On December 28, 1917 H.L. Mencken published an article in the New York Evening Mail titled "A Neglected Anniversary." It described the history of the bathtub in America, noting that people were slow to accept tubs, believing they were dangerous to health. This attitude, Mencken said, changed when President Millard Fillmore became the first president to install a tub in the White House.

Mencken's history of the bathtub was not true. He intended it as a joke, "some harmless fun in war days". However, few people recognized it as such. Details from Mencken's article began to appear in other papers. One scholar included the tale in a history of hygiene.

After eight years, hoping to put a stop to the continued widespread acceptance of his invented tale as true history, Mencken confessed to his hoax in a front-page article in the Chicago Tribune. But his confession did little to stop the tale's spread. If anything, his fake history spread even further. President Truman was known to repeat the story of Millard Fillmore and the bathtub when showing visitors around the White House. To this day, many people still believe that Mencken's fake history of the bathtub is true. More >>>

In 1916 a slender volume of poetry titled Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments introduced the Spectric school of poetry to the world. It joined many other experimental schools of poetry then currently in vogue, such as the Imagists, the Futurists, and the Idealists.

The Spectric poems were rather bizarre and nonsensical, but were also fun, full of life, and decked out with colorful (albeit illogical) imagery. More >>>

The French painter Paul Chabas completed "September Morn" in early 1912. The painting shows a young woman demurely bathing nude by the edge of Lake Annecy in Haute-Savoie, France. When Chabas showed it that year at the Paris Salon, it won a gold medal of honor. Critics praised it. But when copies of the painting made their way to America, it provoked a bitter controversy there about nudity, art, and public morality. Thanks to this controversy, September Morn became one of the most famous and popular paintings of the twentieth century. It sold millions of copies and was reproduced on a wide variety of merchandise including umbrellas, suspenders, postcards, candy boxes, cane heads, and watch fobs. The painting is often cited as an example of "success by scandal."

But in an ironic twist to the September Morn story, the publicist Harry Reichenbach later claimed to have started the controversy by complaining to moral censors about the indecency of the painting. He didn't actually feel the painting was indecent. He was cynically manipulating the self-righteous moralists in order to sell copies of the painting. It was an early example of a marketer staging a phony protest for the sake of publicity. More >>>

In 1912 amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson unearthed a skull and jawbone from a gravel pit near Piltdown, England. The skull was unmistakably human, whereas the jaw appeared to be from an ape, but their proximity within the pit suggested they came from the same creature. The discovery was believed to be of great significance. The fossil was possibly the long-sought missing link between man and ape. For almost forty years the authenticity of the Piltdown fossil remained unquestioned. But in 1953 researchers at the British Museum took a closer look and realized the fossil was a fake. The skull belonged to a prehistoric human, but the jawbone (stained brown to make it appear older) came from a modern orangutan. More >>>

On February 7, 1910 the Prince of Abyssinia and his entourage were received with full ceremonial pomp on the deck of the H.M.S. Dreadnought, the British Navy's most powerful battleship. Although the Commander-in-Chief of the Dreadnought had only received a last-minute warning of the Prince's arrival, he had the sailors standing at attention when the Prince arrived. The Abyssinian party acknowledged the greeting with bows as they shuffled onto the ship, dressed in their long, flowing robes, and for the next forty minutes the Commander gave them a guided tour of the vessel. The Abyssinians paused at each new marvel while murmuring the appreciative phrase "Bunga, Bunga!" in their native tongue. Finally the royal visitors departed as "God Save the King!" played in the background. More >>>

Six years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight in a heavier-than-air craft, aviation technology was still fairly primitive. Planes could only fly a few miles. But in 1909, a Massachusetts inventor, Wallace Tillinghast, announced a breakthrough. He claimed to have built a plane capable of flying 300 miles, carrying three passengers, and maintaining a speed of 120 mph. But he refused to show the plane to anyone, saying he was worried about other inventors stealing his ideas. But he did reveal that in a test flight (conducted at night) he had flown from Massachusetts down to New York City, circled the Statue of Liberty, and flown back.

Tillinghast's announcement generated enormous excitement. In the next few weeks thousands of people throughout New England reported seeing his plane flying in the sky at night. But as the months went by and Tillinghast failed to offer any tangible proof of his claims, the media came to realize he was lying to them. He had no airplane. One man confessed that the lights people had seen in the sky were actually small lanterns he had tied to the legs of owls as a practical joke. More >>>

In the Summer of 1907 a performer named "Sober Sue" began to appear onstage at Hammerstein's Roof Garden, located above the Victoria Theater in New York City. Sober Sue was billed as the girl who never laughed.

The theater offered a prize of $100 to anyone who could make Sober Sue laugh. People from the audience, as well as professional comedians, all accepted the challenge, but all failed. Sober Sue never so much as cracked a smile. Her routine became extremely popular.

Various theories were advanced to explain Sober Sue's amazing ability to keep a straight face. Critics theorized that perhaps she was deaf or partially blind. The truth was only revealed after her run at the Roof Garden had finished. It was impossible for her to laugh because her facial muscles were paralyzed.

The Roof Garden was managed by Willie Hammerstein. He paid Sober Sue very little, a mere $20 a week, but his unwinnable challenge managed to lure top-rank comedians into performing for free. Thus, for him the act proved extremely lucrative. However, the comedians who had been conned into performing for free never forgave him. More >>>

On October 16, 1906, an out-of-work German shoemaker named Wilhelm Voigt donned a second-hand military captain's uniform he had bought in a store, walked out into the street, and assumed control of a company of soldiers marching past. He led them to the town hall of Köpenick, a small suburb of Berlin, arrested the mayor and the treasurer on charges of embezzlement, and took possession of 4,000 marks from the town treasury. He then disappeared with the money. The incident became famous as a symbol of the blind obedience of German soldiers to authority — even fake authority.

The police tracked him down nine days later, and he was sentenced to four years in jail. But he proved to be such a likable character (and popular hero) that the Kaiser pardoned Voigt after he had served less than two years. Voigt subsequently pursued a career in show business, where he entertained audiences by re-enacting his stunt on the stage.

Between 1897 and 1904, Cassie Chadwick scammed millions of dollars from Ohio banks by claiming to be the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie. The banks, believing they could charge Carnegie high interest rates, happily loaned her the money without asking too many questions.

Chadwick had used a simple ruse to lay the groundwork for her scam. She had asked a Cleveland lawyer to accompany her to Carnegie's house. He waited in the carriage while she went inside to conduct her business. On the way out, she "accidentally" dropped a promissory note for $2 million, signed by Carnegie. When the lawyer saw the note, she told him her secret — that she was Carnegie's daughter — but swore him to secrecy, confident he would immediately break his vow and tell every banker in Ohio, which he promptly did. In reality, the note was forged and the only business Chadwick had conducted inside Carnegie's house had been to chat with his maid.

Chadwick's con fell apart in 1904 when a bank demanded she repay a loan of $190,800. She couldn't repay, and finally bankers thought to ask Carnegie if she really was his daughter. Carnegie's reply: "I have never heard of Mrs. Chadwick."

Chadwick was sentenced to over ten years in prison, but died in jail after two and a half years.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was first published in Russia in 1903. It was said to be the text of a speech given by a Zionist leader outlining a secret Jewish plan to achieve world power by controlling international finance and subverting the power of the Christian church.

The manuscript was used to justify hate campaigns against the Jewish people throughout the twentieth century, including the Russian pogroms of the early twentieth century and the Nazi persecutions of the 1930s and '40s. Many copies of the Protocols are still in circulation today throughout the world.

However, the Protocols are a hoax. Journalists discovered in 1921 that the text had been plagiarized from an 1864 work, Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, by Maurice Joly. Joly's book was an attack upon Emperor Napoleon III that didn't mention the Jewish people at all. But when Joly's work resurfaced in Russia at the turn of the century, it was transformed into pseudo-evidence of a vast Jewish conspiracy.

Francis Douce (1757-1834) was a wealthy English antiquarian, known for his collection of books, prints, drawings, coins, and artifacts. In particular he specialized in collecting material related to children's books and games, fools and jesters, as well as death, demonology, and witchcraft. He also worked briefly at the British Museum, where he held the post of Keeper of Records.

When he died in 1834 he left an unusual stipulation in his will. He wanted all his personal papers donated to the British Museum, but they were to be first sealed in a box and only opened sixty-six years after his death. More >>>