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Whopper of the Week: Nepali Prince Regent (subsequently, King) Gyanendra

Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, June 8, 2001, at 8:32 AM ET

"According to the information received by us [they] were seriously injured in an accidental firing from an automatic weapon."

--Prince Regent Gyanendra, quoted in a statement broadcast June 3 on Nepali state radio, according to CNN. Prince Gyanendra's comment refers to the former Crown Prince (at that point, King) Dipendra's massacre of King Birendra and nine royal family members on June 1. King Dipendra died of a self-inflicted gunshot shortly after this statement was made.

"Beloved citizens, I am extremely saddened to tell you that His Majesty King Dipendra is no more with us. In his tenure as King, we as Prince Regent had addressed you earlier. In that address, we had referred to the tragic incident at the Royal Palace on Friday, 19 Jestha 2058, but there were constitutional and legal difficulties in expressing what had actually transpired."

--Former Prince Regent Gyanendra, now king (check out the Dr. Seuss crown), in a June 4 address to the Nepali nation, according to Nepalnews.com.

Got a whopper? Send it to . To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.

Whopper Archive:

June 1, 2001: Mary McGrory
May 25, 2001: Ari Fleischer
May 18, 2001: York, Pa., Mayor Charles Robertson
May 11, 2001: Ted Olson
May 4, 2001: Rear Admiral Craig Quigley
April 27, 2001: Ben Affleck
April 20, 2001: South Carolina state legislator Chip Limehouse
April 13, 2001: Gray Davis
April 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
March 30, 2001: Spencer Abraham
March 23, 2001: George W. Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department
March 16, 2001: George W. Bush
March 9, 2001: Russ Freyman, spokesman, National Association of Manufacturers
March 2, 2001: Paul O'Neill
Feb. 23, 2001: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Feb. 16, 2001: Oscar spokesman John Pavlik
Feb. 9, 2001: Lynne Cheney
Feb. 2, 2001: Bobby Thomson
Jan 26, 2001: Denise Rich

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