I've known for some time the joke about the American military ship insisting that another ship moves out of their way just to discover it was a lighthouse. I've always thought it was simply a joke, but today this video appeared in my Facebook feed.
It's the same story, but it's seemingly an authentic radio recording of the event.
Is this radio recording staged? Did the event take place?
It's fake.
Until the last couple of lines, the script matches almost exactly the Snopes disproven internet joke: The Obstinate Lighthouse.
That includes number of degrees, direction of suggested change, number of support ships, etc. According to Snopes it's been bouncing around the internet since 1996, but was published in various books of jokes before that. The joke itself goes back to at least 1931, and probably a lot further than that.
The Navy says it never happened.
And some of the differences in the script look like they were taken from the video USS Abraham Lincoln vs lighthouse (the bit about the dog, food, beer), which is expressly fictional.
