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· Were Shakespeare’s plays really authored by Sir Walter Raleigh?
· Did Jesse James escape his supposed assassination, and live to a ripe old age?
· Did Paul McCartney secretly die in 1966? Is the story of his demise hidden in several Beatles songs?
 Unless a brilliant impersonator has been substituting on stage and in marriage for Paul McCartney over the last few decades, the Beatles story—which erupted into a huge phenomenon at the time—is obviously untrue. The James story has apparently been radically diminished by scientific proof that the man in his grave is indeed the famous outlaw, while the Shakespeare legend is still up for grabs.
 From the rumored lives of ancient gods and goddesses, to the alleged goings-on of their earthly but no less stellar modern equivalents, secrets of the famous (and infamous)—such as those investigated in TV Land’s Myths & Legends series —have always kept the rumor mills and the media gossipers working overtime. It appears that whenever there are famous people or events, there are hidden “truths” that achieve the modern equivalency of myths—whether they are true or not.
 “Urban legends” are often how these modern myths are described. But urban legends aren’t only about city-based legends, such as alligators that grow to enormous size in New York’s sewers after being flushed down the toilets by their former owners.
 In fact, they don’t need a city at all. The term is simply used to distinguish them from traditional folklore. “Urban legend” was used as early as 1979 by University of Utah professor Jan Harold Brunvand, who studied them as cultural indicators. Like jokes that migrate as a virus does, these legends are dependent on a communication chain of willing carriers.
 Myths, as any Roman god can tell you, do not need to be literally true to grow. Like any good stories, they often have grown into their mature states from some seeds of truth. And these days, when the Internet and TV can carry a rumor around the world within moments of its birth, modern myths—these urban legends—can outgrow any factual ancestry faster than you can ask, “Was Lucille Ball a Communist?”
Here are some other popular urban legends about celebrities, TV, movies and pop culture artifacts, as defined by such urban legend sites as snopes.com, truthorfiction.com and tafkac.org.
Some of these urban legends blossomed from facts, while others grew entirely out of a bed of cultural assumptions. Can you pick the true ones out of this crop? (You’ll find the answers below.)
- TV reporter Geraldo Rivera was born Jerry Rivers but later changed his name to appear more Hispanic.
- Bill Gates and Microsoft will pay you $245 for every person to whom you forward a certain email.
- Walt Disney received a dishonorable military discharge in the First World War.
- Lemmings, which are not naturally inclined toward suicide, were induced to jump off a cliff during the filming of a Disney nature documentary.
- Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer was originally created for Montgomery Wards department stores.
- Movie star Charlie Chaplin once placed poorly in a Chaplin lookalike contest.
- Comic actor Stan Laurel is the father of actor/director Clint Eastwood.
- The woman that actor Jack Nicholson thought was his sister turned out to be his mother.
- In the movie The Crow, the scene where actor Brandon Lee is accidentally and fatally wounded can be seen in the movie.
- By contract, straight-faced silent screen star Buster Keaton was legally prevented from smiling on camera.
- Movie critic Gene Siskel was buried with his thumb pointing up, per his will—the same sign he gave to films he liked.
- Contractually, preparations for Van Halen’s performances must include bowls of M&Ms with all the brown candies removed.
- Rap star Tupac Shakur faked his own death and is alive.
- Many of the actors in the Poltergeist trilogy of movies have died premature deaths.
- Fred Rogers, the late, gentle PBS children’s host, had been a Navy Seal and a sniper in Vietnam.
- Actor Robin Williams paid actor Christopher Reeve’s medical bills after Reeve was permanently paralyzed, because of a promise they made to each other in acting school.
- Defense attorney Johnny Cochran’s tombstone declares: “OJ did it.”
- At one time, Coca Cola contained cocaine.
- Actor Humphrey Bogart was the model for the baby on the Gerber baby food jars.
- Back to the Future II, which came out in 1989, made an accurate prediction about the 1997 World Series.
The following are true: 4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 14 and 18. All the rest are false.
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