On August 22 and 23, 1914 the British Expeditionary Force near Mons was struggling to retreat from the German Army. They were almost surrounded and badly outnumbered. But just when all hope seemed to have been lost, a shimmering angelic apparation appeared in the fog and smoke that hung over the battle field. The British troops staggered towards the figure and discovered that it had shown them an escape route. This remarkable story quickly spread throughout Britain and was widely taken as evidence of divine support for their troops. But in time skeptics began to insist that the entire story was a hoax. The writer Arthur Machen claimed that a fictional story he had published in September, 1914, involving angelic bowmen firing arrows at the Germans, had been mistaken by readers as a true account, thereby leading to the Angel of Mons tale. Stranger still, in 1930 a German officer claimed that the German army had used Zeiss lenses to project an image of an angel into the clouds above the battlefield. It was a psychological warfare trick, he explained, designed to make the British believe that angelic powers were supporting the German forces.
Links: Fortean Times — Wikipedia — The Angel of Mons, by David Clarke.

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→

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→

By November 1918 it seemed that the four-year-long conflict between the Allied and Axis powers might finally be coming to an end. Word leaked to the president of the United Press, who was in Europe at the time, that an armistice had been signed on November 7. Excitedly he cabled the news to America, where it then appeared as front page news across the country and sparked nationwide celebrations. The only problem was that the armistice hadn’t actually been signed. Apparently a German agent had planted the false news in order to demonstrate that the public in the Allied countries would welcome peace rather than a continuation of the conflict. The agent had actually read the political and public mood correctly. He was just a few days early. The real armistice was signed on November 11.

The quaint Massachusetts town of Stotham, described in an advertising monograph as an example of an unspoiled New England village, didn't actually exist. More→

Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant living in Boston in the early twentieth century, was said by his worshipful followers to have "discovered money." In fact, what he really discovered was a way to bilk the public out of millions of dollars by means of a financial pyramid scheme. There were pyramid schemes before Ponzi came along, but his was so outrageous that this type of scam has ever since borne his name. More→

In 1920 a series of photos of fairies captured the attention of the world. The photos had been taken by two young girls, the cousins Frances Griffith and Elsie Wright, while playing in the garden of Elsie's Cottingley village home. Photographic experts examined the pictures and declared them genuine. Spiritualists promoted them as proof of the existence of supernatural creatures, and despite criticism by skeptics, the pictures became among the most widely recognized photos in the world. It was only decades later, in the late 1970s, that the photos were definitively debunked. More→

In November 1922 Howard Carter located the entrance to the tomb of Tutankhamun. By February he and his team had unsealed the door of the Burial Chamber. But a mere two months later, on April 5, 1923, the sponsor of his expedition, Lord Carnarvon, died in his Cairo hotel room, having succumbed to a bacterial infection caused by a mosquito bite. The media immediately speculated that Carnarvon had fallen victim to King Tut's Curse. This curse supposedly promised death to all who violated his tomb. More→

In 1924, Paul Jordan Smith, a Los Angeles-based novelist and Latin scholar, painted a picture of a South Seas islander holding a banana over her head. He intended the picture as a spoof of abstract styles of modern art such as Cubism, and as a joke he entered it into an art exhibition. He claimed it was the work of the Russian artist Pavel Jerdanowitch (a name he had invented), the founder of the Disumbrationist School of Art (another invention of his). Smith used the foreign name because he figured that painters with exotic names were always a bigger hit with critics. More→

In 1924, a seventeen-year-old farmer, Emile Fradin, discovered an underground chamber that contained many mysterious artifacts. He did so while plowing a field on his grandfather's property in Glozel (near Vichy, in central France). More→

In 1924 a man calling himself Lafayette Mulligan presented the Prince of Wales with the key to the City of Boston, while the Prince was vacationing in Massachusetts. However, the Mayor of Boston had no idea who Lafayette Mulligan was. In fact, Lafayette Mulligan was not a real person at all. More→

After a heavy snowfall, the footprints of a large animal were found on the campus of Cornell University, leading up to the shore of the frozen Beebe Lake. A hole in the ice indicated that the animal must have fallen in and drowned.

A zoologist examined the tracks and identified them as those of a rhinoceros. Word of the rogue rhinoceros spread around town, and since the University got its water supply from the lake, many students declared they were no longer going to drink the water. Many of those who did drink it, swore they could taste rhinoceros.

The tracks turned out to be the work of Cornell student Hugh Troy. He and a friend had borrowed a rhino-foot wastepaper basket from a professor's house. They had weighted it down with scrap metal then attached it to a clothesline. Holding the clothesline at either end, they made their way across campus, creating a trail of tracks in the snow up to the edge of the lake.

The rhinoceros footprints are one of the most famous pranks in Cornell's history. However, there is no documentation to prove that the prank happened. Therefore, some suggest it may only be a legend.

During the 1920s, Austrian scientist Paul Kammerer designed an experiment involving a species called the Midwife Toad. He wanted to prove that Lamarckian inheritance was possible. When his experiment produced positive results, the scientitic community was stunned. That is, until researchers had a chance to examine his toads more closely. More→

On 16 January 1926, BBC Radio interrupted a broadcast of a speech from Edinburgh to give a special announcement: an angry mob of unemployed workers were running amok in London, looting and destroying everything in sight. Listeners were stunned. Anxiously they gathered around their radios to hear the frightening news. They heard that the National Gallery had been sacked and the Savoy Hotel blown up. The alarming reports continued with news that the Houses of Parliament were being attacked with trench mortars. More→

By trade Hugh Troy (1906-1964) was an artist. He illustrated many children's books, including "Maude for a Day," "The Chippendale Dam," and "Five Golden Wrens." But by nature he was a practical joker, with numerous pranks to his credit. When asked once what advice he would give to aspiring practical jokers, he replied that one should never sit down and try to deliberately think up a practical joke. This was a sure way to arrive at uninspired ideas. Instead, a prankster needs to seize the moment, grabbing opportunities as they arise. More→