The "World News" section of Google ran a story on Nov. 8th 2003, on how millions of German television viewers have selected Karl Marx as one of the greatest Germans to have ever lived. Google ran the story under the headline "Marx, Einstein in 'best German' contest." Several news agencies were listed as covering the story... MSNBC, Reuters, ABC Online, Yahoo News, Aljazeera, and others. However, the thumbnail graphic accompanying the story... the famous black and white portrait shot of Marx... looked wrong to me.

http://news.google.com/news/en/us/world.html (as of this writing, 14th story on this page)

I followed the link to the Aljazeera story and my doubts were confirmed. The Arab News organization, Aljazeera, ran the story about Marx being a German favorite. They illustrated the article with the famous photo of Karl Marx... except it ISN'T the famous photo of Marx, it's an altered photo of a U.K. RUGBY PLAYER!

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D2FE5D27-F9A3-4317-AF95-B17F2007AD8D.htm

Let me explain how this came to be. The webpage for U.K. Rugby fans, "Stockport R.U.F.C." displays humorous photos of famous Rugby players... but with a twist.

http://www.stockportrugby.co.uk/mainclub/special.htm

Some sports fan playing with Photoshop altered well known photographs of international figures like the Beatles, John Wayne, Elvis, Oliver and Hardy, Marilyn Monroe, Mao... and yes, Karl Marx (3rd row from bottom of page). The photos are altered in such a way as to give the original personality the face of a Rugby player. The famous photo of Karl Marx was altered to show the face of U.K. Rugby player, LOUIS MARX. It's crudely done and meant to fool no one... except that it did!

If you go to Google: http://www.google.com/ ... and click on "Images" under the Google logo, you'll find a searchable data base made up of all online photos. You can type in any subject, but try 'Karl Marx'. You'll be served up hundreds of photos of Marx that are currently hosted by websites all over the planet. The first page offered in my Karl Marx photo search displayed 20 images... some authentic photos, some paintings and cartoons, and an obvious Photoshop fake. Some unsuspecting intern at Aljeezera picked the fake Marx photo... it got posted on the Aljeezera website, and in turn was presented on Google News.