Science Fair Project Encyclopedia

Anthrax hoaxes

October 10, 2001: An office building in Montreal is evacuated after Globe International receives an envelope from American Media in Boca Raton. The envelope is not opened, is recovered by firefighters, and is later found to be harmless.

October 12: The New York Times briefly closes its offices after Judith Miller, a reporter who coauthored "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War", receives an envelope postmarked October 5 from St. Petersburg, Florida containing a white, sweet-smelling powder. The letter was addressed with crude handwritten block letters, with no return address. She opens it at 9:15 a.m. EDT and the powder coats her face and hands. It is later found not to contain anthrax. 32 employees were tested, and none were found to have been exposed to anthrax.

October 17: The FBI arrests a third person for sending a hoaxed anthrax letter. The Rhode Island man mailed it to his friend, who called 9-1-1.

October 18: In Nairobi, Kenya, the Kenyan health minister announces that a letter sent from Atlanta to a Kenyan citizen tested positive for anthrax spores. Two other suspicious envelopes, one of which was sent to a Nairobi United Nations office, are being tested. These all test negative.

December: Clayton Lee Waagner, 45, was arrested for sending more than 550 anthrax hoax letters to women's health clinics.

March 13, 2002: The FBI announces that 10 fake anthrax letters were mailed to various Hispanic organizations in the past two days. These letters all contained a white powder that was not anthrax. Although no one is arrested yet for this crime, at least 35 others have been arrested in the U.S. for similar hoaxes.

10-26-2009 08:16:03
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