Bielefeld Conspiracy

"How come the German city of Bielefeld doesn't exist?"

In 1993, a student party in Kiel, Germany, was attended by a guest who claimed to come from Bielefeld. The other guests were puzzled, as none of them had heard of such a city. Computer science student Achim Held was also at the party. A few weeks later, while driving past the Bielefeld exit on the A2 highway, he noticed that the exit was closed due to roadworks – and that the city’s name was crossed out. ‘Funny,’ he thought, ‘it really looks as if the city doesn’t exist!’ He took this incident as an opportunity to mock common conspiracy theories. Thus, he created a story about Bielefeld’s mysterious non-existence and shared it on Usenet. The theory soon became a running gag in Germany.