In 1799 the naturalist George Shaw, Keeper of the Department of Natural History at the British Museum, received a specimen of an Australian animal that appeared to be a combination of a duck and a mole. Shaw described the specimen in a scientific journal, the Naturalist’s Miscellany, but admitted he suspected the specimen was a hoax. He wrote, "there might have been practised some arts of deception in its structure."

Other British naturalists were also suspicious of the authenticity of the creature. It was only when more specimens of the strange Australian creature arrived in England that naturalists finally, grudgingly admitted it was real. Today we know the creature as the Duckbilled Platypus. It is one of the more famous instances of a hoax that proved not to be a hoax after all. More >>>

As literacy rates rose during the eighteenth century, a kind of cult-like reverence for the work of William Shakespeare emerged. Theaters staged his plays repeatedly, and collectors eagerly sought out any relics related to his life.

The bookseller Samuel Ireland was one of the most passionate of these Shakespeare-worshiping relic hunters. He devoted his life to the pursuit of Shakespeariana, in the process neglecting his talented young son, William Henry Ireland (1777-1835). That is, until his son brought home from the law office where he worked a mortgage document apparently signed by Shakespeare himself. More >>>

Sir Richard Phillips (1767-1840) founded the Leicester Herald in 1792. One day, while preparing the paper for print, he is said to have perpetrated a hoax that became legendary among journalists. The story, told in Phillips' own words, was first reported almost one hundred years after the fact in the journal Notes and Queries:


A postscript adds that Sir Richard claimed he later met a man from Nottingham who had kept the "Dutch Mail" edition of the Leicester Herald for thirty-four years, hoping to one day get it translated.

The tale is probably an urban legend. There is no surviving copy of the "Dutch Mail" edition of the Leicester Herald. The Notes and Queries article also observes that similar tales were told of other newspapers.

In 1782 a shocking letter was printed in the Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle. It alleged that Indian warriors were sending hundreds of American scalps as war trophies to British royalty and Members of Parliament. The scalps included those of women, as well as young girls and boys.

Soon the letter had crossed the Atlantic and began to circulate throughout Europe, where it shocked European public opinion. But in fact, the British had not received scalps from any Indians. The Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle was a fake newspaper which Benjamin Franklin had printed and distributed to his friends.

Franklin intended his hoax to aid the American war effort by turning European opinion against the British.

In 1782 the Reverend Samuel Peters published (in England) a book titled A General History of Connecticut. The book included sensational details about "blue laws" that had supposedly once existed in Connecticut. (Blue laws are puritanical laws designed to regulate public morality.)

For instance, Peters claimed it had once been against the law in Connecticut to run on Sunday, unless one was going to church. There was also a law that "every male should have his hair cut round, according to a cap." Law breakers could face punishments such as whipping, cutting off of the ears, or even death.

In fact, there was no evidence such laws had ever existed. Peters had made them up. He was a wealthy Anglican who had been forced to leave the country during the American Revolution, and this was apparently his way of getting back at the country that had exiled him, by portraying its people and laws as repressive and fanatical. More >>>

James Graham was one of the more notorious medical quacks that worked in London during the eighteenth century. He called himself a doctor, even though he had never completed his medical studies. He promised customers he could cure them of a variety of ills (but in particular sterility and impotence) if they slept in his "celestial bed," for which he charged £50 a night.

The Celestial Bed was twelve-feet long by nine-feet wide, could be tilted so that it lay at various angles, and had a mattress filled with "sweet new wheat or oat straw, mingled with balm, rose leaves, and lavender flowers."

As lovers lay in the bed, they could stare up into the large mirror suspended above them on the ceiling. Behind them, electricity crackled across the headboard of the bed, filling the air with a magnetic fluid "calculated to give the necessary degree of strength and exertion to the nerves." The phrase "Be fruitful. Multiply and Replenish the Earth" was inscribed on the headboard. Hidden musicians played soft music.

In other words, a night in the bed probably was an unusual romantic experience. However, it had no curative powers.

In 1784 Graham moved to Edinburgh, where he took up the cause of mud baths, claiming that they were the secret to immortality. He died in 1794. More >>>

Centuries before IBM built Deep Blue, its chess-playing supercomputer, Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen built what he claimed was a "thinking machine" that could play chess against human opponents. Not only that, but it consistently won.

Kempelen, a Hungarian nobleman, unveiled his chess automaton in 1769 and toured throughout Europe with it. He exhibited it before audiences filled with royalty and aristocrats. The machine consisted of a wooden figure dressed in Turkish clothes (for which reason it was popularly known as "The Turk") whose trunk emerged out of a large wooden box filled with gears and wires. The figure would play chess after its clockwork machinery was wound up.

There was much speculation about how the machine worked. Many theorized there was a dwarf hidden inside it. However, Kempelen always insisted that it really was a thinking machine.

Kempelen dismantled the machine in 1790, but it was subsequently acquired by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, who toured throughout Europe and America with it during the first decades of the nineteenth century. On its American tour, Edgar Allan Poe observed it and wrote an article in which he attempted to solve its mystery. Poe theorized that a man was hidden in the body of the Turk. He was almost right. The truth was that a full-size man was hidden in the machine, but he was concealed in the wooden box, not in the torso of the wooden figure. The hidden man could control the Turk via a series of levers and wires. He was also usually a chess master, which is why the Turk consistently won its matches. More >>>

At the age of twelve, Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) began writing poems in the style of the old manuscripts he came across in his uncle's church. Eventually he turned out a group of poems that he claimed were the work of a 15th century priest named Thomas Rowley. The poems attracted attention and praise.

Encouraged, Chatterton left for London at the age of 17, hoping to make it as a writer on his own terms. But four months later, unable to find work, he committed suicide by poisoning himself with arsenic. The Rowley poems were only recognized as forgeries when they were republished after Chatterton's death. More >>>

In 1766, when the Dolphin returned to London after circumnavigating the globe, a rumor began to circulate alleging that the crew of the ship had discovered a race of nine-foot-tall giants living in Patagonia, South America.

In fact, the rumor of South American giants had a long history, dating as far back as the 1520s. According to this rumor, the name Patagonia actually meant "land of the big feet".

In reality, there were no South American giants, and Patagonia didn't mean "land of the big feet". When the captain of the Dolphin published his official account of the voyage in 1773, he revealed that his crew had indeed encountered a tribe of Patagonians, but that the tallest among them had measured only 6 feet 6 inches. In other words, the Patagonians were tall, but they weren't giants. More >>>

Scottish schoolmaster James Macpherson claimed that during his travels through remote areas of Scotland he had discovered the text of an ancient epic poem written by a third-century bard named Ossian.

In 1761 Macpherson published a translation of this poem, titled Fingal. Two years later he translated a second epic poem, Temora. The works became international successes and propelled Macpherson to fame and riches. But other scholars, particulary Samuel Johnson, accused Macpherson of having written the works himself. A bitter controversy ensued until Macpherson's death, at which point scholars got a chance to examine his sources. It then became clear that the poems were principally written by Macpherson himself, not by a third-century Scottish bard. More >>>

On October 19, 1752, the Pennsylvania Gazette published a brief description of an experiment recently conducted by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, the article said, had flown a kite in a thunderstorm, causing electricity to be conducted down the line of the kite and electrifying a key tied to it. This demonstrated that lightning, as many had speculated, was a form of electricity.

Franklin's electric kite became the most famous experiment of the eighteenth century, helping to make Franklin famous throughout Europe and America. And yet, some historians argue that it probably never happened.

They point to a curious lack of details about the experiment. It is not known exactly when the experiment occurred. Sometime in June, 1752 was the closest Franklin ever came to an exact date. Nor did Franklin ever write a formal report about it. The only witness to the event was Franklin's son, who never said a word about it. Finally, such an experiment would have been extremely dangerous, possibly fatal, as Franklin knew.

Historian Tom Tucker suggests that Franklin originally proposed the idea for the experiment as a joke. Frustrated because the British Royal Society had been ignoring his letters to them about his earlier electrical research, he might have proposed the deadly experiment as a subtle joke. It was his way of saying, Go fly a kite in a storm! But when his suggestion reached France, where people took it seriously, Franklin decided to play along and claimed he really had conducted the experiment.

Tucker's theory remains controversial. Other historians argue that Franklin would never have risked being exposed as a liar by the scientific community.

In 1750 the British Royal Society received a curious report titled Lucina Sine Concubita, which translated means "Pregnancy without Intercourse".

In the letter the writer argued that women could become pregnant without having engaged in any sexual activity, due to the presence of microscopic "floating animalcula" present in the air. The author claimed to have isolated some of these animalcula using "a wonderful, cylindrical, catoptrical, rotundo-concavo-convex machine." When he examined these animalcula under a microscope he found them to be shaped like miniature men and women. This discovery, he suggested, would go a long way toward restoring the honor of women who could not otherwise explain their pregnancies. An engraving accompanying the letter showed a "floating animalcula" approaching a sleeping woman.

The author concluded by proposing that, for the purpose of experimentation, a royal edict should ban copulation for one year.

The letter was signed by Abraham Johnson, but this was a pseudonym of Sir John Hill. His intent was apparently to satirize the "spermist" theory, which held that sperm were actually little men (homunculi) that, when placed inside women, grew into children.

The letter proved very popular and was printed and distributed widely throughout Europe.

It is also said that Hill wrote the letter to revenge himself for having been denied membership to the Royal Society. (Needs confirmation)

In 1749 several British noblemen, the Duke of Portland and the Earl of Chesterfield, were discussing the gullibility of the public. They decided to test its credulity by designing a test. The Duke bet the Earl that if he advertised that an impossible feat would be performed — a man jumping into a quart bottle — they would still "find fools enough in London to fill a playhouse and pay handsomely for the privilege of being there." The Earl accepted the bet. More >>>

In 1747 the London General Advertiser printed the text of a speech said to have been given by a woman, Polly Baker, at her trial. She had just given birth to her fifth child, was unmarried, and had been charged with having sexual intercourse out of wedlock.

Polly Baker readily admitted her guilt but argued that the law itself was unreasonable. Why was she being punished, she asked, while the men who committed the crime with her were let off scot free? According to the article, Polly's argument so moved the judges that one of them asked her hand in marriage the next day.

The text of Polly Baker's speech subsequently circulated widely throughout Europe and America, and it was widely believed to be real. However, thirty years later Benjamin Franklin admitted he had written it. It is not clear how he managed to insert the article into the General Advertiser. However, almost all scholars accept that he wrote it. His intention appears to have been to draw attention to the unfairness of the law which punished mothers, but not fathers, for having children out of wedlock. Franklin himself had fathered a son out of wedlock. The hoax was also Franklin’s first criticism of the penal system, a subject which he devoted much attention to in later decades. More >>>

In 1747 word of a major new historical discovery reached England. Charles Bertram (1723-65), a 24-year-old English teacher in Denmark, had found an ancient manuscript and accompanying map, titled De Situ Brittaniae, that detailed the layout of roads and settlements in Roman Britain.

The material caused a buzz of excitement amongst antiquarians because it revealed numerous Roman landmarks whose existence had not been previously known and suggested the existence of an entire unknown Roman province. But in fact, the map and manuscript turned out to be one of the greatest forgeries of the century. More >>>