Mary Woodbridge’s Everest Expedition

Mary Woodbridge’s Everest Expedition is a fairly new viral campaign from Mammut in Switzerland. Cup of Java has more detailed information on the story:

…featuring an 85-year old woman who had bought herself a Mammut jacket and suddenly found herself wanting to conquer Mount Everest with her dachshund Daisy

The interesting thing about this scoop: over 250 newspapers, TV-Stations, etc. have written about the 85-year-old trying to climb Mount Everest.
A German site has more background on how the media were fooled (or rather: took part in the nonsense by not researching properly).

To some extent that reminds me of the fictional character Chad Kroski, that T-Mobile invented – and for which it got into massive trouble, when they faked a wikipedia entry. (Which still exists – now with the complete information, though.)