Republican nominee John McCain took many people by surprise when he presented first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate on Aug. 29. Media organizations, political junkies and even the campaign of Democratic nominee Barack Obama were sent scrambling to find information on the 44-year-old governor. While reporters were booking flights for Anchorage and lawyers were tearing through her records, some individuals decided to just make it up.

Within hours of McCain’s announcement hundreds of people started posting “little known facts” about Palin to the social-networking sight Twitter. Since that time more than 2,000 “little known facts” have been posted about Palin.

andrew_graham: Little known fact: Sarah Palin chews all the caps off her Bic pens. She keeps them in a garbage bag and it’s almost full.

emdot: Little known fact: Sarah Palin don’t wanna work. She just wanna bang on the drum all day.

mpesce: Little known fact: Sarah Palin once threw a javelin across the Bering Strait.

craigwisch: Little known fact: Sarah Palin invented both plaid and camouflage.

demando: Little known fact: The Russians included Sarah Palin in the Alaska purchase for no additional fee.

wolfcat: Little known fact: the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids to guide Sarah Palin to earth.

kev097: Little known fact: McCain’s been running for president longer than Palin’s been governing. Not a joke: http://is.gd/23Na
Much of what the McCain campaign had revealed about their new candidate would have fit right in with user generated campaign signs at Sarah Palin is your new segway, which builds on the Barack Obama is your new bicycle phenomenon. Many of the slogans, like “Sarah Palin is your new dimpled chad,” and “Sarah Palin is your new staycation,” stack up well against the McCain campaign’s own branding of Palin as a “pitbull in lipstick” and part of a fictional demographic known as “hockey moms.”