If It's On The Internet, It Must Be True

Like Rich's habitual chain-emailer, the bane of my electronic solitude (in addition to the flagrant "reply to all" button abuser) is the well-intentioned urban legend email purveyor.
If you're like me, and thank goodness not many of you are, you want to politely shake these "good samaritans" by the neck and suggest that despite the seeming urgency required to protect me from the evils of devil-worshipping soap merchants and larvae-infested carbonated beverages and novelty candies that just the scantest amount of research might be in order before filling my Inbox with "PLEASE READ..." messages.

However, in fairness to these happy zealots, it can sometimes be tricky to separate Internet fact from Internet legend. So with this in mind, I ask you, the enlightened Realm rabble, to see if you can identify which of the following statements are true (fact) or false (urban legends) without trying to research them first:

• Lemmings periodically commit suicide by marching over cliffs and into the sea. -- False
• The federal holiday observed in the United States on the third Monday of February is officially designated as "Presidents' Day." -- False
• A frog placed in water that is brought to a boil through gradual temperature increase will make no attempt to escape. -- False
• At age 37, Jack Nicholson discovered that the woman he'd always thought his sister was actually his mother. -- True
• The airplane that carried Buddy Holly to his death was named American Pie. -- False
• Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham after being challenged by his editor to produce a book using fewer than fifty different words. -- True
• The full name of the title character in the television series Gilligan's Island was "Willy Gilligan." -- In dispute
• For five years, Webster's New International Dictionary mistakenly included an entry for "dord", a word which did not exist. -- True
• Monkee Mike Nesmith's mother was the inventor of Liquid Paper correction fluid. -- True
• A lightbulb manufactured in 1901 still burns bright to this day. -- True

I'll post the answers on Thursday, but please resist the urge to then email all of your coworkers about the ones that are true. I'd consider it a personal favor. After all, it's a lot different to subject yourself to inane babble by choice when you visit a blog, then it is to have it foisted upon you through email... or at least it seemed that way when I started this post.

Thanks for your consideration.

P.S. I apologize in advance to all the true good samaritans throughout the Realm, if I have sullied them by association with this post.

Urban Legends