Posted by Rick Denney on July 25, 2002 at 10:29:27:
In Reply to: Re: 1812 Disaster Blast posted by Klaus on July 25, 2002 at 07:12:17:
This has all the earmarks of an urban legend. It is a moral tale that pits two wildly contrasting themes--e.g. classical music and dynamite. It also appeals to the pyromaniac in all of us. The real catch is the detail--people who concoct fiction add detail to make it more plausible. Excessive detail and precision (i.e. names and dates) give the story credence, because nobody will use that detail to check facts.
A quick search of urban legend sites (www.urbanlegends.com and www.snopes.com) reveals no information about this story, suggesting that it may not be a widespread urban legend. It achieved fame as a story when it was picked up by the Darwin Awards, who class it as apocryphal (which means that it has been authoritatively debunked).
http://www.darwinawards.com/legends/legends1998-17.html
The real debunking comes from the link below, where music librarian sent a message from the Music Librarian Association List to Charles Hymes, who runs Nonprofit.net, a repository for Internet-spread hoaxes.
http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/
Rick "interested in the spread of Internet legends and hoaxes" Denney