Article Era -> 1800-1868
Hoaxes that occurred in the time period 1800 to 1868.
Articles in category "Era -> 1800-1868 ":
There are 9 articles for this category
Calaveras Skull
Type: Hoax. Summary: A practical joke by miners confused scientists for decades. Front view of the Calaveras SkullOn February 25, 1866 workers found a human skull buried deep inside a mine on Bald Mountain in Calaveras County, California. The skull was located 130 feet below the surface, beneath a layer…
Empire City Massacre
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: Mark Twain invented a tale of a gruesome murder in order to embarrass the San Francisco newspapers. In 1863 San Francisco newspapers were spilling a lot of ink lambasting mining ventures that were cooking their books, and these same papers were encouraging investors to put their…
Great Chess Automaton
Type: Technology Hoax. Summary: Centuries before IBM built Deep Blue, Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen built what he claimed was a “thinking machine” that could play chess against human opponents. A woodcut of the Turk that accompanied Poe’s 1836 article. According to Poe it was a ‘tolerable representation’ of the automaton.…
Joice Heth
Type: Show-business hoax. Summary: An elderly black woman claimed to be the 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington. A pamphlet advertising the exhibition of Joice HethJoice Heth was an elderly black woman whom a young P.T. Barnum put on display in 1835, advertising that she was the 161 year…
Journal of Charles LeRaye
Title page of A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, And LouisianaIn 1812 a Boston printer published an anonymously authored book titled A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana. Appended to this book was a section described as “An Interesting Journal of…
Perpetual Motion Machine of Charles Redheffer
A working replica of Redheffer’s perpetual motion machine built by Isaiah Lukens In 1812 a man called Charles Redheffer appeared in Philadelphia. He had with him a miraculous perpetual motion machine that required no source of energy to run. Or so he claimed. He set up a working model of…
Petrified Man
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: A newspaper article published in 1862 described the discovery of a petrified human body. The following news report appeared in the Territorial Enterprise, Virginia City, Nevada’s leading newspaper, on October 4, 1862: A petrified man was found some time ago in the mountains south of Gravelly…
Princess Caraboo
Type: Impostor Summary: A nineteenth-century British maid pretended to be a princess from the exotic land of Javasu. Princess Caraboo, by Edward BirdOn Thursday April 3, 1817, a strange woman appeared in Almondsbury, a small town near Bristol in Gloucestershire, England. She was five foot two, extremely attractive, and wore…
Railways and Revolvers in Georgia
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: A London newspaper provoked trans-Atlantic controversy when it reported that a series of brutal killings had occurred on a Georgia train. American society has long had a reputation for violence. Therefore, when in 1856 the London Times received a letter from an Englishman living in America…
