the state of a quantum system, we know its current state and stop it from being in any of its other possible states. Of course, it's rather bad business for a racetrack to have its winner be a superposition of two different horses at the same time. The Futurama writers also love to reference the famous thought experiment about observation and quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat.

2. "What happens in Cygnus X-1 stays in Cygnus X-1"

The opening tagline for "Prisoner of Benda" is obviously a reference to the slogan "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." But Vegas has nothing on Cygnus X-1, which is a black hole candidate. No way your photos are getting out of there and ending up on Facebook.

Adding another layer to the joke is the fact that Cygnus X-1 was itself the subject of a wager. In 1975, Stephen Hawking bet fellow physicist Kip Thorne that Cygnus X-1 would not ultimately prove to be a black hole. Eventually, Hawking conceded the bet, and Thorne allegedly won a one-year subscription to Penthouse as his prize.

This isn't even close to the coolest scientific aspect of this episode. After all, writer Ken Keeler, who holds a PhD in applied mathematics, developed a mathematical proof to resolve the episode's core conflict.

3. Loew's ℵ0-Plex

What comes after the multiplex? New New York's premiere movie theater (which shows up in a couple of episodes) is and aleph-nullplex. ℵ0 is the cardinality (measure of elements in a set) of all natural numbers, and therefore describes sets that are countably infinite. We suspect that, even in the year 3000, it's a slight exaggeration for the movie theater to claim it has an infinite number of screens — even if it's a small number of infinity.

The ℵ0-plex was the brainchild of none other than Keeler, who joked in a draft of the "Raging Bender" script that it still wouldn't be big enough to show all the Rocky movies.

In his book The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, Simon Singh notes that Futurama also references a much larger infinity. In "Möbius Dick," Bender ends up in a four-dimensional space with many copies of himself doing a conga line and later quips, "That was the greatest uncountably infinite bunch of guys I ever met."

4. Happy ln(bΩer)

This is a pun that requires some knowledge of mathematical symbols, scientific symbols, and Jewish holidays. The "ln" refers to a natural logarithm, and the omega is the symbol for ohm, the SI derived unit of electrical resistance. So the sign reads "Happy Logbohmer" or, rather, "Happy Lag BaOmer." Lag BaOmer is a holiday celebrated on the 33rd day of the Counting of Omer, when the mourning of the Counting of Omer is lifted, so the date of Bender's son Ben's Bot-Mitzvah in "The Bots and the Bees" is an auspicious one.

[Hat tip to r/futurama]

5. Taxicab Numbers

Eagle-eyed Futurama viewers may notice that the number 1729 shows up an awful lot in the show. It's part of the Nimbus's registration number. Bender is Mom's son #1729. During "The Farnsworth Parabox," the crew visits Universe 1729.

So what's the deal? 1729 is the Hardy–Ramanujan number, also known as a taxicab number. G.H. Hardy and Srinivisa Ramanujan were mathematicians and unlikely friends. According to Hardy, their interest in 1729 came about when Hardy visited Ramanujan and remarked that he had ridden in a cab numbered 1729. It struck Hardy as a rather dull number, and he worried that it was an ill omen. Ramanujan replied that it was actually quite an interesting number; after all, it's the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two positive algebraic cubes in two distinct ways: 1729 = 1³ + 12³ = 9³ + 10³

A taxicab number has since been defined as the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two positive algebraic cubes in n different ways. For the most part, the number 1729 is used merely as a nod to Hardy and Ramanujan, but in "Bender's Big Score," the taxicab number 87539319 shows up, amusingly enough, on a taxicab. 87539319 is the smallest number that can be written as the sum of two cubes in three distinct ways: 87,539,319 = 167³+436³ = 228³+423³ = 255³+414³

6. Mars University Physics Annex

This is a sight gag that confuses some viewers at first glance. After all, the Mars University Physics Department and the Annex clearly have different masses, but they appear balanced on the lever. But we have to consider the mechanical advantage of the lever. The fulcrum is considerably closer to the main building than the annex, so in order to balance the lever, the force that the annex exerts on the lever must be less than the force that the main building exerts on the lever.

A balanced lever can be expressed with the equation (M1)(a) = (M2)(b), where M1 is the mass at one end of the fulcrum, M2 is the mass at the other end of the fulcrum, a is the distance from the fulcrum to M1, and b is the distance from the fulcrum to M2. Of course, this all goes to hell when Nibbler's ship lands outside the main building.

7. All Those Beers

In the episode "The Route of All Evil," Bender, Fry, and Leela all head to the, ahem, 7¹¹ to buy beer. All of the beers are punny — Pabst Blue Robot, Lobrau — but some of them are particularly geeky:

We get a reference to the programming language FORTRAN, which was developed by IBM in the 1950s. Bender drinks it in lieu of Olde English 800, so of course it has a computer language in the name instead of a human one.

The Klein bottles are a non-orientable object, much like a Möbius strip. Its surface is one continuous "side," so you want to watch how you pour that beer.

St. Pauli Girl beer gets mashed up with the Pauli exclusion principle, named for Wolfgang Pauli. The principle states that two identical fermions can't occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. We have no idea how that affects the taste of the beer.

8. Bull Space Moose Party

Not all of Futurama's jokes reference math and science. Some are about history and politics. In "A Head in the Polls," Fry checks out different political parties, and in true Futurama form, the most obscure jokes are lurking in the background. A booth that appears to be manned by Bullwinkle bears the banner "Bully Space Moose Party," a reference to the Progressive Party of 1912. The party was formed by former US President Theodore Roosevelt after he had a falling out with fellow Republican President William Howard Taft. The third party was called the Bull Moose Party because a journalist quoted Roosevelt as saying "I'm feeling like a bull moose." Naturally, though, Fry finds himself drawn to the Apathy Party.

9. Witten's Dog

You may have heard of Schrödinger's cat, but Witten's Dog is entirely an invention of Futurama. It, paired with the phrase "Superdupersymmetric String Theory," is a nod to Ed Witten, one of the fathers of superstring theory and one of the world's greatest living theoretical physicists. In the commentary for this episode, "Mars University," it's explained that a Caltech physicist drew this parody diagram, which is, at its heart, just a classy poop joke.

10. The Cryptic Crypt Inscription

In "The Duh-Vinci Code," the crew flies to Rome to explore the tomb of Saint James and comes across an inscription in Roman numerals that is clearly not a date, but rather part of an equation. In his book, Singh notes that there's nothing random about this particular set of numbers, and that solving the problem gives a very interesting result.

II^XI - (XXIII * LXXXIX) translates to 2¹¹ - (23 * 89), which equals one. If we rearrange the equation 2¹¹ - (23 * 89) = 1, we get 2¹¹ - 1 = 2047. This equation takes the form of a Mersenne prime, in which a prime number is found though 2^p - 1, where p is any prime number. The interesting thing about 2047 is that it's not prime. In fact, it's the smallest number described by 2^p - 1 that isn't prime.

The frozen, icy hellscape that rang in 2014 across the eastern United States returned for an encore in the west during the year's waning hours. Temperatures fell as low as -48°F in Wyoming this morning as a brutal cold snap brings strong winds, heavy snow, and even record high air pressure to areas west of the Plains.

At noon Central Time (11:00 AM Mountain), temperatures across a huge chunk of the country continued to hover in the teens or single digits, with much of the Intermountain West still solidly below zero. Wind chill values approached -50°F in many spots before sunrise this morning. This was the coldest December morning in the United States since December 23, 1998, according to Ryan Maue on Twitter.

The cold weather—not a result of the polar vortex!—locked into place across the west this week thanks to a very strong ridge of high pressure over the center of the United States. In fact, cold air helps to strengthen high pressure at the surface (because cold air is dense), turning the situation into a nasty feedback cycle of sorts.

Many areas set record high air pressure readings thanks to the cold weather this week. Seattle saw its all-time record high air pressure on Tuesday, with the barometer reading 1045.4 millibars at the air's highest density. Astoria, Oregon also set its all-time record high air pressure, clocking in at 1042.9 millibars on Tuesday. "Normal" air pressure at sea level is considered to be 1013.25 millibars.

Elsewhere, the cold is allowing wintry precipitation to fall as a result of a low pressure system moving through the southwestern part of the country. It briefly snowed this morning in Las Vegas, and higher elevations in California reported a coating of snow as precipitation came through during the overnight hours.

One to two feet of snow could fall in higher elevations across the southwest through Friday as the storm swings through, but the biggest threat to population center will be the ice.

Winter storm advisories and warnings are in effect for a huge part of Texas on Thursday and Friday in anticipation of a significant freezing rain event. Many parts of Texas will see ice accretions of one-tenth to one-quarter of an inch by Friday evening, which will make many roadways impassible without heavy treatment by crews.

The west will have a chance to warm up over the next seven days as the cold weather gradually confines itself to the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes, and Northeast.

[Images: Oklahoma Mesonet, WeatherBELL, NWS | UPDATE: The original headline/lede said -35°F, but the Weather Prediction Center has since updated the coldest low temp in the U.S. for Wednesday. The winner was Daniel, Wyoming, with a low of -48°F.]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

According to a report from DNAinfo's Murray Weiss, the NYPD is investigating social media death threats against cops from alleged gang members who are apparently promising to turn tonight's New Year's Eve celebrations into "Kill a Pig Night." But who are these violent tweeters? Do they exist at all?

The evidence as presented in Weiss's article points not to an orchestrated, gang-related effort to kill cops tonight, but the work of a single obsessive Instagram user and the inflammatory writings of a right-wing blogger based in St. Louis, Missouri.

Weiss's law enforcement sources report that the threats have "primarily come in tweets baring a host of vicious anti-NYPD hash tags including #@deadcopseveryday, #onlydeadcops, #wingsonpigs and #laughatyourdeaths." (#@deadcopseveryday likely contains a typo, as Twitter doesn't allow the @ symbol to be used in hashtags.) However, aside from
#wingsonpigs—a slogan that Ismaaiyl Brinsley used on Instagram before he murdered two NYPD officers earlier this month—a search for tweets that were posted before the DNAinfo article was published and contain the cited hashtags turns up only one result: an unrelated tweet in support of police from August.

It's possible that the alleged threats came from private accounts, or that Twitter has already suspended the users responsible. A Twitter spokesperson wrote via email that the company "will remove reported content that violates our rules, which prohibit direct, specific threats of violence against others," but did not specifically address the alleged threats.

On Instagram, the hashtags are being used by one account and one account only. According to a search, #onlydeadcops is used in just two public posts on the photo-sharing network, and #laughatyourdeaths in just one, and all were published by a single user who goes by m_d_c_.

The above anti-NYPD image macro, posted a week ago, contains all of the hashtags Weiss mentions: #wingsonpigs, #onlydeadcops, #laughatyourdeaths, and #2deadcopseveryday, a likely candidate for the apparent typo.

Is m_d_c_ the NYPD's would-be New Year's cop-killer? Weiss declined to comment when I asked whether his sources mentioned any specific users, but it seems likely. The account is filled with incitements of violence toward officers and messages of support for cop-killer Brinsley, including images that read "Keep calm and kill cops," "All my heroes kill cops," and "If a cop pulls you over, shoot him and bury the corpse." The username, m_d_c_, may reference a 1980s and '90s punk band whose full name is Millions of Dead Cops.

But while m_d_c_'s posts emphatically encourage violence against police in a vague, abstract sense, they make no specific reference to a killing on New Year's Eve. "Kill A Pig Night" and "The New Year's Massacre Eve Massacre 2014," the two phrases NYPD sources provided to Weiss, appear to stem from a two-week-old tweet by a supposed Ferguson, Mo., protester that went viral after it was published by the right-wing pro-police blog Gateway Pundit and syndicated by Alex Jones' conspiracy theorist site Infowars. Perhaps the phrases were also used by New York "gang members" on Twitter, as Weiss's report states, but I haven't been able to find any examples if that's the case.

The Gateway Pundit post that publicized the "Kill a Pig Night" tweet also makes reference to another alleged threat: a tweeted photo of Black Panthers activists holding guns, captioned with the text "Dear Police, Don't think that this can't happen again."

The only specific tweeted "threat" against NYPD officers mentioned in Weiss' report sounds suspiciously familiar:

"One tweet reads: "Dear Police, Don't think this cant happen again" accompanied by a photo of armed Blank Panthers from the 1960s and 1970s, sources say.

“@FreeTopher: Dear Police,

Dont think that this cant happen again. pic.twitter.com/sdsVPAojCD” !!!!!!

— fadumo (@_aayeitsfadumo) December 24, 2014

@aayeitsfadumo, the user mentioned in the Gateway Pundit's post, is a 19-year-old located in Seattle, according to her Twitter bio. @FreeTopher, who originally tweeted the photo on Christmas Eve, is located in "STL," according to his bio. Though the men in the photos are holding guns, construing the tweet as a direct threat against police officers in New York, Ferguson, or any other city requires a not-insignificant leap of the imagination.

m_d_c_'s Instagram account certainly warrants investigation; the user began frequently posting about killing police on the day of the Liu-Ramos murders and hasn't slowed since. But the idea that the hashtags and social media posts presented by Weiss' sources constitute an organized and actionable threat to NYPD officers on New Year's Eve is at best a poor reading of the evidence and at worst willful misdirection by the police.

[New Year's 2014 photo via AP]

Veteran character actor Edward Herrmann has died, TMZ reports. He was 71.

According to Herrmann's family, the actor was battling brain cancer and had undergone several days of chemotherapy before dying this morning in a New York hospital.

Hermann is perhaps best known today for his role as Rory's grandfather, Richard Gilmore, on Gilmore Girls.

[Image via Getty Images]

If there's one thing we learned in 2014, it's that political cartoons are awful. Doubly so if your name is "Banksy" and triply so if your name isn't "Banksy" but you wish it were, like the aspiring satirist behind the piece seen above, which reportedly "has many outraged" in Detroit.

Spotted near a police station earlier this week, WJBK-TV says cops and non-cops alike have called the shocking depiction of blob-on-blob crime "hurtful."

Of course, thanks to the graffiti's dog shit execution, the artist's intended message is almost completely inscrutable, but that hasn't stopped critics from weighing in anyway.

"I don't believe—looking at the painting—that God would give an angel a gun to shoot a police officer," said Assistant Detroit Police Chief Steve Dolunt. "I think God gives angels to police officers to try to protect them."

Even on the news story itself, the takes came in hot, representing all (bad) points on the political spectrum:

Thankfully, the offending artwork has now been painted over, rendering the vague political statement only slightly more opaque.

[Images via WJBK-TV//h/t Washington Post]

According to Chinese state media, at least 35 people died and another 42 have been injured after a Shanghai New Year's celebration turned into a deadly stampede.

More photos. Deadly stampede during New Year's Day celebration in #Shanghai. 35 reported dead, 40 injured. pic.twitter.com/62E1fn0mm2

— Jim Barnett (@JimBarnettNews) December 31, 2014

The BBC says the cause of the stampede is still being investigated, but photos on social media show a chaotic scene near Shanghai's waterfront, where the tragedy occurred shortly before midnight on Wednesday.

Authorities reportedly planned on having a more subdued event this year after experiencing problems controlling the large crowds drawn to the celebration in the past. From The New York Times:

Last week, the English-language Shanghai Daily reported that the annual New Year's Eve countdown on the Bund that normally attracts about 300,000 people had been cancelled, apparently because of crowd control issues. The report said a "toned-down" version of the event would be held instead but that it would not be open to the public.

The stampede appeared to be near that area.

[Image via Shutterstock]

With Gawker posting their top hundred posts of 2014 and the overachievers at Lifehacker creating a whole series about it, I thought this would be a good time to post Kinja's most popular independent posts of the past year.

So what's an independent post? Obviously I'm excluding anything on Gawker Media's own sites and any of our partners (you can see a list of our blogs and our partners at the Kinja homepage). I'm also excluding people directly associated with Gawker, though I am including people associated with the partners, if that makes sense.

Why 9 posts? Because the 10th most popular post was about a zoo in Indonesia killing a lion that nobody should read under any circumstances (though you can here if you want to feel terrible for the rest of the day).

So without further ado: the top posts, by unique user visits:

#9 Paper Airplane Shot Hits Peru Defender, England Crowd Loses Shit

This was all over the news in May. Worth a watch if you missed it the first time. I've read that some people think this was spliced together from multiple videos. I can't comment on the veracity of the story.

#8 Barn Find Messerschmitt Starts After Being Stored For 45 Years

Amazing find from Planelopnik, one of Kinja's most popular blogs.

#7 The Iron Sheik's Online Renaissance, And Why We Should Ignore It

3,100 well researched words on a former professional wrestler's twitter account. Kinja!

#6 The Erasure of Maya Angelou’s Sex Work History

A super interesting post about a part of Maya Angelou's life I knew nothing about.

#5 A discussion of the Ray Jasper Death Row issue from a family member of the victim

A response to a (now executed) killer's letter by a victim's brother

#4 5 New Things in Pokémon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire That I'm Thankful For

Something about Pokémon. idk.

#3 Stories I Won't Tell You

BatmansRobyn doesn't take us through some uncomfortable/scary moments with men after the Isla Vista killings.

#2 Brutally-honest posters of this year's Oscar-nominated films

Lulz from CollegeHumor via Roadtrippers' Tatiana Danger (whose blog is fantastic, btw).

#1 Sony Hack Re-ignites Questions about Michael Jackson's Banned Song

Just 2 weeks ago, in the wake of the non-indictments in the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, new poster DB Anderson put out a great piece about Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us".

Earlier this month, Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan made headlines for failing to secure an indictment for Daniel Pantaleo, the Staten Island NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner. This week, Donovan is in the papers again, this time as the Republican Party's "clear front runner" for the congressional seat opened up by outgoing representative/convicted felon Michael Grimm.

According to The New York Observer, sources within the Staten Island GOP say Donovan "has emerged as the strongest candidate" and will likely win the party's backing in the upcoming special election.

Donovan has yet to formally announce his candidacy, but on Tuesday he released a statement saying he was "very seriously considering the race."

From the Staten Island Advance:

[Staten Island Borough President Guy] Molinari said he doesn't think the grand jury decision in the Eric Garner case will hurt Donovan, even as some criticized the district attorney's handling of the case.

"He did what you're supposed to do: He brought the facts before a grand jury and the grand jury spoke," Molinari said. "That's a tough part of the business."

Among the lingering questions surrounding the Garner case: Donovan's unexplained decision to leave a reckless endangerment charge against Officer Pantaleo off the table.

Others were more direct in their assessment of how the case affected Donovan's reputation.

"He could have killed the guy himself and still would get re-elected," one Island Democrat told The Daily Beast. "Everybody just loves Danny. To them, the guy can do no wrong."

[Image via AP Images//h/t Wall Street Journal]

Happy New Year! I bet you feel like shit.

Since it's officially 2015, and our generosity tanks have been replenished to their maximum capacities (three uncomplicated acts of kindness for every 365 days), we've vowed to help you out during your time of need and trial.

You, the hungover, may have one cure for your brain pain, but we, the writers who had the forethought to scribble down our hangover cures before our own hangovers even began, have several. If your old standby of a plate of oysters and a glass of ice-cold water is not working out today, a number of other options exist. Try one, or try them all—who cares, it's 2015. Big whoop.

Hydrate and Complain

Wake up. If you think you can boot, puke hard. Drink water. Go back to sleep for like three more hours. Wake up and immediately start bitching to anyone around you, or if no one is around you, FB, Twitter, and text recipients. Make brunch plans and then blow them off. Drink a lot more water, and complain more until you're ready to go back to sleep. Sit upright in bed on your laptop and/or tablet around like 4 pm and start making dinner plans. Keep drinking water until you feel well enough to stand up, and then show up late to dinner, complaining a lot about how much you feel like shit. Be a downer and pain in the ass throughout dinner, making everyone listen to your complaints of self-inflicted headache and nausea, until you sense they wish you hadn't come at all. Then have a drink and mellow out! —Sam Biddle

Don't Drink

Only drink Diet Mtn Dew. —Hamilton Nolan

Get High

I usually chug a lot of water the night before, if I'm able to keep my head vertical enough to do so. Since I am usually not, when I do wake up with a hangover, I go back to sleep until it is gone. And then I work out to sweat out any residual hangover effects. Basically, I don't get insanely drunk on work nights ever. I prefer weed. :) —Rich Juzwiak

Go to Iraq

Three easy steps: Go to Iraq for a year. Assiduously follow local customs and US military rules against drinking alcohol. Return home with no taste for liquor but a strong urge to smoke all the marijuana. —Adam Weinstein

Your Guess Is as Good As Taylor's

There is no hangover cure. But things or activities that make them more tolerable include: lying perfectly still with your eyes closed, throwing up, a hot shower, a bacon egg and cheese on a toasted everything bagel, yellow or red Gatorade, Advil, complaining, multiple naps. —Taylor Berman

Watch Hope Floats

There is only one process to cure a hangover. Step 1: chug Pedialyte when you wake up. Be sure to chase the Pedialyte with two ibuprofen. Step 2: immediately eat a cheeseburger or breakfast tacos or the fattiest meal you can get your hands on—you might feel real dizzy going out to get the food, but you have to power through. You can get the food delivered, but the lack of exposure to fresh air will prolong the healing process. Step 3: Avoid work emails and looking at your texts from the night before because both will create unnecessary anxiety. Instead, go back to bed and watch Hope Floats until the late afternoon, making sure to shower at some point before the sun sets. By the time you get out of the shower, you'll be ready to go all over again. —Lacey Donohue

Take Period Pills

I am very serious about this, it 100% works. Before you go to bed, set out 2-4 MIDOL (must be MIDOL) and a huge glass of water. Set your alarm for 30 minutes before you have to get up, and consume the MIDOL and water then. Go back to sleep. When you actually get up, the caffeine and acetaminophen will be kicking in. MIDOL also acts as a diuretic which will help flush out all the bad toxins (probably). Make sure you have some more MIDOL for later in the day. —Allie Jones

Wait. Two Days.

Despite what you've likely been told in other blurbs, there is no cure for a hangover—there is only the passing of time. Completing this remedy is simple. Wake up, feel like garbage. Stay in bed, feel worse. Get out of bed, have some water, feel slightly better. Immediately following that brief moment of optimism, feel worse than you have all morning. Barf? Almost certainly. Feel bad for the rest of the day. Think, "At least tomorrow I'll feel better. I can't wait for tomorrow." Wake up the next day with a headache, feeling like you've spent the night on a tilt-a-whirl. Are you fucking serious? Yes. Wait until the sun sets and rises again. Only then will you feel mostly better. —Kelly Conaboy

Hydrate and Shut the Fuck Up

The way I recover from a hangover is the same way I get better from a cold or the flu: drink water. I'm not talking about some wimpy sips here or there. I mean, get the fuck out of bed, shower (ahhhhh), and go buy two gallon jugs of water from wherever (they're cheap). Your job is to drink all that water. Stop asking me "How???" and start drinking. More. "But.." SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DRINK MORE WATER. You will have to pee approximately 10,000 times, but you'll get over it—and your hangover. —Aleksander Chan

Keep a Tight Schedule

7 a.m.: Pee. Chug water. Go back to bed.

11 a.m.: Get up again. Drink water. Excedrin migraine. Coffee.

12 p.m.: Cheeseburger, fries, cola

1 p.m.: Bourne Supremacy

3 p.m.: Bourne Ultimatum (nap at your discretion; the Moby track at the end credits sounds like an alarm)

5 p.m.: Potato chips and Party Down or New Girl, whichever you have watched less recently

6:30 p.m.: You should be cured and ready for another night out at this point —Max Read

Hydrate and Sleep

Sleep and water. —J.K. Trotter

Drink Tomato Juice

I always manage to be hungover on planes, and on one fateful flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles a few years ago, I fainted from the blunt throbbing in my dome. I woke up with an air hostess cradling my head, pouring orange juice into my forcibly-opened mouth. The orange juice was good, but the pain subsisted for the entire day and into the next.

Maybe it's my fond memories of the times I've had hangovers on planes where baby cans of tomato juice are in rich supply or maybe it actually works, but I've started drinking tomato juice to ease the pain. The saltiness and sweetness alleviate the ache somehow, and if I'm too nauseated to eat food, tomato juice feels basically like a meal. I'll also go on long walks in the sun, even if it is the hardest task I've ever completed. —Dayna Evans

Follow Hamilton's Advice

Don't drink (if Hamilton hasn't already said this). —Leah Finnegan

Drink Arizona Iced Tea

If you're too dumb or drunk to remember to stay hydrated the night before, there are a few morning-after cures I live by. First, fluids: water, blue Gatorade, and Arizona iced tea are key. In addition to replenishing your parched body, these drinks will also help wash down the Advil/ibuprofen that'll stop your head panging and help you get out of bed for step two: foodstuffs. I recommend a toasted sesame bagel with peanut butter, or, alternatively, pizza. Don't know why, but they'll make you feel much better. Finally, you're ready to proceed to the third step: fresh air. Get yourself out of your damn house. If you have a balcony, congratulations and I hate you, now take a nap on it. Otherwise, take a walk around the block. Breathe in the fresh air and swear with god as your witness you'll never drink again—until next weekend.—Gabrielle Bluestone

Gatorade and Tylenol, Repeat

This is how to cure a hangover: water and Tylenol before bed, Gatorade and Tylenol when you wake up, make yourself an egg sandwich, drink more Gatorade (buy Gatorade before you get home), lay on the couch all day and watch television. There is no other way to weather the storm. —Jordan Sargent

Pre-Hydrate

How to avoid a hangover: just before going to bed, fill a large glass with water and drink it, then fill it up and drink it again, and repeat this process for as long as you can take it but not long enough that you feel like you're going to vomit. If you were too drunk to complete step one, or if your affliction is so severe that it wasn't effective, enjoy a hot shower and breakfast of black coffee and a sandwich containing bacon or sausage upon waking. It isn't a fancy solution, but filling a toilet bowl with chunks of yesterday's FourthMeal™ because you added too much Bacardi to your Mountain Dew isn't really a fancy problem, either. —Andy Cush

There is Balm in Gilead

—Jay Hathaway by way of Achewood

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

A North Korean defector now working as an activist in South Korea told the Associated Press that he plans to drop 100,000 copies of The Interview into North Korea by balloon.

Activist Park Sang-hak claims that the Human Rights Foundation is financing the production of 100,000 DVDs and USB sticks carrying copies of the film, which he will drop by balloon if weather permits.

"North Korea's absolute leadership will crumble if the idolization of leader Kim breaks down," Park told the AP.

The Human Rights Foundation did not confirm their involvement in this scheme to the AP and did not immediately return a request for comment from Gawker, although they are currently running a campaign on Indie Go Go to "smuggle and airdrop films, literature, encyclopedias, and media into information-starved North Korea."

North Korea has tried to have Park killed several times.

Update, 1:35 p.m. – From a statement provided to Gawker by the Human Rights Foundation:

It is HRF's commitment to put 100,000 copies of "The Interview" into North Korea in 2015. This effort will take place throughout the year, in conjunction with the distribution of a range of different films and media, and will be conducted in partnership with multiple defector organizations.

As one of the human rights organizations that considers property rights to be a fundamental and key component of a free society, HRF does not engage in nor does it encourage the violation of copyright or intellectual property rights. In the specific case of The Interview, we were approached by an executive from the company involved in the electronic distribution of this film and are currently in useful communications to explore the options available to make distributing this film in North Korea a reality.

"Mr. Park is the head of Fighters for a Free North Korea, one of several defector organizations that we will be working with," HRF's director of institutional affairs Alex Gladstein wrote in an email.

[Image via AP Images | h/t Ars Technica]

Goldman Sachs paid its top employees in the U.K. twice as much as other banks in the U.K. in 2013, according to Reuters, and also more than its employees right here at home, which may "cause internal friction." Uh oh!

Minimum wage increases go into effect in 20 states today, bringing the total of states that exceed the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour to 29.

The increases, of course, are marginal at best. New Jersey's minimum wage, for example, has increased to $8.38/hour from $8.25—a result of automatically adjusting for inflation. A report by the New Jersey Policy Perspective found that a "survival budget" in that state for a single person would require a wage of $13.78/hour.

"That's going to be unnoticeable, really," Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, told the New York Times. "If you're talking about an increase of a buck or two bucks, then maybe there's some kind of noticeable effect."

But some states are getting more ambitious, passing laws that mandate wage increases in 2016, 2017, and even 2018. Vermont passed a law that will bring the state's minimum wage up to $10.50 per hour in 2018, Al Jazeera America reports.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Arkansas, Hawaii, Maryland, Nebraska, South Dakota, and West Virginia's minimum wage will be greater than the federal level for the first time. Other states that will see increases today are Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

The minimum wage in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington will also increase due to "automatic adjustments to keep wages in line with inflation," the Monitor reports.

Also, Alaska's minimum wage will increase in late february and Washington, D.C.'s in mid-2015.

The federal minimum wage has not increased since 2007.

[Image via AP Images]