Never let it be said that the truth ever got in the way of a good story. Since the dawn of the internet, Hollywood's lawyers have been kept busy with an almost impossible tide of speculation and libel, fire-fighting rumours as they appear online on behalf of their clients whose only crime is usually to be successful enough in their trade to attract fame. No matter how many times we hear them, some of those stories and urban legends are still great to revisit. So why don't we run through the ten most outrageous rumours that some people still think are true?
1. Walt Disney Will Rise Again
The Rumour: Fearing the icey hand of the Grim Reaper, having been diagnosed with cancer in 1966, cartoon supremo Walt Disney had himself cryogenetically frozen until medical science had advanced enough to revive and cure him. He's currently stored under the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disney World.
The Truth: As romantic as it all sounds, Disney was cremated on December 17, 1966, and his ashes were interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Some might suggest that isn't actually concrete evidence, but Walt's daughter Diane wrote in 1972 to confirm the story was untruhful: "There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that my father, Walt Disney, wished to be frozen. I doubt that my father had ever heard of cryonics." And regardless of whether Disney had some interest in the science, as suggested by a couple of his biographers, the first known human cryogenic freezing didn't happen until a month after he died. And why exactly would anyone hide that story?