Want to keep track of some fascinating (?) urban myths? Go to
http://www.snopes.com/
http://www.scambusters.org/urban-legends/
http://urbanlegends.about.com/
http://netsquirrel.com/combatkit/
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~dbaxo/urban_legend.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_legend
What is an Urban Legend?
Generally speaking, an urban legend is any modern, fictional story, told as truth, that reaches a wide audience by being passed from person to person. Urban legends are often false, but not always. A few turn out to be largely true, and a lot of them were inspired by an actual event but evolved into something different in their passage from person to person. More often than not, it isn't possible to trace an urban legend back to its original source -- they seem to come from nowhere.
Thematically, urban legends are all over the map, but several persistent elements do show up again and again. Typically, urban legends are characterized by some combination of humor, horror, warning, embarrassment, morality or appeal to empathy. They often have some unexpected twist that is outlandish but just plausible enough to be taken as truth. http://science.howstuffworks.com/urban-legend1.htm
There are even such myths being created about the Tsunami.
See http://www.snopes.com/religion/tsunami.asp
There's a deadly (no pun intended) mix of religion, politics, disaster... you just might like it.
Ah, if only such things were true!
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