By Duncan Wilson Follow @DJDuncWilson



"A man in Sweden has died after trying to have sex with a hornet's nest on his farm outside Ystad," reported the UK's International Business Times.

Other non-business related websites also scrambled to write this nasty tale up, the web ablaze with reports of this most painful, not to mention embarrassing, death. What followed, however, was far less embarrassing for the victim, mainly since he didn't exist!

Reported to be named 'Hasse' in the tale, the origins of this unfortunate nest-pest have been traced back to a Swedish satirical website called Nyheterna Sverige. The article was published in September last year.

In the IB Times report, a neighbour was said to have found Hasse "so swollen he initially mistook him for a whale carcass". Yeah, right.

Freebie London paper Metro UK also initially reported the story, saying: "Following an autopsy that revealed Hasse had 146 stings on his body – 54 of those on his genitals – authorities came to the conclusion he tried to have sex with the hornets’ nest." They later updated their story to reflect the truth, however.

While all that comes out of this is some increased traffic to the Nyheterna Sverige website (at time of writing they are upgrading the site, due to what is known in satirical circles as "The Colin Craig Effect"), it is somewhat pleasing to know that there is one less animal-abusing pervert in the world than was originally thought. And nobody died!

source: data archive