Cyrillic glitch
On 17 August I was feeling moody about something and decided to mock-up an image of a Runcorn Weekly News flag flying above The Reichstag, as depicted in the iconic World War II photograph of Red Army troops in Berlin. It was a rough rushed job using Microsoft Paint to create my ‘flag’ from a Weekly News masthead then Adobe Photoshop to rotate it and add a sepia tint before returning to Paint to reduce it to fit onto a downloaded image of the Reichstag photograph. I used the pipette tool to blur out the obvious deficiencies in my cutand-paste ability. I then posted it on my Twitter feed and emailed it to two colleagues.
A week later, on the evening of 24 August, I had another look at the mock-up image and realised that the first ‘R’ in ‘Runcorn Weekly News’ had reversed so that it appeared as a Cyrillic letter. No other letters were reversed and the only other discernible change was some slight warping of the letter ‘n’, but it was more or less the same.
My initial reaction was one of feeling spooked – in more ways than one – and a slight sense of awe. The first theory to spring to mind was that someone in a Russian government department had played a goodnatured prank and hacked Twitter somehow and doctored the image. I then considered that maybe it was just the work of an independent hacker or Russian patriot. The next day I raised it with my boss who found it amusing, and also with one of my colleagues. She reminded me that I had sent the image via email and not just on Twitter so I went back and checked the original in the email, which was sent at 5.14pm, five minutes before I tweeted the image. I also retrieved what I presume to have been the ‘original’ from my desktop recycle bin. Both featured the reversed ‘R’. I remain completely baffled and am eager to find out if anyone else has had such an experience or can explain it.
At present the most likely explanation appears to be a combination of a software glitch and coincidence. My concern is that people, quite understandably, will suspect I have done it myself as a prank or publicity stunt, but as a news reporter I realise that such a strange claim could undermine my credibility. The decision to go public is not taken lightly, but in the spirit of complete honesty and inquiry. An unusual truth is still a truth and to erase it from public record for the sake of reputation would be dereliction of duty. Publish and be damned. Oliver Clay Reporter, Runcorn and Widnes Weekly News (Cheshire)