As estimates of the death toll rose in the days following the 9/11 attacks, enormous amounts of sympathy and media attention flowed out towards those who had lost loved ones in the attack. Those who had participated in rescue efforts were hailed as national heroes. But simultaneously, many people (motivated, perhaps, by a desire for sympathy or attention) fabricated tales of phony heroics and lost loved ones in the weeks and months following 9/11. Listed are a few of the more notable cases of these phony 9/11 tales: More→

The Donation of Constantine was a letter supposedly written by the Roman emperor Constantine (285-337 A.D.) to Pope Sylvester I, granting the Catholic Church ownership of vast territories within the western Roman Empire. For centuries, Popes used the Donation to legitimate the Church’s possession of the papal lands in Italy. The truth was that the Church only officially acquired the papal lands in 756 ad when King Pepin of the Frankish Empire gave them to the Church as a gift. But for almost 700 years, until 1440, the Donation was considered to be authentic. More→

The Holy Foreskin of Christ first made an appearance in medieval Europe around 800 ad, when King Charlemagne presented it as a gift to Pope Leo III. Charlemagne said it had been given to him by an angel. However, rival foreskins soon began to pop up all over Europe. More→

According to legend, Pope Joan was a woman who concealed her gender and ruled as pope for two years, from 853-855 ad. Her identity was exposed when, riding one day from St. Peter's to the Lateran, she stopped by the side of the road and, to the astonishment of everyone, gave birth to a child. The legend is unconfirmed. Skeptics note that the first references to Pope Joan only appear hundreds of years after her supposed reign. However, supporters argue that the Church may have attempted to erase all evidence of her existence from the historical record. More→

In the mid-twelfth century, at a time when European rulers felt threatened by the growing power of Muslim nations on their borders, a letter suddenly appeared from Prester John, who described himself as a Christian king of great wealth living in the far east. The letter was addressed to the Byzantine emperor Manuel Comnenus.

Prester John claimed to be a descendant of one of the Three Magi. He wrote that his kingdom stretched from India to the land where the sun rises, and that it was inhabited by fantastic creatures such as seven-horned bulls, birds so large they could lift and kill an armored man, and horned men with three eyes in the back of their heads. He even claimed there was a fountain of perpetual youth in his kingdom.

The letter circulated throughout all the European courts. In 1177, Pope Alexander III instructed his personal envoy to travel east, search for Prester John, and deliver a reply to his letter. It was hoped Prester John would come to the aid of the Christian nations in Europe, but no response ever came. Nevertheless, European explorers continued to search for the mythical king for centuries.

The true author of the letter remains unknown. Whoever it was, he was familiar with old legends, which he borrowed heavily from — legends such as the tales of Alexander the Great’s adventures in the East. Linguistic evidence suggests the letter originated in Italy. The author probably intended to offer hope to the Christian armies fighting the crusades, and in this respect he succeeded, even though the hope was a false one.

The medieval mind fixated on the end of the world. Predictions of imminent, world-encompassing disaster turned up during the middle ages with almost clockwork regularity. More→

A letter supposedly written by the astrologers of Toledo and addressed to Pope Clement III began circulating throughout Europe in 1184. It predicted the end of the world would occur in September 1186. It said there would be wind and storms, drought and famine, pestilence and earthquake. The air would grow dark and a dreadful voice would be heard that would destroy the hearts of men. Coastal towns would be covered with sand and earth. All this would be triggered by a rare conjunction of the planets in the sign of the Scales and in the tail of the Dragon. People were advised to flee their homes and find safety in the mountains.

The letter caused panic throughout Europe. The Archbishop of Canterbury ordered a 3-day fast to prevent the calamity. When September 1186 arrived, the planetary conjunction did occur on schedule, but the end of the world never happened. Nevertheless, some attribute the Third Crusade of 1189 to the unrest stirred up by the letter.

This was not the end of the Toledo Letter. Variants of it continued to circulate for centuries, with names and dates altered. A version from around 1214, which attributed the text to a Cardinal Johannes Toletanus, warned of the end of the world in 1229, citing the same rare planetary conjunction as the reason. By the end of the fourteenth century the text was attributed to the Magisters in Paris, though the content of the warning remained essentially the same. Even as late as 1480 it was still in circulation, now attributed to a Mount Sinai hermit and a Rasis of Antiochia, who warned the end would come in 1510.

Marco Polo's Description of the World, written around 1298, described his travels in China. In later centuries the book became one of the principal European sources of information about China. But some historians, principally Frances Wood in Did Marco Polo Go to China?, argue that Marco Polo may never have set foot in China. Instead, he may have traveled no further than his family’s trading posts on the Black Sea, where he was able to compile information from Persian and Arabic guidebooks about China. Evidence for this theory rests largely on curious omissions in Marco Polo's work. For instance, he never mentions the Great Wall of China nor the Chinese use of chopsticks. However, this theory remains highly controversial. More→

The Shroud of Turin first came to the attention of the public in 1355, when it was exhibited at the Church of St. Mary in Lirey, France. It had been given to the church by a French knight, Geoffroy de Charny, who probably acquired it in Constantinople. Its supporters claim that this fourteen-foot piece of cloth bearing the image of a naked man was the funeral shroud of Christ. They argue that only supernatural means could have created such an image. Skeptics dismiss the shroud as a medieval forgery, arguing that: 1) there was a flourishing trade in false relics during the middle ages; 2) a medieval forger could definitely have created such an image (researchers have offered a variety of theories to explain how it might have been done); and 3) the man's body is oddly proportioned (his head is too large), which suggests the image is a painting. More→

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which first appeared in print around 1371, purported to document the travels of an English knight throughout Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Persia, and Turkey. The book was very popular, and was regarded as being factual by medieval scholars, but modern readers can easily spot that the majority of it is fiction. For instance, it describes islands whose inhabitants have the bodies of humans but the heads of dogs, a tribe whose only source of nourishment is the smell of apples, people the size of pygmies whose mouths are so small that they have to suck all their food through reeds, and a race of one-eyed giants who eat only raw fish and raw meat. More→

For centuries European map-makers believed that an island called Hi-Brazil was located in the Atlantic, even though no such island had ever been found. More→

Crowland Abbey, located deep in the Lincolnshire fens of England, was once a center for medieval religious life. Today, however, it lies mostly in ruins. A few quatrefoil window carvings and undamaged statues provide a sense of the building's former glory, but the abbey itself is less well known for its artwork than it is for an outrageous historical hoax that its former inhabitants once perpetrated. More→

Count Jean V d'Armagnac (1420-1473) was described by a contemporary as "short and stocky of stature, even pot-bellied, but gifted with great bodily strength. His neck was short, surmounted with an acne-pocked visage, with squinty eyes, crowned by a shock of red hair."

The Count fell in love with his younger sister, Isabelle, whom he affectionately called ma mia costa (my own rib). She was said to be one of the great beauties of her time. He had two sons with her, after which he sought approval from the Pope to marry her. The Pope refused.

Undeterred, the Count bribed a papal official, Antoine d'Alet, Bishop of Cambrai, to forge a papal bull allowing the marriage. A few months later, the Count and his sister had a third child together, a daughter. The three children were known as the Bastards of Armagnac. Isabelle referred to them in public as her niece and nephews, which technically they were.

When the Pope learned of what the Count had done, he excommunicated him. Eventually the Count married another woman (not related to him).

Later the Count rebelled against King Charles VII of France, who sent an army to crush him. The army killed the Count and dragged his body through the streets. They locked his wife, seven months pregnant, in a cell with her husband's dead body. Her child (the Count's one legitimate heir) was stillborn, thus ensuring the end of the House of Armagnac.

In 1496, when he was a young man, Michelangelo sculpted a sleeping cupid. He, or an accomplice, then buried it in acidic earth to give it an appearance of great age. The plan was to pass it off as an antiquity, which would allow it to fetch a higher price.

The artificially aged sculpture was sold through a dealer to Cardinal Raffaello Riario of San Giorgio. Eventually the Cardinal learned of the forgery, and he demanded his money back from the dealer. However, the Cardinal was so impressed by Michelangelo's obvious talent that he didn't press charges against the young artist. To the contrary, he allowed him to keep his percentage of the sale.

Michelangelo’s cupid eventually came into the possession of the d’Este collection in Mantua, where it was reportedly displayed side by side with a genuine antique sleeping cupid. But it is believed that the statue was destroyed in a fire in 1698. Even though it was a "fake", it would be considered priceless today, if it still survived. More→

The Voynich manuscript is a mysterious book consisting of approximately 240 pages of hand-written text and crudely drawn illustrations that depict plants, astrological diagrams, and naked women. The text is written in an unknown alphabet that has defied all attempts at translation. It is not certain exactly how old the manuscript is, but it appears to date to around the late fifteenth century. It is named after Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it in 1912 from the library of Villa Mondragone, a Jesuit college in Frascati, Italy. More→