Fake 140 Year Old Hot Dog Hoax Fools CNN

It looks like CNN got Punk’d.

Earlier today the popular news website ran a story on a 140-year-old hot dog that had reportedly been found encased in ice under the Coney Island boardwalk.  The amazing hot dog had somehow remained in tact and easily recognizable.

Interesting how a block of ice survived in a place where subways can often exceed 90 degrees in the summertime isn’t it?

The story turned out to be a hoax and has since been yanked from CNN’s website.  It’s a bit too late now, though, as the story has propagated all over the blogosphere.

Officials at the Coney Island History Project had put the “ancient” wiener on display, saying that it was discovered during the demolition of the historic Feltman’s Kitchen, which just happens to be the place where the world’s first hot dog was made.

They trotted it out in a sidewalk display with a sign stating that it was the “1st Hot Dog.”

Too bad it was all an elaborate hoax.

“The recent discovery by an amateur archaeologist of the ’140 Year Old Feltman’s Hot Dog’ encased in ice along with a bun, [and] an original receipt from Feltman’s, … was a publicity stunt in the grand tradition of Coney Island ballyhoo,” said Tricia Vita, spokeswoman for the history project.”

She added that the prank was an example of Coney Island publicity history, and said it was meant to emulate the style of press great Milton Berger, known for his P.T. Barnum-like style of hype.

“Mr. Berger was a veteran of the Damon Runyonesque school of Broadway press agentry and the last of the Ballyhoo Boys,” she said. “Before he came to Coney Island in 1952, his fellow publicists always remembered that Milton Berger got a man to sue a barber claiming he had ruined his toupee giving his a haircut, the idea of course being that the toupee was so good, it even fooled the barber.

“In Coney Island, the flamboyant Mr. Berger was a master at estimating attendance.. He was famous for telling the papers there were 2 million on the beach, rain or shine,” she said.

In this day in age, however, even she is surprised at how quickly things spread, thanks to the internet.

“I was surprised in the beginning at how many people believed it was true,” she said. “But after reading all the buzz about it on Twitter and the internet, I’m not really that surprised because people want to believe these types of things are true.”

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