Rumors that once circulated primarily by word of mouth now move at the speed of the Internet in viral e-mail. (Illustration by Ted Crow)

Somebody named Lawrence started his piece of the chain a few weeks ago. He saw the message, or got it in e-mail, and forwarded it to at least seven friends, urging them to do the same. "If you don't forward anything else, forward this!" he wrote, using exclamation points and marking it "high importance."

By the next morning, it reached more than two dozen recipients. One was Judy, who forwarded it with the question, "What is this country coming to?" Another was Jay, who wrote, "I hope this is not true."

Hoping isn't checking. But one recipient did check the e-mail, which was headed "Eisenhower in Dachau" and claimed that the University of Kentucky had removed all mention of the Holocaust from its courses out of fear of offending Muslims.

It took him only a few seconds of searching to find the story was completely false. It was, in fact, derived from a false rumor about schools in the United Kingdom, or "UK," which someone, somewhere, took to mean University of Kentucky.