On April 1, 1996, readers in five major U.S. cities opened their newspapers to learn from a full page announcement that the Taco Bell Corporation had purchased the Liberty Bell from the U.S. government. The announcement reported that the company was relocating the historic bell from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Irvine, California. The move, the corporation said in the advertisement, was part of an "effort to help the national debt".

　　Hundreds of other newspapers and television shows ran stories related to the press release on the matter put out by Taco Bell's public relations firm, PainePR. Outraged citizens called the Liberty Bell National Historic Park in Philadelphia to express their disgust. A few hours later the public relations firm released another press announcement stating that the stunt was a hoax.

　　White House press secretary Mike McCurry got into the act when he remarked that the government would also be "selling the Lincoln Memorial to Ford Motor Company and renaming it the Lincoln-Mercury Memorial".

　　Crop Circles

　　Strange, circular formations began to appear in the fields of southern England in the mid-1970s, bringing busloads of curious onlookers, media representatives, and believers in the paranormal out to the countryside for a look.

　　A sometimes vitriolic(讽刺的)debate on their origins has since ensued(跟着发生), and the curious formations have spread around the world, becoming more and more elaborate as the years go by.

　　Some people consider the crop formations to be the greatest works of modern art to emerge from the 20th century, while others are convinced they are signs of extraterrestrial communications or landing sites of UFOs.

　　The debate rages even today, although in 1991 Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two elderly men from Wiltshire County, came forward and claimed responsibility for the crop circles that appeared there over the preceding 20 years. The pair made the circles by pushing down nearly ripe crops with a wooden plank suspended from a rope.

　　Moon Landing—a Hoax?

　　Ever since NASA sent astronauts to the moon between 1969 and 1972, skeptics have questioned whether the Apollo missions were real or simply a ploy to one-up(领先)the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The debate resurfaced and reached crescendo levels in February 2001, when For television aired a program called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?

　　Guests on the show argued that NASA did not have the technology to land on the moon. Anxious to win the space race, NASA acted out the Apollo program in movie studios, they said. The conspiracy theorists pointed out that the pictures transmitted from the moon do not include stars and that the flag the Americans planted on the moon is waving, even though there is though to be no breeze on the moon.

　　NASA quickly refuted these claims in a series of press releases, stating that any photographer would know it is difficult to capture something very bright and very dim on the same piece of film. Since the photographers wanted to capture the astronauts striding across the lunar surface in their sunlit space suits, the background stars were too faint to see.