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A Neglected Anniversary
Type: Journalistic Hoax. Summary: Text of an article detailing a false history of the bathtub. What follows is the complete text of Henry L. Mencken’s article “A Neglected Anniversary,” published in the New York Evening Mail on December 28, 1917. The article presents a false history of the bathtub. Details…
Baby Adolf
Type: Photo hoax. Summary: A widely circulated photo of an evil looking baby was alleged to be Adolf Hitler as an infant. Fake Baby AdolfIn 1933 a picture supposedly showing Adolf Hitler as a baby began circulating throughout England and America. The child in the picture looked positively menacing. Its…
Blue Laws of Connecticut
Type: Fake History. Summary: An eighteenth-Century historian wrote about repressive “blue laws” supposedly once practiced in Connecticut. The term ‘Blue Laws’ describes harsh, puritanical laws that regulate public morality. Such laws supposedly existed in colonial America, making it illegal to do such things as kiss a child or shave on…
Casablanca Rejected
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: The script of Casablanca was sent to over 200 movie agents. A large number of them rejected it, many with disparaging remarks about its quality. Too much dialogue, not enough exposition, weak story line Casablanca is arguably the most famous movie in the history of film.…
Claire Chazal Experiment
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: A French magazine mocked a celebrity author by submitting a disguised copy of her novel to her own publisher, which rejected it. Claire Chazal Claire Chazal was a well-known newswoman who presented the evening news on France’s TF1 network. Like many French celebrities, she had decided…
Cottingley Fairies
Type: Photo Hoax. Summary: A series of photographs taken by two young girls appeared to provide evidence of the existence of fairies. The fairies in the photos were eventually revealed to be paper cut-outs. COTTINGLEY FAIRY HAIKUCamera ready, Two young girls patiently wait — Fairy paparazzi! (by AB) Holmes’ writer…
David Manning
Type: Fake testimonial. Summary: A movie reviewer who consistently gave rave reviews turned out not to exist. No matter how bad the movies of Columbia Pictures were, there was always one reviewer who was sure to heap lavish praise on them. That was David Manning of the Ridgefield Press. For…
Death in the Air
Type: Photo Hoax. Summary: Photographs of World War One aerial dogfights were, decades later, discovered to have been faked. A book called Death in the Air: The War Diary and Photographs of a Flying Corps Pilot was published in 1933. It contained numerous pages of spectacular aerial photographs of World…
Disumbrationist School of Art
Type: Art Hoax. Summary: A novelist painted deliberately bad paintings, which he submitted to art exhibits, claiming they were the work of a Russian genius. (left) Paul Jordan Smith; (right) Smith as Pavel Jerdanowitch In 1924 Paul Jordan Smith, a Los Angeles-based novelist and Latin scholar, painted a blurry picture…
Doris Lessing as Jane Somers
Type: Literary hoax (of the spurious submission type) Summary: Doris Lessing used a pseudonym to submit copies of a new work by herself to the publishers of her previous works. In 1983 the novel The Diary of a Good Neighbor was published in Great Britain and United States. It told…
Eighteenth-Century Literary Hoaxes
Type: Literary Hoaxes. Summary: The eighteenth century is regarded as the great age of literary forgery. During the eighteenth century literary fakes poured forth from the pens of writers. A number of factors contributed to this. First, this was the period during which print culture became ascendant over oral culture.…
Elmer de Hory
Type: Forgery Summary: Elmyr de Hory fooled the art world for thirty years with his expert forgeries of works by Picasso, Renoir, and other masters. To this day, many of his forgeries remain undetected and are in museums and collections throughout the world. Posted by: Elliot Feldman In 1955, Harvard…
Ern Malley
Type: Literary hoax. Summary: Two Australian poets deliberately wrote nonsense verse, and fooled an editor into believing it was the work of a brilliant young writer. Max Harris was a glamorous young Australian poet who was making a reputation for himself as something of a rebel as editor of Angry…
Fortsas Bibliohoax
Cover of the Fortsas CatalogJean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, was a man with a singular passion. He collected books of which only one copy was known to exist. If he ever discovered that one of the volumes in his library had a duplicate anywhere in the world, he…
Fritz Kreisler
Type: Musical Hoax. Summary: The musician Fritz Kreisler claimed that works he had written himself were actually “lost classics” written by famous composers. Fritz Kreisler During the early twentieth century, Fritz Kreisler was considered to be one of the leading violinists of his time. Part of his popularity stemmed from…
Giant Bear
Type: Real photos, inaccurate captions. Summary: Photos circulated via email showed a hunter posing with an enormous bear. Theodore Winnen poses with the bear he shot.A photo showing a hunter posing with an incredibly large bear began to circulate via email in late 2001. The large size of the bear…
Great Bottle Hoax of 1749
Type: Hoax. Summary: In 1749 hoaxers tried to gauge the gullibility of the public by seeing how many people would show up if they advertised that an impossible feat (jumping into a bottle) would be performed. Text from: Walsh, William. (1893). Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities. J.B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia. 1893:…
Great Wall of China Hoax
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: In 1899 four Denver newspapers falsely reported that the Great Wall of China was going to be torn down. A rumor subsequently emerged suggesting that this hoax provoked the Boxer Rebellion in China. From the Lima News. August 4, 1899. Caption reads: “Great Wall of China…
Hitler Diaries
Type: Forgery. Summary: A fake set of diaries, supposedly written by Adolf Hitler, became one of the most costly forgeries in history. Gerd Heidemann (right) and Wolf Hess (left), son of Nazi leader Rudolf Hess, pose with a volume of the Hitler diaries. April, 1983. Table of Contents The Beginning:…
J.S.G. Boggs
Type: Art. Summary: Boggs draws money that’s almost convincing enough to pass for the real thing. J.S.G. Boggs is a contemporary artist whose work deals with the tension between money’s aesthetic value and its economic function. He draws currency: Dollars, euros, or whatever the currency is where he happens to…
James Macpherson and the Ossianic Controversy
Type: Literary hoax. Summary: An eighteenth-century schoolmaster claimed to have found poems written by a third-century Scottish bard. The poems were actually written by the schoolmaster himself. James MacphersonIn 1760 a young Edinburgh schoolmaster named James Macpherson (1736-1796) published a translation of ancient Scottish verse titled Fragments of Ancient Poetry,…
Janet Cardiff - Walking Tours
Type: Art that blurs fiction and reality. Summary: Canadian installation artist Janet Cardiff has created a new art genre: alternative big city historical walking tours. Posted by: Elliot Feldman Janet Cardiff (born March 15, 1957) is a highly acclaimed Canadian multimedia artist. She is best known for creating a new…
Kidnapping of Nicole Riche
Type: Publicity Stunt. Summary: A French actress disappeared under mysterious circumstances. She later claimed she had been kidnapped by “Puritans” who lectured her about her immoral life. Nicole RicheAt 3 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, April 1, 1950 the 22-year-old French actress Nicole Riche (no relation to Nicole Richie)…
Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota
Type: College Prank. Summary: The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Pail and Shovel Party promised that, if elected to student government, they would move the Statue of Liberty to Lake Mendota, and they made good on their promise. Lady Liberty sinks into Lake Mendota. (Photograph by Ravi Kochhar). In February 1979 an…
Madagascar or Robert Drurys Journal
Type: Undetermined. Probably not a hoax. Summary: There has been continuing debate about whether a popular tale describing survival in eighteenth-century Madagascar was truth or fiction. Ask your average eighteenth-century Englishman about the faraway land of Madagascar, and all you’d get was a blank stare. For the English, Madagascar was…
MalePregnancy.com
Type: Hoax Website. Summary: A website that claims to document the first human male pregnancy. Mr. Lee Mingwei, supposedly the first pregnant man. MalePregnancy.com is a website that alleges to document the case of Mr. Lee Mingwei, supposedly the first human male to become pregnant. Visitors to the site can…
Man Flies By Own Lung Power
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoax. Summary: A widely printed photograph showed a man flying by means of a device powered by the breath of his lungs. April Fool’s Day Content in the Museum of HoaxesTop 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes—The Origin of April Fool’s Day—April Fool’s Hoaxes by Year1698 |…
Marcel Duchamp
Type: Art Prankster. Summary: Throughout his career, French artist Marcel Duchamp was known for playing outrageous pranks on the art world. Posted by: Elliot Feldman Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) always held the snobbishness of art collectors and gallery owners in disdain. While he was a revolutionary artist with at least one…
Melancholy Reflections
Type: Exposé of a journalistic hoax. Summary: Text of an article in which H.L. Mencken admitted inventing a false history of the bathtub. What follows is the complete text of Henry L. Mencken’s article “Melancholy Reflections,” published in the Chicago Tribune on May 23, 1926. In the article, Mencken admits…
Milli Vanilli
Type: Hoax. Summary: A popular pop duo were revealed to be an artistic fraud. Milli Vanilli accepting a Grammy AwardIn 1988 the German record producer Frank Farian discovered Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan (Rob and Fab) while they were living in Munich. Impressed by their charisma and chiselled good looks,…
Milton Rejected
Type: Literary Hoax Summary: During the late nineteenth-century a hoaxer sent disguised copies of a work by John Milton to publishers, most of whom rejected it. Text from: Walsh, William. (1893). Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities. J.B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia. 1893: 469-470. A very different sort of hoax was recently practised…
Modest Proposals
Type: Genre of satirical hoax. Summary: A form of satire that makes its point by shocking people with a socially taboo proposal. In 1729 Jonathan Swift published a short work titled A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to their Parents…
Moving the Body
Type: Technique of photo fakery. Summary: Photographers can create misleading images by arranging the elements in a scene. Photo fakery usually involves the use of darkroom tricks or image-manipulation software in order to alter a photograph. However, fakery can also be achieved simply by posing people or objects in artificial…
Naked Came The Stranger
Newsday columnist Mike McGrady was convinced that standards of literary and artistic taste were plummeting rapidly in the United States, driven down by a relentless flood of media sensationalism that catered to the lowest common denominator. So he decided to design an experiment to test the depths of the American…
New York Evening Graphic and Composographs
Type: Inventing the News. Summary: The story of publisher Bernarr MacFadden and The New York Evening Graphic, America’s first tabloid. Posted by: Elliot Feldman Although publisher Bernarr MacFadden’s newspaper, The New York Evening Graphic, only lasted a few years, its impact on mass media is still felt today, for better…
Paul Is Dead
Type: Part rumor, part hoax. Summary: In 1969 the possibility that Paul McCartney had died years ago in a car crash and been replaced by a double became one of the most hotly debated questions around the world. HOAX HAIKUSo many fake clues The three, the hand, the flowers Paul…
Pierre Brassau - Monkey Artist
Type: Art Hoax. Summary: The paintings of the avant-garde artist Pierre Brassau were revealed to be the work of a monkey. Peter the Chimp, aka “Pierre Brassau,” at work. In 1964 four paintings by a previously unknown avant-garde French artist named Pierre Brassau were exhibited at an art show in…
Report From Iron Mountain
Type: Conspiracy hoax. Summary: A book alleged to provide evidence of the American government’s plan to maintain a perpetual state of war. Front cover of Report From Iron Mountain. In 1967 the war in Vietnam was escalating and race riots were breaking out in many major U.S. cities. Popular distrust…
Retractable Capitol Dome
Type: Satire Mistaken as News Summary: A Beijing newspaper mistakenly reported that the U.S. Congress was demanding the installation of a retractable Capitol dome. On June 3, 2002, the Beijing Evening News scooped its competitors with a shocking story from America: the U.S. Congress was threatening to leave Washington DC…
Rudolph Fentz
The widely circulated story of Rudolph Fentz is told as follows: In June 1950 a man suddenly appeared in the center of New York City’s Times Square, as if from out of the blue. He was wearing old-fashioned clothes and sported the kind of mutton-chop sideburns that had gone out…
September Morn
Type: Alleged publicity stunt. Summary: Publicist Harry Reichenbach claimed that a phony protest engineered by him helped “September Morn” become one of the most famous paintings in the world. This is shown not to be the case. The French painter Paul Chabas completed “September Morn” in early 1912. The painting…
Snowball the Monster Cat
Type: Hoax Photo. Summary: A photograph widely circulated on the internet purported to show a mutant 87-pound cat. HOAX HAIKUBig cats make great pets, And make great conversation, but think of the Hairballs! (by J) Man that man is strong holding Fluffy, smiling big hate to clean that litter (by…
Sober Sue
Type: Show Business Scam. Summary: A prize was offered to anyone who could make Sober Sue laugh. Contestants did not realize it was an impossible challenge. 1907 newspaper advertisement for Sober Sue’s performanceIn the Summer of 1907 a performer named “Sober Sue” began to appear onstage at Hammerstein’s Roof Garden,…
Spurious Submission Hoaxes
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: A hoaxer takes a well-regarded work and alters a few key details, such as the title and name of the author. He then submits the manuscript to a publisher. Usually the publisher fails to recognize the work and rejects it. Every year publishers receive thousands of…
Stotham Massachusetts
Type: Hoax. Summary: A Massachusetts town, described as an example of an unspoiled New England village, turned out not to exist. Frontispiece to Ripley’s articleThe White Pine Monograph Series was a series of carefully researched, high quality brochures, paid for by Weyerhaeuser mills and edited by Russell Whitehead, that collected…
Subways Are For Sleeping
Advertisement for Subways Are For Sleeping that ran in the New York Herald-Tribune. In 1961 an advertisement appeared in the New York Herald-Tribune for a Broadway play titled “Subways Are For Sleeping.” The play had not been doing very well at the box office. Nevertheless, judging by the ad, it…
Sympsychography
Type: Hoax. Summary: A scientific article describes a new photographic process that is able to capture thoughts on film. A sympsychographic image of a cat. From Popular Science Monthly (Sep., 1896): 601.An article by the famous scientist David Starr Jordan (president of Indiana University and Stanford University) appeared in the…
Theft of the Sacred Cod
Type: College Prank. Summary: In 1933 Harvard students “codnapped” the Sacred Cod of Massachusetts. The Sacred Cod of Massachusetts. Theft is one of the classic and most-often-used tools in the toolbox of college pranksters. All manner of prized items are regularly spirited away at campuses throughout the world: statues, bells,…
The Steps Experiment
Type: Literary Hoax (an example of a spurious submission hoax). Summary: The script of Jerzy Kosinski’s award-winning novel Steps was submitted under a false name to fourteen different publishers, all of whom rejected it. Artwork accompanying Ross’s 1979 article describing the Steps Experiment. In 1975 Chuck Ross was selling cable…
The Third Eye
Type: Phony Tibetan monk. Summary: The son of a British plumber claimed to be a lama from a wealthy Tibetan family. Tuesday Lobsang Rampa The Third Eye, published in 1956 and authored by Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, purported to be Rampa’s autobiographical tale of his study and mastery of Tibetan Buddhism.…
Thomas Chatterton
Type: Literary forgery. Summary: A young man in eighteenth-century England claimed to have found poetry by a fifteenth-century priest. The Death of Chatterton, Oil Painting by Henry Wallis, 1856As a young boy growing up in Bristol, Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) spent a great deal of time with his uncle, the sexton…
Total Body Replacement
Type: Technique of photo fakery. Summary: A common form of image manipulation involves cutting-and-pasting a person’s head onto someone else’s body. Image manipulation software such as Adobe’s Photoshop allows photo editors to alter the appearance of their subjects in many ways. With a click of a mouse they can erase…
Tourist Guy
Type: Hoax Photo. Summary: A photograph purported to show a tourist standing on the observation deck of the World Trade Center, seconds before it was struck by a plane. Soon after September 11, 2001, a sensational photo began circulating via email. It showed a tourist posing for a snapshot on…
Travels of Marco Polo
Did Marco Polo Go To China by Frances Wood, head of the Chinese Department at the British Library Marco Polo’s famous Description of the World was written around 1298. It was Polo’s account of the many years he had spent in China. According to the book’s prologue, Marco Polo first…
Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Illustration from the earliest printed edition of Mandeville’s Travels showing some of the various races and species that Mandeville claimed to have encountered, including (clockwise from top left): the wild men with horns and hoofs; the people with eyes in their shoulders; the folk that have but one foot; and…
Trial of Polly Baker
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: The story of a woman tried for giving birth to five children out of wedlock provoked widespread popular outrage during the eighteenth century. In 1747 the text of a speech delivered by a woman, Polly Baker, accused by British magistrates in a court in Colonial America…
Voynich Manuscript
A sample of untranslatable text from the Voynich manuscript The Voynich manuscript dates back at least to the seventeenth century, though it is possibly much older. It is approximately 240 pages long, and its pages are filled with hand-written text and crudely drawn illustrations. The illustrations depict plants, astrological diagrams,…
War of the Worlds
Type: Radio Hoax. Summary: In 1938 thousands of people were fooled into believing that Martians had invaded New Jersey when they mistook a broadcast of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds for a newscast of real events. HOAX HAIKUThe night has grown still. Nothing stirs but that Martian blasting its…
Whatever Happened to Buckwheat
Type: Hoax. Summary: Man falsely claims to be the actor who played Buckwheat in the Our Gang film series. Buckwheat, as soon on Our GangMany child stars achieve success and stability as adults, but occasionally they go from stardom to the opposite extreme of anonymity and failure, as if dragged…
William Henry Ireland - Shakespeare Forgeries
Type: Literary Forgery. Summary: During the 1790s, a young man claimed to have found a new play written by Shakespeare. A letter supposedly written by Shakespeare (forged by Ireland) expressing gratitude towards the Earl of Southampton. (click for larger version)As literacy rates rose during the eighteenth century, a kind of…
Witch Trial at Mount Holly
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: In 1730 an American newspaper printed a detailed account of a fictitious witch trial. On October 22, 1730 an article appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette describing a witch trial that had recently been held in Mount Holly near Burlington, New Jersey. (To read the full text…
Witch Trial at Mount Holly - Text
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: The complete text of a 1730 newspaper article describing a witch trial that supposedly occurred in New Jersey. What follows is the complete text of the “Witch Trial at Mount Holly” hoax, believed to have been written by Benjamin Franklin. It was published in the Pennsylvania…
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A Neglected Anniversary
Type: Journalistic Hoax. Summary: Text of an article detailing a false history of the bathtub. What follows is the complete text of Henry L. Mencken’s article “A Neglected Anniversary,” published in the New York Evening Mail on December 28, 1917. The article presents a false history of the bathtub. Details…
Baby Adolf
Type: Photo hoax. Summary: A widely circulated photo of an evil looking baby was alleged to be Adolf Hitler as an infant. Fake Baby AdolfIn 1933 a picture supposedly showing Adolf Hitler as a baby began circulating throughout England and America. The child in the picture looked positively menacing. Its…
Blue Laws of Connecticut
Type: Fake History. Summary: An eighteenth-Century historian wrote about repressive “blue laws” supposedly once practiced in Connecticut. The term ‘Blue Laws’ describes harsh, puritanical laws that regulate public morality. Such laws supposedly existed in colonial America, making it illegal to do such things as kiss a child or shave on…
Casablanca Rejected
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: The script of Casablanca was sent to over 200 movie agents. A large number of them rejected it, many with disparaging remarks about its quality. Too much dialogue, not enough exposition, weak story line Casablanca is arguably the most famous movie in the history of film.…
Claire Chazal Experiment
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: A French magazine mocked a celebrity author by submitting a disguised copy of her novel to her own publisher, which rejected it. Claire Chazal Claire Chazal was a well-known newswoman who presented the evening news on France’s TF1 network. Like many French celebrities, she had decided…
Cottingley Fairies
Type: Photo Hoax. Summary: A series of photographs taken by two young girls appeared to provide evidence of the existence of fairies. The fairies in the photos were eventually revealed to be paper cut-outs. COTTINGLEY FAIRY HAIKUCamera ready, Two young girls patiently wait — Fairy paparazzi! (by AB) Holmes’ writer…
David Manning
Type: Fake testimonial. Summary: A movie reviewer who consistently gave rave reviews turned out not to exist. No matter how bad the movies of Columbia Pictures were, there was always one reviewer who was sure to heap lavish praise on them. That was David Manning of the Ridgefield Press. For…
Death in the Air
Type: Photo Hoax. Summary: Photographs of World War One aerial dogfights were, decades later, discovered to have been faked. A book called Death in the Air: The War Diary and Photographs of a Flying Corps Pilot was published in 1933. It contained numerous pages of spectacular aerial photographs of World…
Disumbrationist School of Art
Type: Art Hoax. Summary: A novelist painted deliberately bad paintings, which he submitted to art exhibits, claiming they were the work of a Russian genius. (left) Paul Jordan Smith; (right) Smith as Pavel Jerdanowitch In 1924 Paul Jordan Smith, a Los Angeles-based novelist and Latin scholar, painted a blurry picture…
Doris Lessing as Jane Somers
Type: Literary hoax (of the spurious submission type) Summary: Doris Lessing used a pseudonym to submit copies of a new work by herself to the publishers of her previous works. In 1983 the novel The Diary of a Good Neighbor was published in Great Britain and United States. It told…
Eighteenth-Century Literary Hoaxes
Type: Literary Hoaxes. Summary: The eighteenth century is regarded as the great age of literary forgery. During the eighteenth century literary fakes poured forth from the pens of writers. A number of factors contributed to this. First, this was the period during which print culture became ascendant over oral culture.…
Elmer de Hory
Type: Forgery Summary: Elmyr de Hory fooled the art world for thirty years with his expert forgeries of works by Picasso, Renoir, and other masters. To this day, many of his forgeries remain undetected and are in museums and collections throughout the world. Posted by: Elliot Feldman In 1955, Harvard…
Ern Malley
Type: Literary hoax. Summary: Two Australian poets deliberately wrote nonsense verse, and fooled an editor into believing it was the work of a brilliant young writer. Max Harris was a glamorous young Australian poet who was making a reputation for himself as something of a rebel as editor of Angry…
Fortsas Bibliohoax
Cover of the Fortsas CatalogJean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, was a man with a singular passion. He collected books of which only one copy was known to exist. If he ever discovered that one of the volumes in his library had a duplicate anywhere in the world, he…
Fritz Kreisler
Type: Musical Hoax. Summary: The musician Fritz Kreisler claimed that works he had written himself were actually “lost classics” written by famous composers. Fritz Kreisler During the early twentieth century, Fritz Kreisler was considered to be one of the leading violinists of his time. Part of his popularity stemmed from…
Giant Bear
Type: Real photos, inaccurate captions. Summary: Photos circulated via email showed a hunter posing with an enormous bear. Theodore Winnen poses with the bear he shot.A photo showing a hunter posing with an incredibly large bear began to circulate via email in late 2001. The large size of the bear…
Great Bottle Hoax of 1749
Type: Hoax. Summary: In 1749 hoaxers tried to gauge the gullibility of the public by seeing how many people would show up if they advertised that an impossible feat (jumping into a bottle) would be performed. Text from: Walsh, William. (1893). Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities. J.B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia. 1893:…
Great Wall of China Hoax
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: In 1899 four Denver newspapers falsely reported that the Great Wall of China was going to be torn down. A rumor subsequently emerged suggesting that this hoax provoked the Boxer Rebellion in China. From the Lima News. August 4, 1899. Caption reads: “Great Wall of China…
Hitler Diaries
Type: Forgery. Summary: A fake set of diaries, supposedly written by Adolf Hitler, became one of the most costly forgeries in history. Gerd Heidemann (right) and Wolf Hess (left), son of Nazi leader Rudolf Hess, pose with a volume of the Hitler diaries. April, 1983. Table of Contents The Beginning:…
J.S.G. Boggs
Type: Art. Summary: Boggs draws money that’s almost convincing enough to pass for the real thing. J.S.G. Boggs is a contemporary artist whose work deals with the tension between money’s aesthetic value and its economic function. He draws currency: Dollars, euros, or whatever the currency is where he happens to…
James Macpherson and the Ossianic Controversy
Type: Literary hoax. Summary: An eighteenth-century schoolmaster claimed to have found poems written by a third-century Scottish bard. The poems were actually written by the schoolmaster himself. James MacphersonIn 1760 a young Edinburgh schoolmaster named James Macpherson (1736-1796) published a translation of ancient Scottish verse titled Fragments of Ancient Poetry,…
Janet Cardiff - Walking Tours
Type: Art that blurs fiction and reality. Summary: Canadian installation artist Janet Cardiff has created a new art genre: alternative big city historical walking tours. Posted by: Elliot Feldman Janet Cardiff (born March 15, 1957) is a highly acclaimed Canadian multimedia artist. She is best known for creating a new…
Kidnapping of Nicole Riche
Type: Publicity Stunt. Summary: A French actress disappeared under mysterious circumstances. She later claimed she had been kidnapped by “Puritans” who lectured her about her immoral life. Nicole RicheAt 3 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, April 1, 1950 the 22-year-old French actress Nicole Riche (no relation to Nicole Richie)…
Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota
Type: College Prank. Summary: The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Pail and Shovel Party promised that, if elected to student government, they would move the Statue of Liberty to Lake Mendota, and they made good on their promise. Lady Liberty sinks into Lake Mendota. (Photograph by Ravi Kochhar). In February 1979 an…
Madagascar or Robert Drurys Journal
Type: Undetermined. Probably not a hoax. Summary: There has been continuing debate about whether a popular tale describing survival in eighteenth-century Madagascar was truth or fiction. Ask your average eighteenth-century Englishman about the faraway land of Madagascar, and all you’d get was a blank stare. For the English, Madagascar was…
MalePregnancy.com
Type: Hoax Website. Summary: A website that claims to document the first human male pregnancy. Mr. Lee Mingwei, supposedly the first pregnant man. MalePregnancy.com is a website that alleges to document the case of Mr. Lee Mingwei, supposedly the first human male to become pregnant. Visitors to the site can…
Man Flies By Own Lung Power
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoax. Summary: A widely printed photograph showed a man flying by means of a device powered by the breath of his lungs. April Fool’s Day Content in the Museum of HoaxesTop 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes—The Origin of April Fool’s Day—April Fool’s Hoaxes by Year1698 |…
Marcel Duchamp
Type: Art Prankster. Summary: Throughout his career, French artist Marcel Duchamp was known for playing outrageous pranks on the art world. Posted by: Elliot Feldman Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) always held the snobbishness of art collectors and gallery owners in disdain. While he was a revolutionary artist with at least one…
Melancholy Reflections
Type: Exposé of a journalistic hoax. Summary: Text of an article in which H.L. Mencken admitted inventing a false history of the bathtub. What follows is the complete text of Henry L. Mencken’s article “Melancholy Reflections,” published in the Chicago Tribune on May 23, 1926. In the article, Mencken admits…
Milli Vanilli
Type: Hoax. Summary: A popular pop duo were revealed to be an artistic fraud. Milli Vanilli accepting a Grammy AwardIn 1988 the German record producer Frank Farian discovered Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan (Rob and Fab) while they were living in Munich. Impressed by their charisma and chiselled good looks,…
Milton Rejected
Type: Literary Hoax Summary: During the late nineteenth-century a hoaxer sent disguised copies of a work by John Milton to publishers, most of whom rejected it. Text from: Walsh, William. (1893). Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities. J.B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia. 1893: 469-470. A very different sort of hoax was recently practised…
Modest Proposals
Type: Genre of satirical hoax. Summary: A form of satire that makes its point by shocking people with a socially taboo proposal. In 1729 Jonathan Swift published a short work titled A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to their Parents…
Moving the Body
Type: Technique of photo fakery. Summary: Photographers can create misleading images by arranging the elements in a scene. Photo fakery usually involves the use of darkroom tricks or image-manipulation software in order to alter a photograph. However, fakery can also be achieved simply by posing people or objects in artificial…
Naked Came The Stranger
Newsday columnist Mike McGrady was convinced that standards of literary and artistic taste were plummeting rapidly in the United States, driven down by a relentless flood of media sensationalism that catered to the lowest common denominator. So he decided to design an experiment to test the depths of the American…
New York Evening Graphic and Composographs
Type: Inventing the News. Summary: The story of publisher Bernarr MacFadden and The New York Evening Graphic, America’s first tabloid. Posted by: Elliot Feldman Although publisher Bernarr MacFadden’s newspaper, The New York Evening Graphic, only lasted a few years, its impact on mass media is still felt today, for better…
Paul Is Dead
Type: Part rumor, part hoax. Summary: In 1969 the possibility that Paul McCartney had died years ago in a car crash and been replaced by a double became one of the most hotly debated questions around the world. HOAX HAIKUSo many fake clues The three, the hand, the flowers Paul…
Pierre Brassau - Monkey Artist
Type: Art Hoax. Summary: The paintings of the avant-garde artist Pierre Brassau were revealed to be the work of a monkey. Peter the Chimp, aka “Pierre Brassau,” at work. In 1964 four paintings by a previously unknown avant-garde French artist named Pierre Brassau were exhibited at an art show in…
Report From Iron Mountain
Type: Conspiracy hoax. Summary: A book alleged to provide evidence of the American government’s plan to maintain a perpetual state of war. Front cover of Report From Iron Mountain. In 1967 the war in Vietnam was escalating and race riots were breaking out in many major U.S. cities. Popular distrust…
Retractable Capitol Dome
Type: Satire Mistaken as News Summary: A Beijing newspaper mistakenly reported that the U.S. Congress was demanding the installation of a retractable Capitol dome. On June 3, 2002, the Beijing Evening News scooped its competitors with a shocking story from America: the U.S. Congress was threatening to leave Washington DC…
Rudolph Fentz
The widely circulated story of Rudolph Fentz is told as follows: In June 1950 a man suddenly appeared in the center of New York City’s Times Square, as if from out of the blue. He was wearing old-fashioned clothes and sported the kind of mutton-chop sideburns that had gone out…
September Morn
Type: Alleged publicity stunt. Summary: Publicist Harry Reichenbach claimed that a phony protest engineered by him helped “September Morn” become one of the most famous paintings in the world. This is shown not to be the case. The French painter Paul Chabas completed “September Morn” in early 1912. The painting…
Snowball the Monster Cat
Type: Hoax Photo. Summary: A photograph widely circulated on the internet purported to show a mutant 87-pound cat. HOAX HAIKUBig cats make great pets, And make great conversation, but think of the Hairballs! (by J) Man that man is strong holding Fluffy, smiling big hate to clean that litter (by…
Sober Sue
Type: Show Business Scam. Summary: A prize was offered to anyone who could make Sober Sue laugh. Contestants did not realize it was an impossible challenge. 1907 newspaper advertisement for Sober Sue’s performanceIn the Summer of 1907 a performer named “Sober Sue” began to appear onstage at Hammerstein’s Roof Garden,…
Spurious Submission Hoaxes
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: A hoaxer takes a well-regarded work and alters a few key details, such as the title and name of the author. He then submits the manuscript to a publisher. Usually the publisher fails to recognize the work and rejects it. Every year publishers receive thousands of…
Stotham Massachusetts
Type: Hoax. Summary: A Massachusetts town, described as an example of an unspoiled New England village, turned out not to exist. Frontispiece to Ripley’s articleThe White Pine Monograph Series was a series of carefully researched, high quality brochures, paid for by Weyerhaeuser mills and edited by Russell Whitehead, that collected…
Subways Are For Sleeping
Advertisement for Subways Are For Sleeping that ran in the New York Herald-Tribune. In 1961 an advertisement appeared in the New York Herald-Tribune for a Broadway play titled “Subways Are For Sleeping.” The play had not been doing very well at the box office. Nevertheless, judging by the ad, it…
Sympsychography
Type: Hoax. Summary: A scientific article describes a new photographic process that is able to capture thoughts on film. A sympsychographic image of a cat. From Popular Science Monthly (Sep., 1896): 601.An article by the famous scientist David Starr Jordan (president of Indiana University and Stanford University) appeared in the…
Theft of the Sacred Cod
Type: College Prank. Summary: In 1933 Harvard students “codnapped” the Sacred Cod of Massachusetts. The Sacred Cod of Massachusetts. Theft is one of the classic and most-often-used tools in the toolbox of college pranksters. All manner of prized items are regularly spirited away at campuses throughout the world: statues, bells,…
The Steps Experiment
Type: Literary Hoax (an example of a spurious submission hoax). Summary: The script of Jerzy Kosinski’s award-winning novel Steps was submitted under a false name to fourteen different publishers, all of whom rejected it. Artwork accompanying Ross’s 1979 article describing the Steps Experiment. In 1975 Chuck Ross was selling cable…
The Third Eye
Type: Phony Tibetan monk. Summary: The son of a British plumber claimed to be a lama from a wealthy Tibetan family. Tuesday Lobsang Rampa The Third Eye, published in 1956 and authored by Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, purported to be Rampa’s autobiographical tale of his study and mastery of Tibetan Buddhism.…
Thomas Chatterton
Type: Literary forgery. Summary: A young man in eighteenth-century England claimed to have found poetry by a fifteenth-century priest. The Death of Chatterton, Oil Painting by Henry Wallis, 1856As a young boy growing up in Bristol, Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) spent a great deal of time with his uncle, the sexton…
Total Body Replacement
Type: Technique of photo fakery. Summary: A common form of image manipulation involves cutting-and-pasting a person’s head onto someone else’s body. Image manipulation software such as Adobe’s Photoshop allows photo editors to alter the appearance of their subjects in many ways. With a click of a mouse they can erase…
Tourist Guy
Type: Hoax Photo. Summary: A photograph purported to show a tourist standing on the observation deck of the World Trade Center, seconds before it was struck by a plane. Soon after September 11, 2001, a sensational photo began circulating via email. It showed a tourist posing for a snapshot on…
Travels of Marco Polo
Did Marco Polo Go To China by Frances Wood, head of the Chinese Department at the British Library Marco Polo’s famous Description of the World was written around 1298. It was Polo’s account of the many years he had spent in China. According to the book’s prologue, Marco Polo first…
Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Illustration from the earliest printed edition of Mandeville’s Travels showing some of the various races and species that Mandeville claimed to have encountered, including (clockwise from top left): the wild men with horns and hoofs; the people with eyes in their shoulders; the folk that have but one foot; and…
Trial of Polly Baker
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: The story of a woman tried for giving birth to five children out of wedlock provoked widespread popular outrage during the eighteenth century. In 1747 the text of a speech delivered by a woman, Polly Baker, accused by British magistrates in a court in Colonial America…
Voynich Manuscript
A sample of untranslatable text from the Voynich manuscript The Voynich manuscript dates back at least to the seventeenth century, though it is possibly much older. It is approximately 240 pages long, and its pages are filled with hand-written text and crudely drawn illustrations. The illustrations depict plants, astrological diagrams,…
War of the Worlds
Type: Radio Hoax. Summary: In 1938 thousands of people were fooled into believing that Martians had invaded New Jersey when they mistook a broadcast of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds for a newscast of real events. HOAX HAIKUThe night has grown still. Nothing stirs but that Martian blasting its…
Whatever Happened to Buckwheat
Type: Hoax. Summary: Man falsely claims to be the actor who played Buckwheat in the Our Gang film series. Buckwheat, as soon on Our GangMany child stars achieve success and stability as adults, but occasionally they go from stardom to the opposite extreme of anonymity and failure, as if dragged…
William Henry Ireland - Shakespeare Forgeries
Type: Literary Forgery. Summary: During the 1790s, a young man claimed to have found a new play written by Shakespeare. A letter supposedly written by Shakespeare (forged by Ireland) expressing gratitude towards the Earl of Southampton. (click for larger version)As literacy rates rose during the eighteenth century, a kind of…
Witch Trial at Mount Holly
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: In 1730 an American newspaper printed a detailed account of a fictitious witch trial. On October 22, 1730 an article appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette describing a witch trial that had recently been held in Mount Holly near Burlington, New Jersey. (To read the full text…
Witch Trial at Mount Holly - Text
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: The complete text of a 1730 newspaper article describing a witch trial that supposedly occurred in New Jersey. What follows is the complete text of the “Witch Trial at Mount Holly” hoax, believed to have been written by Benjamin Franklin. It was published in the Pennsylvania…