Bielefeld Conspiracy

In 1993, a student party took place in Kiel, Germany, which was also attended by a guest who came from Bielefeld. „Bielefeld? That doesn‘t even exist, does it?,“ the other guests wondered, because none of them had ever heard of the city. Computer science student Achim Held was also there. When he drove past the Bielefeld exit on the A2 highway a few weeks later, the exit was closed due to roadworks and the name of the city was crossed out. „Funny,“ he thought, „it really seems as if the city doesn‘t exist!“. He took the incident as an opportunity to ridicule common conspiracy theories. Thus he came up with a sci-fi story about Bielefeld‘s mysterious non-existence and circulated it on the Usernet, the predecessor of the internet.