Site Map
Hoax Archive: Categories
The Hoax Archive
A collection of the most notorious deceptions throughout history
A collection of the most notorious deceptions throughout history
1700-1799: List of Titles
The Native of Formosa (1702-1706)
In the early eighteenth-century a white-skinned, blond-haired man showed up in northern Europe claiming to be from the island of Formosa (Taiwan). Luckily for him, no one in Europe knew what a Taiwanese person should look like.
The Native of Formosa
- The Charlton Brimstone Butterfly (1702 (exposed in 1793))
- The Lying Stones of Dr. Beringer (1725-1726)
- The Electric Kite Hoax (June 1752)
- The Patagonian Giants (1766)
- The Great Chess Automaton (1769 - mid-nineteenth century)
- The Duckbilled Platypus (1799)
- Lucina Sine Concubitu (1750)
- Graham’s Celestial Bed (1775-1784)
Mary Toft and the Rabbit Babies
A Modest Proposal (1729)
Benjamin Franklin was one of the most admired and famous men of the eighteenth century. He was also an incorrigible hoaxer.
- Silence Dogood (1722)
- The Death of Titan Leeds (December 1732)
- Enigmatical Prophecies (1736)
- The Trial of Polly Baker (1747)
- The Electric Kite Hoax (June 1752)
Benjamin Franklin
De Situ Brittaniae (1747)
- Thomas Chatterton and the Rowley Poems (Late 1760s)
- William Henry Ireland’s Shakespeare Forgeries (1794-1796)
The Blue Laws of Connecticut (1782)
The Dutch Mail (circa 1792)
All text Copyright © 2011 by Alex Boese, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.