Famous urban legends have a variety of sources, sometimes they come from old movies, sometimes

they're simply made up by someone and spread online, sometimes people mistake an old

fictional book for something that might really have happened.

But today's topic is a rare case, it's a famous story to be sure, but its source is

an unlikely one, military disinformation.

The Angel of Mons is coming up next, Unskeptoid.

Hey everyone, Brian here, a quick favor, we're conducting an audience survey.

We'd be really grateful if you could take just a few minutes and answer our survey.

This is the kind of thing that's sort of an engineering and marketing necessity to make

the whole free podcast ecosystem flourish.

So please check it out, also surveys are fun, you get to talk about yourself.

Please visit survey.prx.org slash skeptoid to take the survey today.

That's survey.prx.org slash SKEPTOID, thanks.

For listening to Skeptoid, I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com, The Angel of Mons.

It was August of 1914, near Mons in Belgium.

The German army was making its sweep into France in the opening stages of World War One.

Heavily outnumbered units of the British Expeditionary Force came under vastly superior German

fire, and their destruction seemed assured.

But in perhaps the strangest tale in modern warfare, the British were saved at the last

moment by an inexplicable heavenly presence.

A brigade of warrior angels appeared and wrought destruction upon the Germans, handing

the day and the victory to the British.

...