For more than a century a 25 kilometer island called Sandy Island sat in the Coral Sea on charts, atlases and Google Earth. In 2012 an Australian research ship passed the spot and found water more than 1,400 meters deep. Here is how a whaler’s 1876 sighting became a digital ghost.

In 1946 the US Navy sent 13 ships and about 4,700 men to Antarctica. Online legend says they went to destroy a secret Nazi base. The Navy’s own report and a peer-reviewed study show what the expedition really did, and how the myth was built.

On April 6, 1966, children at a Melbourne school watched an object in the sky that some say landed in nearby bushland. The local paper called it a mystery. Sixty years later the witnesses still want an answer.

In 1931 a silent stranger built a cabin on the Rat River. Weeks later he had shot two Mounties and led police on a 48-day Arctic chase. DNA tests on his remains still could not say who Albert Johnson really was.

In April 1935 a Berlin magazine printed a photo said to show the Tatzelwurm, the cat headed lizard of Alpine legend, near Meiringen. A search, a reward and a Swiss press backlash followed. Here is what the original reports say.

In 2003 a Weekly World News hoax about a time traveling trader named Andrew Carlssin spread to newsrooms around the world. Here is how a tabloid joke went global.

On November 22, 1987, a figure in a Max Headroom mask broke into two Chicago TV signals in one night. The FCC and FBI investigated, but the culprits were never found. Here is what the evidence shows.

In July 1897 Salomon August Andrée, Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel set off by balloon for the North Pole and were never heard from again. Their last camp, diaries and film turned up on White Island in 1930. What killed them is still argued over.