There’s a row of newspaper racks where I wait for the bus to work in the mornings, and one of them has the Onion “newspaper” in it. I check out the headlines as I’m standing there…you know, for a pre-work titter or two.

I don’t believe the titles, obviously. They’re so outlandish you couldn’t possibly believe them. Right? Well…evidently, Yahoo! bought the story of a Spanish-language newspaper similar to the Onion…and they ran it.

Some of this morning’s Onion titles:

Stockwatch: Google—Disillusioned investors sent this once-mighty web company’s stock into a tailspin after it came to light that CEO Larry Page was still using his Hotmail account.

Brave Woman Enters Restaurant Without First Looking It Up Online

Eagles Say Michael Vick Should Be Ready for Thursday Night Injury

Will.i.am to Debut New Song on Mars

There are a lot of other outlandish titles, some of them controversial. But they’re so ridiculous they’re impossible to believe…hence the humor.

Well, evidently there’s a Spanish-language cousin of the Onion in Mexico, El Deforma (the warp or the deformed). And evidently Yahoo! made the mistake of believing one of the Deforma’s stories. And it’s a good one.

Samsung Paga Multa de 1 Billón de Dólares a Apple en Monedas de 5 Centavos

Or, Samsung Pays $1 Billion to Apple in Nickels.

Evidently, Yahoo! Finanzas México ran with the story they read in the Deforma, according to the Guardian newspaper.

No, Samsung Did Not Try to Pay Apple Its $1Billion Fine in Nickels was the title of the Guardian’s article.

The story according to the Guardian is that Samsung loaded 30 trucks with nickels and delivered them to Apple’s Cupertino headquarters. Just as Apple’s security was about to “freak out,” Apple CEO Tim Cook got a call from someone at Samsung, who told him that the trucks full of nickels were Samsung’s payment of the royalties from the patent case.

Too bad it’s not a real story. I’d like to see that. But anyway, the Guardian did some fact-checking…

Each nickel weighs 5 grams. Five grams times 20 billion equals 100,000,000 kilos. It would take something like 2,700 18-wheelers to deliver that load. Also, there may not be that many nickels in circulation—the New York Times reported there being about 20 billion nickels total back in 2006, and there may be fewer now.