Piltdown Man

I've already heard about the Piltdown Man hoax. It's worldwide famous because by that time all scientists from London's Historical Geological Society believed it to be THE missing link between Humankind and Apes.

But it wasn't, Dawson, the first acclaimed discoverer of this treasure was in fact just a small-town (Piltdown is a village in UK) liar, an amateur geologist.

I found an really interesting podcast in Youtube. Not only because of the history in itself, but also to practice our listening, as it has a lot of different accents!! Good to practice for IELTS, as we know a little about the Piltdown Man hoax, and not everything will be new info for us.

If someone is interested, this is the link (use phones =D):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LGnXaf9A4c

Jimmy Wales

I started watching an interview. Jimmy was being bombarded with so many dubious questions. The interviewer was trying to make Jimmy’s creation, Wikipedia, seems like a huge mistake, once the children was just copying and pasting its content, without reading properly, and learn. Jimmy answer back with a question: Which marks are these children obtaining? Probably F or E. So, don’t blame me.

Jimmy sees Wikipedia like a traditional encyclopedia with fresh new information. It is always being updated, and when not too accurate, the Wiki’s staff keep on working to correct the errors and fake news. Another point that Jimmy emphasizes is that we must learn how to be critical about all the information we receive daily, coming from Wikipedia or not.

When he idealized Wikipedia, he was claiming for a world in which every single person on the planet could have free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

I also watched to a new Wiki program that is creating free offline Wikipedia access to countries in Africa, where broadband connection is not always available or its too expansive. That’s really wonderful!

Spaghetti trees - Huiwon

In 1957, BBC broadcasted a three minutes programme about Spaghetti trees in which farmers were

harvesting spaghetti from the trees, drying it  under the sun and finally cooking using this.

Because the presenter in this programme was really prestigious and this programme was made

by BBC that was one of the famous broadcast company in the UK, lots of people believed that story.

Even staff  in BBC didn’t doubt the truth of the programme.

The idea of the story had been derived from a class that a cameraman was taken when he was young.

Once, his teacher told the class that if there were people who would believe someone’s saying that

spaghetti grew on trees, they were stupid. 

Because at that time spaghetti wasn’t popularized and people just could see spaghetti as a can

with tomato sauce, there were not much people who knew the origin and how spaghetti was made. 

That was why many people believed the hoax that now we could think of it as a obviously fake news. 

the spaghetti-tree hoax - Minami Kamata

 I searched about the spaghetti-tree hoax.

 

 It was reported for  broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by BBC. They said "a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the family "spaghetti tree". " At the time  the UK people didn't know about spaghetti because it wasn't famous food. Therefore the audience thought it was good food for they make. The news was announced by Richard Dimbleby who was  respected by a lot of people so much. It's one of the reason many people believed the news.

 

 After I searched about that I thought the respect sometimes cause misunderstanding.
However it was fun story for me so much.

 

Sidd Finch-Chiaki Kitaoka

 I read the article abut hoaxes on the textbook and I found Sidd Finch the most interesting for me. Sports Illustrated ran the article about him. He was introduced as an up-and- coming player. The article also said he threw balls as fast as 270 km/h. It is said that many people believed this was true. I think it never occurred to people that an authoritative sport magazine do that. 
 I think the most interesting thing about this hoax is the hoaxer gave people quite an obvious hit. The hit is to read the first letters of the sentence, ''He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga—and his future in baseball.'' It says ''Happy April Fool's Day.''
 In Japan people sometimes use the similar way to this. The way is to write some sentences so that the first letters of them make another sentence when they are connected.

The Manuel Elizalde Hoax – Natsuki Sakamoto

 I knew the hoax about a Stone Age tribe, and I thought if the tribe existed, it would be fun and exciting. I have some reasons why I think so.

 Firstly, everyday life must be new. For example, even though they live in the remote part of the country, they are human, so they have to eat to survive. They have to find something to eat by themself because there is no supermarket or restaurant. Sometimes they may find something like fruits, or sometimes they try to find some animals and cut them or they could find new foods. It means that everyday life could be adventurous to find something to eat, I guess. In addition, I wander if they never drunk except water because there is no ingredient to make juice in the cave.

 Secondly, the article says they didn’t even speak the same language as other people in the area, so I want to know what the language they speak looks like. I guess they all speak special language known by an individual. They cannot communicate with each other by speaking, so it is admirable thing to live together every day. They may communicate by only using gesture?!

 The life which they lived seems to be hard and of course it’s just hoax, but I would like to live in the caves as Manuel found if possible!

Jimmy Wales - Huiwon

I watched a interview that had happened 9 years ago.
He looked relatively young and seemed enthusiastic. In the interview, it seems interviewer asked him with quite aggressive attitude but he didn’t lose his own mood. He said the future of WIKI and now I know his dream came true already.
While watching a few videos about him, I felt he was very open minded and his own business took after his personality as well.