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The year is 1955, and you're at the airport in New York, getting ready for a flight on
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the most luxurious airline in the skies - Pan Am.
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Your name gets called, you show your ticket to the airline clerk, and you settle into
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your seat for a nice relaxing eight-hour flight.
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After a lovely in-flight meal, you fall asleep - and wake up to the sound of shouting.
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The situation on the ground isn't what it was supposed to look like.
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All the buildings look different, shiny - almost like you were in the future.
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You hear shouting from the cockpit.
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“This is Pan Am Flight 914, scheduled to land in Caracas.”
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“That's impossible.
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Pan Am Flight 914 was lost over Caracas in 1955.”
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“Wait, what year is it?”
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“It's 1982.
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This flight has been missing for thirty-seven years.”
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What?
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How is this possible?
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Did your flight travel in time to the future?
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Have you really been gone for thirty-seven years?
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How does this make any sense that a plane could spontaneously go missing for thirty-seven
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years and reappear with no time having passed for anyone on board?
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No plane has ever traveled in time - well, at least not for thirty-seven years.
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The closest anyone ever came to traveling in time on an airplane was at the end of 2017,
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when Hawaiian Airlines Flight HA446 left Auckland, New Zealand shortly after midnight, crossed
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the international dateline, and made it to Honolulu, Hawaii before it hit midnight there.
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Those lucky passengers had the surreal experience of taking off in 2018 and landing in 2017,
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and got to celebrate the new year twice, but that's the closest anyone's come to time
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traveling on an airplane.
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But that hasn't stopped the story of Pan Am Flight 914 from captivating the internet's
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attention.
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The original article telling the terrifying tale of the passengers has been circulating
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since the early days of the internet, and is full of details that stick with you.
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The article tells the story of confused passengers staring out the window in horror, as the air
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traffic controller and pilot try to make sense of the bizarre thirty-seven year gap in time.
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Unable to process the bizarre events and clearly going mad, the airline pilot takes off into
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the air again with everyone still on board, and the flight once again vanishes into thin
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air - never to be seen again.
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Conspiracy videos and articles litter the internet trying to make sense of this bizarre
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story.
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Many people argue that the plane went through a wormhole that broke the laws of time and
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space.
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Others believe the plane was kidnapped by aliens, and UFO fans try to find reports of
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UFO sightings near the time the plane supposedly disappeared and when it reappeared.
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Others believe it's some sort of government conspiracy that took the plane and is lying
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to everyone about what happened.
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Could the answer be in the notorious Area 51?
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No wonder everyone wanted to raid it!
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Scientists who are open to these theories have tried to prove or disprove the events.
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There is no hard evidence to prove the existence of alien abductions or men in black, so investigations
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have focused on the time travel theory.
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Could an airplane theoretically travel in time?
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Actually, every airplane flight does!
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This is called time dilation, a theory predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
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Because airplanes travel so much faster than people on the ground and because you're
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so high above from Earth's mass, you're less bound by gravity and time moves a little
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bit faster.
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But the time difference is tiny - for an average flight, your watch will run about fifty nanoseconds
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or zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero five seconds slower than the watch of
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a person on the ground.
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How fast would you have to go to lose thirty-five years of time on the ground?
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No one knows, but it would be well faster than the speed of light.
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So what's the answer?
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How did Pan Am Flight 914 travel in time?
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After all, if people are talking about something on the internet, it's got to be true, right?
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In truth, the story of the time-traveling flight from 1955 is a complete work of fiction,
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with no basis in reality.
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The most fascinating thing about the story is that it's an illustration of how a story
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doesn't need any basis in fact to capture the attention of the internet.
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And it all comes back to one of the most notorious tabloids in journalism history - the Weekly
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World News.
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Do you remember shopping in the supermarket any time from the 1980s to the early 2000s?
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The odds are, as you checked out, you remember seeing an odd tabloid with the most ridiculous
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headlines imaginable.
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“Alien endorses Bill Clinton for President!”
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“Volcano exposes the gate to hell!”
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“Garden of Eden found!”.
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Every week, the Weekly World News would share terrifying, bizarre, and seemingly impossible
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news.
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And almost every single article in the magazine was complete nonsense, created by the outlandish
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fiction writers behind the tabloid.
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In 1979, the magazine publisher Generoso Pope, Jr. was looking for another tabloid to supplement
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the success of his iconic magazine National Enquirer.
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While the Enquirer was known for its focus on celebrity culture and its questionable
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grasp of the facts, the Weekly World News would know exactly where it stood on the question
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of facts - it had no use for them.
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Based in Florida and printed entirely in black and white, it hired Eddie Clontz, a high-school
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dropout and former low-level copy editor as its lead editor.
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And while its bizarre articles may have annoyed serious journalists, the low-cost magazine
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certainly found its audience - in the 1980s, its circulation was over one million copies
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an issue!
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The Weekly World News occasionally published wacky real-world stories, like the tale of
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Hogzilla - the 800-pound wild pig that was shot and killed by a Georgia farmer - or graphic
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details of the autopsy of Ted Bundy.
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That last one actually got someone arrested, when the employee of the Florida Medical Examiner's
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office who leaked the photo was charged with stealing classified information and selling
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it to the tabloid.
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But the paper was best known for its tales of the surreal and supernatural.
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They had occasional articles by notorious students of the supernatural, like exorcism
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expert Father Gabriel Morath.
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Maybe the paper's most popular regular feature was the opinion columns of Ed Anger.
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A curmudgeonly character known for his extreme opinions, his signature line was “Let's
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pave the stupid rainforests and give school teachers stun guns”.
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Every issue would feature an article by Anger yelling about the subject of the week, but
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much like everything else about the News, Anger was fake.
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His columns were written by Eddie Clontz until Clonts left the paper in 2001 and other writers
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took over.
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But Ed Anger was so popular that his columns were collected in several books which outlived
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the paper.
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The Weekly World News' biggest lasting legacy, though, is the character that made them famous
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- Bat Boy.
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Not related to that guy in Gotham City, Bat Boy is a tiny monster that appears to be half-bat,
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half baby.
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The bald critter first appeared on the cover of the June 23, 1992 issue, baring his fangs
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to the reader.
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It went on to become one of the best selling issues in the magazine's history.
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Described as a juvenile delinquent, he was supposed to be one of a group of strange Bat-monsters
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living in the Ozark mountains, and repeatedly appeared in the magazine endorsing politicians,
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protesting laws, and even running for California governor.
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Bat Boy may have been another of the Weekly World News' wacky creations, but he crossed
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over into the real world when his story was made into an off-Broadway musical featuring
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such tunes as “Hold Me, Bat Boy”.
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So what was the downfall of the Weekly World News?
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After the departure of Eddie Clontz, the paper started getting a little predictable.
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Stories fell back on old favorite characters rather than trying to shock the people into
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buying a copy out of curiosity.
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How many times can you see Bat Boy doing something wacky before you figure, eh, I'll buy a
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candy bar instead?
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The editors even started reprinting some of their most popular stories with minor changes.
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The spooky tale of Pan Am Flight 914's mysterious flight into the future first appeared in 1985,
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but it was reprinted again in 1993 and 1999.
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The only difference in the articles was the date - and somehow, the appearance of the
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Air Traffic Controller involved changed completely between articles.
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As conspiracy buffs continued to circulate rumors about the mystery plane, including
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a seven-minute 2019 video that barely acknowledges the possibility of the story being a hoax
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near the end, the internet investigators at Snopes went to work.
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The rumor-debunking site was able to find evidence that the photo of the supposed landing
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was a stock photograph of a plane from 1935, not a Pan Am flight at all.
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The story was clearly a fake, but the inspiration may have come from a 1961 episode of The Twilight
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Zone.
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In that episode, a freak breaking of the time barrier sends a commercial airline hurtling
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back in time - first to the prehistoric age where they encounter dinosaurs, then to the
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1939 World's Fair.
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Did that episode of one of TV's most acclaimed sci-fi series inspire the article that inspired
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countless conspiracy buffs?
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The legend of Pan Am Flight 914 continues to fascinate conspiracy buffs, even if it's
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a fake cobbled together from a variety of sources.
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But in a final bit of irony, the Weekly World News' fake story may have created a homage
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of its own.
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The TV series Manifest, about an airplane that takes off from Jamaica and lands in the
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United States five years later with the people on board not having aged a day, is currently
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going strong on NBC with a complex plot that involves psychic powers and government conspiracies.
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The Weekly World News may have ceased publishing in 2002, but it's bizarre legacy of conspiracy-driven
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stories lives on.
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For another strange tale of disappearing airlines, check out “What Happened to Malaysian Airlines
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Flight 370?”, or check out this video instead.
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Thanks for watching, and see you next time!