About the Museum
The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about dubious- sounding claims, and whatever else strikes our fancy. The site is also home to the Hoax Photo Database, the Hoax Forum, the Hoaxipedia, and:

• The Top 20 Satirical Candidates
• The Top 100 April Fools

The Museum of Hoaxes is the sister site of Weird Universe.

Web Hoax Museum

HOLIDAY GAG GIFTS
Everything from the popular Farting Santa to fake Lottery Ticket stocking stuffers.

HOAX FORUM: Most Recent Posts

HOLIDAY HENRY
The festive talking holiday gnome. Record a personalized message, and listen as Henry repeats it back in his high-pitched squeaky gnome voice!
2009 JACKASS CALENDAR
Also available: the Monthly Dog Poop and Nuns Having Fun calendars.
PERV THE ELF
He'll waggle his tongue and say raunchy 'holiday-related' phrases.

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Examining dubious claims and mischief of all kinds
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Shea Cockrum thinks that extracting water from air is the solution to the world's water shortage. Honestly, I'm not sure whether he's a nutcase, or if his theories could actually work. He claims that he was extracting one or two gallons of water an hour from an "air well" that he constructed in his backyard consisting of buried PVC pipe through which hot air was blown. One or two gallons of water an hour, if he was really getting this, isn't bad at all. And according to Cockrum, this was just the beginning. His new system is even better. Like I said, I have no idea if this could be done... though I do know that an incredible amount of dew collects in my yard every morning, which is the only reason I'm reluctant to dismiss his theory out of hand.
Here's a hoax website from Denmark. It's Jydsk Atomic Power (in bad English via automatic translation here). I discovered the site through an article in a Danish newspaper (bad translation) that mentioned it, and also linked to my site. My Danish is a little rusty (nonexistent actually), but from what I can make out Jydsk Atomic Power claims to be overclocking their atomic reactor, thereby producing electricity with twice as much power. All electric devices drawing this double-strength power work twice as well. You'll be able to boil water on your stove in half the time! At least, I think that's what the site says. Any Danish speakers out there feel free to correct me.
Since I'm on the subject of free-energy cars, here's the ENOON Car by Hoax Industries. "The ENOON*-device is able to power a car for an
unlimited time period without the need of refuelling!" ENOON stands for 'energy out of nowhere.'
Earth2012 this month announced the launch of a major new project: they're going to build a water-fueled car. And they're soliciting donations to help them achieve this ambitious dream. Of course, a water-fueled car might raise a few skeptical eyebrows, but Earth2012 says the science behind their project is all very sound. The tank of their car will be filled up with water, but the water will then be converted onboard into hydrogen. So it's really a hydrogen-powered car, not a water-powered one. And hydrogen-powered cars, of course, already exist.

What makes my hoax detector start ringing when I read about their project is their description of the onboard water-to-hydrogen conversion process. From what I understand, it takes quite a bit of energy to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. This has always been one of the major stumbling blocks on the road to a hydrogen economy (the cost of producing hydrogen). But Earth2012 says that it has developed a 'revolutionary way of creating hydrogen from water.' This involves vibrating the water at exactly the correct frequency, thereby causing the water to easily separate into oxygen and hydrogen.

Maybe Earth2012 really has developed this revolutionary new process, though the details they provide about it are awfully sketchy. But it all sounds an awful lot like a water-as-fuel hoax, of which there have been many in the past... one of the weirdest being Guido Franch's claims back in the 70s that he had developed a cheap green powder that, when added to water, transformed the water into gasoline. Franch gave a few demonstrations of his powder, though never under scientifically controlled conditions, and his credibility took a bit of a blow when he confessed that the secret of the powder had been given to him by a group of spacemen from the planet Neptune. The Straight Dope has an article about Franch if you're interested in reading more about him.

Update: Parazyte has provided a link to an article (in English) about Daniel Dingel, a Filipino man who claims that he invented a water-powered car back in 1969. The rest of the site is in German, but click here to see a video of Mr. Dingel driving around in his watercar.

Kohei Minato, a Japanese inventor, has built an incredible new kind of magnet-powered electric motor. As this article on Japan.com explains, "Minato's motors consume just 20 percent or less of the power of conventional motors with the same torque and horse power. They run cool to the touch and produce almost no acoustic or electrical noise. They are significantly safer and cheaper (in terms of power consumed), and they are sounder environmentally." Sounds really great. Until you read down a bit more and get to this line, "it is feasible to attach a generator to the motor and produce more electric power than was put into the device." In other words, it's another perpetual-motion machine. Lots of discussion of this over at Slashdot. (Thanks, James).
Infinite Energy, 'The Magazine of New Energy Science and Technology,' has devoted its entire current issue to analyzing the work of Joseph Papp, the Hungarian inventor who claimed to have built some kind of fusion-powered engine that used noble gases as fuel (i.e. we're talking 'free-energy' technology here). In the 1960s he also claimed to have built a submarine that could travel at 300 mph, and in a test run of this craft he said that he travelled from Canada to France in 13 hours (the airplane ticket that was later found in his pocket debunked this claim). Infinite Energy has one sample article about Papp on its website. I've also got some pictures of Papp's submarine on my site.
Sandeep Acharya has shared with me his blueprints for building a machine that can convert magnetic energy into mechanical energy. He promises that it really works. Check it out for yourself.
A visitor named Heinz Klostermann sent me quite a bit of info about Joseph Papp, a Hungarian-born inventor who first claimed that he had built a submarine capable of traveling at 300 mph, and later claimed to have built a car engine that could run for six months without refueling. Heinz sent an article about Papp that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News in 1989, as well as an article apparently written by the physicist Richard Feynman describing a demonstration of Papp's engine. It turns out that Heinz has been working for the past three years to reinvent Papp's engine (the secret of how to build it died with Papp). If you have any info about Papp he'd like you to contact him at: AHK2@rcn.com. Also check out the comments I've received over the years about Papp and his submarine.