The discovery excited not just the blogosphere, who are ready to gawk at and dismiss anything the least bit interesting, but news-hungry cable TV, which presented it as news with about as much journalistic scrutiny as Ron Burgundy gave the water-skiing squirrel in Anchorman.

If it were a one-time thing, we'd chalk it up to a fluke. But we've seen this before. "Time Traveler Captured on Film" has graduated from meme to trope.

There's something about the juncture of photography, consumer tech, history (near and far) and our readiness to believe in conspiracies, science fiction and the occult that leads us to fall for this shtick over and over again.

In this gallery, we're going to examine purported physical evidence of time travel, or our belief in time travel. And our point of departure is the actor and filmmaker — shown above in his classic Modern Times — whose films are still tramping their way through our modern times.

Authors: Tim Carmody

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