10 fake photos of Hurricane Sandy

The images of destruction in New York and New Jersey are stunning. Some are also photoshopped

Shock of the century: This photo is not real.
(Image credit: Via Mashable)

Frankenstorm Sandy has passed over the New York City area on her slow, destructive path north, leaving behind a trail of wreckage and mayhem from North Carolina up to at least Connecticut. The biggest mess, though, is in New York City: The streets and subway tunnels are filled with water, power lines and power stations have erupted in flames, fires have taken out whole blocks in outer Queens — and New Yorkers with cameras, both professional and cellphone varieties, captured much of the damage. But among those stunning photos, telling the story of Sandy to people anxiously scanning their Twitter feeds, Instagram, and web browsers, a number of fakes also went viral. Some helpful journalists have laid out ways to sniff out the fakes from the real thing, and others have turned to debunking the frauds themselves. Here, a lightly curated gallery of some Sandy fakes:

1. Some of the photos making the rounds on Twitter are real, but have nothing to do with Sandy. This amazing view of a storm brewing over lower Manhattan, for example, is from an April 2011 tornado, captured on film by The Wall Street Journal:

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