David Mikkelson
David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994 as a creative outgrowth of his wide-ranging interests in a variety of subjects (particularly folklore) and his professional expertise in the computer industry. Handling everything from researching and writing articles about urban legends to managing the site’s technical infrastructure, David saw snopes.com (which antedated the development of automated search engines) quickly become the go-to place for Internet users to query about anything questionable they encountered online, establishing it as the oldest and best known online fact-checking outlet operating today. David’s educational background includes a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas (San Antonio) and about a zillion course hours of post-graduate classes at California State University Northridge taken with no particular degree program in mind. His previous employment encompassed stints with the News-Chronicle (newspaper), Teledyne Electronics, USPS, JPL, Digital Equipment Corporation, Rocketdyne, and Health Net (HMO).
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 26, 2000
Sign a petition to stop bear farming in China.
Written by: Barbara Mikkelson David Mikkelson
July 25, 2000 (Updated: Aug. 21, 2014)
Legend claims women used to maintain slender figures by ingesting diet pills made from tapeworms.
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 24, 2000
Was the Titanic's sister ship originally named the 'Gigantic'?
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 20, 2000
Was the Titanic ever advertised using the word 'unsinkable'?
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 19, 2000
Only one verified case of an adult male passenger's using an article of women's clothing to secu ...
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 19, 2000
Was the Titanic cursed because its hull number read 'NO POPE' backwards?
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 18, 2000
Legend holds that the first use of 'SOS' was by the Titanic, but ships had already been employin ...
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 18, 2000 (Updated: Sept. 16, 2022)
Astor's combination of fame and eccentricity, and perhaps a reputation for being a bit humorless ...
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 13, 2000
Music student hands in reversed version of someone else's composition.
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 13, 2000
Glurge about Hitler, Roosevelt, and Churchill.
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 11, 2000 (Updated: Aug. 4, 2022)
Failed businesses, a lost election, and the death of his mother were all said to have been failu ...
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 11, 2000
Abraham Lincoln wasn't a quitter, but he also didn't quite experience a steady stream of failure ...
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 10, 2000
When a sarcastic wisecrack becomes fact, print the legend.
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 10, 2000
A man insured his cigars against fire, then tried to collect for fire damage after smoking them.
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 10, 2000
When a strange woman asked a shopper to call her 'mother,' he never thought he'd end up paying f ...
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 9, 2000
Bill Ripken's 1989 Fleer baseball card features a hidden obscenity. How did it get there?
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 9, 2000 (Updated: Sept. 7, 2022)
Since at least the 1930s, people have shared this piece of humor about a lawyer supposedly provi ...
Written by: David Mikkelson
July 8, 2000
Man intervenes in attack; saves his own daughter?
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