This is hidden brain.
Im Shankar Vedantam.
Shortly after the 911 attacks, a photo made its way around the Internet.
It showed a man standing on the observation deck at the World Trade center in New York City.
His face is expressionless, unsmiling.
Hes wearing a knitted black cap, sunglasses, and an unzipped parka.
Behind him, a deep blue sky, views of Manhattan and the Hudson river.
But there's something else behind him, too.
A plane.
It's headed straight toward the tower.
Rumor had it the man died that day, and his camera was later pulled from the rubble.
It's an amazing shot and an amazing story, and it's totally false.
The man is Peter Guzli, and he's hungarian.
The picture was snapped several years before the terrorist attacks.
After 911, Peter Goesley photoshopped in the plane and emailed the image to a few friends as a joke.
Those friends shared the image with their friends, and their friends shared it with more friends, and soon the photo was everywhere.
Ten years after the attacks, Peter Goesley publicly apologized.
He said he was ashamed and sorry and hadn't considered the consequences.
He said, I never thought it would go out of my tight circle of friends.
That should have been the end of it, but it wasn't.