April Fools Day - 1878
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoaxes. Summary: Notable hoaxes perpetrated on April Fool’s Day, 1878.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 | 1708 | 1844 | 1860 | 1866 | 1878 | 1888 | 1900…

April Fools Day - 1888
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoaxes. Summary: Notable hoaxes perpetrated on April Fool’s Day, 1888.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 | 1708 | 1844 | 1860 | 1866 | 1878 | 1888 | 1900…

April Fools Day - 1900
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoaxes. Summary: Notable hoaxes perpetrated on April Fool’s Day, 1900.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 | 1708 | 1844 | 1860 | 1866 | 1878 | 1888 | 1900…

Bosnian Beheading Rumor
Type: Rumor. Summary: During the nineteenth-century, a rumor circulated in Bosnia suggesting that a person could earn a million florins by volunteering to be beheaded in place of Baron de Rothschild. Text extracted from: Walsh, William. (1893). Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities. J.B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia. 1893: 473-474. The Levant Herald…

Cardiff Giant
Type: Hoax Summary: A stone figure unearthed in 1869 turned out not to be as ancient as many, at first, believed. HOAX HAIKUWhatever you do, Don’t call him jolly or green. It’ll make him mad. (by AB) Made for cash or pride He’s a man-made Man of stone Guess who’s…

Case of the Miraculous Bullet
Type: Scientific Hoax. Summary: A journal article published in 1874 described the case of a woman impregnated by a bullet that had first passed through the testicles of a soldier. In November 1874 an unusual article appeared in the introductory volume of The American Medical Weekly, a Louisville medical journal.…

Cassie Chadwick
Type: Con Artist. Summary: A woman financed a lavish lifestyle by claiming to be the daughter of Andrew Carnegie. Cassie Chadwick claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie. She said that Carnegie was paying her huge sums of money in order to keep their relationship a secret. Based…

Central Park Zoo Escape
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: Panic ensued after the New York Herald reported that wild animals had escaped from the New York City Zoo. “Another Awful Calamity. The Intellectual Department of The New York Herald Let Loose Upon the Public.” Front cover of the Daily Graphic (Nov. 13, 1874), mocking the…

Dreadnought Hoax
Type: Prank. Summary: A group of upper-class youths fooled the British navy into believing they were a visiting group of Abyssinian dignitaries. “The Emperor of Abyssinia” and his suiteFrom left to right: Virginia Stephen (Virginia Woolf), Duncan Grant, Horace Cole, Anthony Buxton (seated), Adrian Stephen, Guy Ridley. On February 7,…

George Washington Petrified
Type: Newspaper hoax. Summary: An article widely reprinted around the time of the first centennial of the United States alleged that the remains of George Washington had become petrified. In early 1877, an article appeared in many American newspapers alleging that the remains of General George Washington had been discovered…

Gold Accumulator
Type: Scam. Summary: A con artist lured investors with a machine that could supposedly suck gold out of the sea. In 1897 Prescott Ford Jernegan dazzled investors with his gold accumulator. When lowered into the ocean, this contraption sucked particles of the precious metal out of the surrounding waters. Hours…

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…

Joseph Mulhattan
Type: Media Hoaxer. Summary: During the late nineteenth century, Mulhattan was widely known for his love of hoaxing newspapers. Joseph MulhattanDuring the 1870s and 1880s Joseph Mulhattan was perhaps the most famous hoaxer in America. He was a traveling salesman, not a reporter, but he was notorious for repeatedly succeeding…

Locals - 19th Century Newspaper Hoaxes
The creation of the penny press during the 1830s completely changed the character of the news business. The older six-penny papers had confined themselves to business and political news, but the penny papers discovered that there was a huge market for local news: stories about neighborhood crimes, police reports, social…

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…

Monkeys Pick Cotton
Type: Urban Legend. Summary: A nineteenth-century rumor described an experiment in which a Southern planter trained monkeys to pick cotton. Monkeys picking pecans (see end of article). Throughout the nineteenth century a rumor circulated in the southern states of America alleging that a planter had experimented with training monkeys to…

Piltdown Man
Type: Hoax. Summary: Early twentieth-century paleontologists discovered in a pit in Southern England what they claimed to be the missing link between man and ape. HOAX HAIKUOrangutan jaw with human skull fools Science. Naughty Charles Dawson. (by Nefertari) Got shiny, new teeth? Stain them an attractive brown With Piltdown Toothpaste!…

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…

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,…

Solar Armor
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: An article published in 1874 described a man who invented “solar armor,” which caused him to freeze to death in the middle of a Nevada desert during the Summer. As anyone who has ever been to Nevada during the summer knows, its deserts can become scorchingly…

Stamp Hoax
Type: Hoax. Summary: Wealthy stamp collector included an unusual stipulation in his will. The following case was reported in The Fort Wayne News, Monday, June 25, 1900. Details have not been verified. The identity of this collector is unknown: The Washington correspondent of the Chicago Record tells of a hoax…

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…

Tichborne Claimant
In 1854 a wealthy young aristocrat named Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne disappeared at sea and was presumed dead. His distraught mother, refusing to believe he was actually dead, placed ads in newspapers around the world, seeking information about his whereabouts. In 1866 she received a response from an Australian man…

Wild Animal Hoax - Part 1
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: Complete text of the “wild animal hoax” published by the New York Herald in 1874. On November 9, 1874 the New York Herald published an article claiming that the animals had escaped from their cages in the New York zoo and were rampaging through the city.…

Wild Animal Hoax - Part 2
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: Continuation of the complete text of the “wild animal hoax” published by the New York Herald in 1874. (Continued from Wild Animal Hoax - Part 1.) On November 9, 1874 the New York Herald published an article claiming that the animals had escaped from their cages…

Winsted Wild Man
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: Reports of a wild man loose in Winsted, Connecticut fanned mass hysteria. In August of 1895 New York City papers received a wire story about a naked, hairy man that was terrorizing townspeople in Winsted, Connecticut. Intrigued, the papers sent reporters up to Winsted to find…