Microsoft Acquires the Church: This one is probably king of the "Forwards from Grandma" genre of Internet hoaxes that invade our inboxes on a daily basis. It was a bogus press release passed around in 1994 that claimed Bill Gates "will acquire the Roman Catholic Church in exchange for an unspecified number of shares of Microsoft common stock." Yeah, it's totally ludicrous, but you need to remember that computers and the Internet were just starting to catch on at the time, and Microsoft was seen as this magic company with unlimited resources. For that reason, this dumb email was forwarded around to millions upon millions of people, many of whom actually believed it and called their Congresspeople to complain.