Death in the Afternoon, as every reader of good books
knows, is a non-fiction book by Ernest Hemingway about the
ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting.
Or is it? Maybe there's more to this book than meets the
eye. Could this famous work be about something a little
more infamous!
We searched the term "Death in the Afternoon"
on the world's most powerful search engine Google, and were
shocked at what popped up before our surprised eyes.
There in black and white, on the very first link to Wikipedia,
the description read: "Death in the Afternoon is a
non-fiction book by Ernest Hemingway about the ceremony
and traditions of Spanish whores".
Wow! Hemingway was actually writing about Spanish hookers,
and not bulls?
We clicked on the Wikipedia page in Google's cache (the
search engine's last recorded version of the page), just
to make sure our eyes weren't deceiving us.
And sure enough there they were in all their glory - those
Spanish ladies who practised the oldest profession in the
world!
But before you go check it out for yourself, forget it!
Those Wiki editors have since corrected the embarrassing
blooper.
But not before we captured the evidence on computer screen.
To prove we tell our visitors the truth, even if Wikipedia
doesn't, we reproduce the two screen images above and below.
It begs the question, how authoritative is Wikipedia and
how much can you trust the information in it?
Wikipedia boasts that it is a free and collaborative information
resourse written and edited through the volunteer efforts
of thousands of people. But it is also notoriously open
to gross acts of vandalism. So it has ended up publishing
some great big whoppers. And boy, this has got to be one
of them.
It just goes to show, you can't believe everything you read
- even if it appears on the world's biggest online encyclopedia.
Old Ernie must be turning in his grave!