In fact, Smith did so much work on behalf of his imaginary friend that Burdell eventually graduated.When other students found out about the hoax, they helped keep Burdell's story going.  According to his rÃ©sumÃ©, Burdell flew 12 missions over Europe during World War II and served on MAD magazine's Board of Directors from 1969 to 1981. In 2001, when Burdell was supposedly 90 years old, he nearly became Time magazine's Person of the Year after garnering 57 percent of online votes.  Today, Burdell is one of Georgia Tech's most celebrated alums. He even has a page on Facebook, where he keeps in touch with more than 4,000 "friends."  Very few film critics had anything nice to say about Rob Schneider's 2001 comedy "The Animal". One exception: movie reviewer David Manning of the so-called Ridgefield Press, who called the movie "Another winner!"  In reality, Sony marketing executives created the fictional critic to promote the company's worst films. In fact, "The Animal" was just one of many box office bombs that Manning enthusiastically praised. He also lent his critical support to "Hollow Man", "Vertical Limit", and "The Patriot".  After reading about the deception in Newsweek, two California movie lovers, Omar Rezec and Ann Belknap, decided to sue Sony. They filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all filmgoers who saw movies based on Manning's "reviews."  In the end, Sony settled out of court, paying real money to anyone duped by the fake critic.  Sometimes life imitates art, and sometimes life mocks it. In 1998, Scottish novelist William Boyd wrote a book called "Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960".  The book was pure fiction, but Boyd released it as a biography because he wanted to see how long it would take the art world to figure out that Tate never existed. To help sell the story, Boyd enlisted some powerful friends, including author Gore Vidal (who is liberally quoted throughout the book) and rock star David Bowie.
The dream studentGeorge P. Burdell was a man born of a simple mistake. In 1927, someone in the admissions office at Georgia Tech accidentally sent student Ed Smith two registration forms instead of