April Fools Day - 2000
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoaxes. Summary: Hoaxes perpetrated on April Fool’s Day, 2000.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 - 2001
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoaxes. Summary: Hoaxes perpetrated on April Fool’s Day, 2001.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 - 2002
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoaxes. Summary: Hoaxes perpetrated on April Fool’s Day, 2002.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 - 2003
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoaxes. Summary: Hoaxes perpetrated on April Fool’s Day, 2003.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 - 2004
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoaxes. Summary: Hoaxes perpetrated on April Fool’s Day, 2004.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 - 2005
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoaxes. Summary: Hoaxes perpetrated on April Fool’s Day, 2005.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 |…

Bonsai Kitten
Type: Hoax Website. Summary: A website that came online in late 2000 purported to offer instructions on how to raise kittens inside of glass jars. The Bonsai Kitten website. Bonsai describes the ancient Japanese art of growing miniature trees by rigorous pruning of their roots and branches. Because of their…

Cesky Sen Hypermarket
Type: Hoax. Summary: Shoppers were promised a store that was too good to be true. In early 2003 advertisements began to appear throughout Prague promoting a new hypermarket called Cesky Sen (or “Czech Dream") opening soon in the Lethany Fairgrounds. The ads appeared on billboards, at bus stops, in newspapers,…

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…

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…

Donside Lying Contest
Type: College prank. Summary: Two students turned a lying contest on its head by lying too convincingly. Many college pranks are the result of careful planning, but occasionally they come about simply when a student recognizes an opportunity and goes for it. Such was the case with the lying contest…

Emulex Stockmarket Hoax
A US Attorney announces the arrest of Mark Jakob at a press conference held on August 31, 2000. Behind him, a chart shows the downward spike that the hoax caused in the stock price of Emulex. On August 25 2000, shareholders of Emulex Corp. were greeted in the morning by…

Final Curtain
Type: Hoax Website. Summary: The Final Curtain claimed to be a theme-park style cemetery, which allowed people to design their own graves. The Final Curtain Website. In March, 1999 an ad appeared in a variety of weekly magazines, such as the L.A. Weekly and the Village Voice. It read, “Death…

Flemish Secession Hoax
Type: Television News Hoax. Summary: In 2006, on a Belgian TV station news broadcast, it was announced that Flanders, the Dutch-speaking half of the country, had seceded from the country. Thirty minutes into the news bulletin, only after the station’s phonelines were swamped, it was revealed to be a hoax.…

Freewheelz
Type: April Fool’s Day Hoax. Summary: An article described a company that gave away free cars. 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 |…

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…

Gorgeous Guy
Type: Online Hoax. Summary: A man was accused of using numerous fake aliases in order to create a buzz about himself online. Dan Baca, aka ‘Gorgeous Guy’ Dan Baca, a 29-year-old network engineer, was going about his life, minding his own business, when suddenly people began staring at him. He…

I Buy Strays
Type: Hoax Website. Summary: A website pretends to represent a business that buys pets and resells them to research labs. IBuyStrays.com appeared on the internet in late December, 2007 and has quickly achieved notoriety. The site purports to represent a business that buys unwanted pets and stray animals and resells…

Jack Kelley
Type: Rogue Reporter. Summary: In 2004, it was uncovered that Jack Kelley, one of USA Today’s most respected reporters, a five-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, had been fabricating major news stories at least since 1991. Posted by: Elliot Feldman In 2004 it was uncovered that Jack Kelley, one of USA Today’s…

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…

Jane Austen Rejected
Could Jane Austen, one of the most celebrated and popular writers in the English language, get published today? To find out, David Lassman, director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, typed up some opening chapters of her books, added a cover letter with plot synopses, and sent them off…

Jedi Knight Religion
Ewan McGregor as the Jedi Obi-wan Kenobi As the 2001 census geared up in Britain, an e-mail began to spread declaring that if 10,000 people listed their religious affiliation on the census form as Jedi Knight, then the government would be forced to acknowledge ‘Jediism’ as an officially recognized faith.…

Kaycee Nicole Swenson
Type: Online Impostor. Summary: A woman attracted many friends online by pretending to be a young girl dying of cancer. Kaycee Nicole was a nineteen-year-old girl from Kansas dying of cancer. Or so believed the thousands of people who visited her website on which she kept a diary of her…

Lovenstein Institute IQ Report
In July 2001 an e-mail began to circulate claiming that the Lovenstein Institute, a think-tank based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, had conducted research into the IQ of all the Presidents of the past 50 years and concluded that George W. Bush ranked at the bottom, with an IQ of only 91.…

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…

Manbeef.com
Type: Hoax Website. Summary: A website offered to sell human flesh. Manbeef.com appeared online in early 2001 and immediately caused a sensation. The site claimed to sell human flesh for the “sophisticated human meat consumer.” Visitors to the site could read the ‘recipe of the day’ as they viewed pictures…

Microsoft iLoo
Type: Hoax that was not a hoax. Summary: Microsoft announced that it intended to create the world’s first internet-enabled toilet. On April 30, 2003, MSN UK, a division of Microsoft, issued a press release announcing the imminent introduction of the iLoo, the world’s first internet-enabled port-a-potty. The introduction of this…

Monkey Fishing
Type: Hoax. Summary: Slate.com reporter describes the sport of fishing for monkeys. Jay Forman wrote an occasional “Vice” column for the online magazine Slate.com. It provided him with a mainstream outlet to detail some of the bizarre activities he had engaged in or witnessed over the years. For instance, one…

Nostradamus Predicted 9-11
Nostradamus may have lived in the sixteenth century, but if you believe what his followers say (and I would encourage you not to), his gaze extended far into the future. He’s been credited with predicting numerous major world events such as the great London fire of 1666, the rise of…

Paris Hilton Hoaxes
Type: Heiress-themed Hoaxes. Summary: Paris Hilton has played a starring role in numerous hoaxes. Paris Hilton. Mugshot taken June, 2007 when she was booked into a Los Angeles jail. Celebrity heiress Paris Hilton is not known for perpetrating hoaxes. However, much like the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and Adolf Hitler,…

Rathergate
On Sept. 8 Dan Rather reported on 60 Minutes that CBS had obtained documents showing that President Bush had disobeyed orders while serving in the National Guard and had then used his family’s influence in order to cover up his poor service record. The documents allegedly came from the files…

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…

Satellite Medical Exam
Type: Scam. Summary: Victims are convinced to pose outside so that a satellite camera can diagnose their medical condition. During the past three decades the resolution of satellite-based cameras has greatly increased, and satellite imagery has grown in importance for the work of both businesses and governments. Nevertheless, satellites remain…

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…

Space Cadets
Type: Reality TV hoax. Summary: In 2005, the British television show “Space Cadets” pulled off the most expensive and elaborate hoax in English television history. Posted by: Elliot Feldman In 2005, all of Britain was talking about a new Channel 4 reality series, “Space Cadets.” The show’s alleged concept: twelve…

Spud Server
Potatoes: the secret power source that fuels the internet Getting a potato to power a clock is the stuff of high school chemistry. Spud Server purported to take the concept a step further by using potatoes to power an internet server. Visitors to the site (which loaded agonizingly slowly) could…

Stone Age Discoveries of Shinichi Fujimura
One of the ‘smoking gun’ photographs that showed Fujimura burying artifacts By the age of 50, Shinichi Fujimura had established himself as one of Japan’s leading archaeologists. However, his career began as a hobby. He was working at a manufacturing company as a young man in 1972 when he developed…

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…