Back in 2002, I was bored at work on May 1st. while some people were out being anarchists, i was stuck in an office with nothing to do, an idea in my head and an evil glint in my eye. After a forum post by a friend, who had heard a rumour that Johnny Knoxville had died. I took it one stage further, knocking up a fake MTV news page saying that he died parachuting whilst eating a catering-tub sized tin of heinz baked beans, uploading it to a webserver i had access to at the time, and then posting an email with a spoofed url in (long before most browsers had security/phishing filters in, you could have something pointing to www.bbc.co.uk@ip_address_here/hoaxpage.html which made it look as though you were going to the proper site if you didnt know any better!)
little did I know, the whole thing exploded and went global! by the end of the day, there were pages on the BBC and MTV websites denying the rumours.
Sorry Johnny. I never thought it would go any further than a few friends on a web forum I ran :)
a quick google shows up:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1962611.stm
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-an050402.htm
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Celebrity_Death_Hoaxes/
and talk about chinese whispers! some guy apparently heard it on the radio!
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=50570
loads more at:
http://www.google.com/search?q=mtv+knoxville+parachuting+hoax
wayback machine comes to the rescue!
http://web.archive.org/web/20021011212954/http://62.49.147.102/latest/kn...
MTV Jackass star Johnny Knoxvile tragically died during filming of the new series, it was revealed yesterday.
Knoxville, 31, was being filmed parachuting from a bi-plane whilst eating a catering sized tub of Heinz baked beans, when his parachute failed to open. Tragically the backup chute also failed, and Knoxville plummeted to his death.
This is the second tragic accident that has befallen the popular MTV Television series. Three weeks ago, assistant cameraman Brett Williams, 27, was killed when attempting to film skateboard hero Tony Hawk jump over 15 cameramen filming him for the new MTV Jackass series. Brett was the cameraman at the end, and Hawk unfortunately failed to clear the jump, ending in tragic consequences.
Filming of the series is now due to take a two week hiatus while the crew mourn the loss of their frontman, but the series will go ahead according to co-stars Bam Margera and Steve-O, "It's what he would've wanted" they say.
