Claim: Facebook will be closed for maintenance from Feb. 29-31 in 2011.
Examples:[Collected via e-mail, February 2011]
Saw this rumor in a friends facebook status. Is this true?
Facebook will be closed for maintenance from Feb. 29-31. Many people will try to login from February 29 to 31, only to find the site closed. Please repost so that your FB friends have warning and do not face mental health problems due to FB withdrawal. I will be placing my brain in a vault for those three days. My FB friends let me know (thank you Carolyn!). I am passing it forward
Origins: For as long as the Internet has been in common use, pranksters have spread hoax messages proclaiming that some popular service (such as Facebook), or the Internet as a whole, will be shutting down (either permanently or for temporary maintenance) on a particular date.
The message reproduced above, proclaiming that Facebook will be "closed for maintenance" from Feb. 29-31, is a double-whammy prank in that same vein: not only is the notion that Facebook will be shutting down in order to perform "maintenance" a hoax, but the dates cited for that shutdown —Feb. 29, 30, and 31 — are non-existent, as the month of February has only 28 days in 2011.
