Hoax by Tattersall and Nevraumont

Fake News isn't anything new.  Sure social media has made the proliferation of doctored images, exaggerated tales, and non-existent statistics easy to share, but we, everyday humans, have been being duped by hoaxes a whole lot longer than since the invention of Facebook and Twitter.

Cons, scams, fakes, cures, and the like have existed for as long as humans it seems.  The first recorded report of the Loch Ness Monster was in 563. The Shroud of Turin dates to 1390. Bigfoot footprints were cast in 1811. The Fox sisters claimed to be psychic mystics in 1848.

Some of the modern hoaxes our authors mention: Milli Vanilli's lip sync scandal (which happened right here in CT at Lake Compounce, when the area that's now the Haunted Graveyard was a concert venue), Flat Earth Theory (really????), faking the Moon landing, Walt Disney's frozen head, and of course vaccines and autism.

This would be a great references for courses on digital media and social media.

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All opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of Mrs. W.

Romanov by Nadine Brandes

Every once and while you hear a claim made by an elderly woman that she is the long lost Anastasia Romanov. It was even a joke of Betty White's character Elka on "Hot In Cleveland".  I had a childhood friend who claimed to be Anastasia's granddaughter (she wasn't--I knew both sets of her grandparents, and they were 100% Italian.).

So who exactly was Anastasia Romanov? 
Read here from Wikipedia:

"Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia (Russian: Анастаси́я Никола́евна Рома́нова, tr. Anastasíya Nikoláyevna Románova; June 18 [O.S. June 5] 1901 – July 17, 1918) was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.

Anastasia was the younger sister of Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, and was the elder sister of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia. She was murdered with her family by a group of Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918.

Persistent rumors of her possible escape circulated after her death, fueled by the fact that the location of her burial was unknown during the decades of Communist rule. The abandoned mine serving as a mass grave near Yekaterinburg which held the acidified remains of the Tsar, his wife, and three of their daughters was revealed in 1991. These remains were put to rest at Peter and Paul Fortress in 1998. The bodies of Alexei Nikolaevich and the remaining daughter—either Anastasia or her older sister Maria—were discovered in 2007. Her possible survival has been conclusively disproved. Scientific analysis including DNA testing confirmed that the remains are those of the imperial family, showing that all four grand duchesses were killed in 1918.^[1][2]

Several women falsely claimed to have been Anastasia; the best known impostor is Anna Anderson. Anderson's body was cremated upon her death in 1984, but DNA testing in 1994 on available pieces of Anderson's tissue and hair showed no relation to the Romanov family."

So despite proof of Anastasia's murder, stories that she survived and fled to Siberia or America persist.  

This was a very easy read I finished in a day.  It's a romanticized tale that had a few eye roll moments for me.  Not really my cup of tea. 

A better question though is I have absolutely no idea how I got this book or how it made it's way to my to-read shelf.  It's not pre-cataloged, so it didn't come from Follett.  It's not a Scholastic edition, so it didn't come from the annual warehouse sale. It's not in my Amazon order history.

Maybe Anastasia wanted me to read this version of her story?

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All opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of Mrs. W.