Hours later, the world woke up to the image of a masked man on the balcony of the Olympic Village.

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It took weeks, Mikkelson said, for a European tourist to come forward as the creator of doctored photos of a man on a balcony of one of the World Trade Center towers with a plane bearing down.

WSJ: Hoaxes, scams abound after disasters like Boston

He also started getting the handwritten memories of countless couples who met at a Carnegie concert, of the man who, as a 10-year-old, was sitting in the hall's balcony on Dec. 7, 1941, when Arthur Rubinstein was playing Brahms and the Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor.

WSJ: Saving Carnegie Hall | Gino Francesconi | Cultural Conversation by Joanne Kaufman