Woolly mammoths became extinct thousands of years ago. But in October, 1899 a story appeared in McClure's Magazine titled "The Killing of the Mammoth" in which a narrator named H. Tukeman described how he had recently hunted down and killed a mammoth in the Alaskan wilderness. More >>>

On June 25, 1899 four Denver newspapers reported that the Chinese government was going to tear down portions of the Great Wall of China, pulverize the rock, and use it to build roads. American companies were said to be bidding on the enormous demolition project. Newspapers throughout the country picked up the story, but it eventually became apparent the news was not true. The Chinese were not planning to tear down the Great Wall. Four Denver reporters — Al Stevens, Jack Tournay, John Lewis, and Hal Wilshire — had invented the tale while sharing a drink at the Oxford Hotel in order to spice up a slow news day. A rumor later suggested that when the news reached China, the Chinese become so furious at the idea of Americans tearing down the Great Wall, that they took up arms against Westerners in the Boxer Rebellion. This rumor was not true. More >>>

In February 1899, numerous American newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, printed a story claiming that a farmer, W.W. Mangum, had successfully trained monkeys to pick cotton on his plantation in Smedes, Mississippi. The story was sourced to an article in the Cotton Planters' Journal by T.G. Lane. Reportedly Mangum was so pleased with the success of his monkey-labor experiment that he had ordered more monkeys from Africa, and he was urging other planters to join him in using simians as laborers. There is no evidence this story was true. In fact, the tale of monkeys being trained to pick cotton (or other crops) was one of the more persistent legends that circulated in the American South during the second half of the nineteenth century. Versions of it appeared in newspapers every few years. More >>>

Prescott Jernegan claimed he had found a way to cheaply extract gold from sea water. His "Gold Accumulator" consisted of a wooden box, inside of which was a pan of mercury mixed with a secret ingredient. A wire connected the mercury to a small battery. When lowered into the ocean, this contraption supposedly sucked gold out of the water.

A test conducted in Narragansett Bay in February 1897 proved the gold accumulator worked. After a few hours the box was raised, full of gold flakes.

Soon Jernegan had found investors who helped him found the Electrolytic Marine Salts Company. When the company offered stock, the share price rapidly rose from $33 to $150. But to the dismay of investors, the apparent success of the gold accumulator was entirely due to the diving skills of Jernegan's accomplice, Charles Fisher. Fisher would swim underwater in a diving suit and salt the mercury with gold.

Jernegan and Fisher fled to France in July, 1898 with over $200,000 before the scam was found out. More >>>

William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York Journal, had a reputation for never letting truth get in the way of a good story. According to one famous tale, when hostilities broke out between the Spanish and the Cubans, Hearst sent the illustrator Frederic Remington to Cuba to draw pictures of the conflict. Finding that not much was happening, Remington cabled Hearst in January 1897: "Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return."

Supposedly Hearst cabled back: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."

It is doubtful Hearst ever sent such a telegram. The first report of it appeared in a 1901 book, On the Great Highway, by journalist James Creelman. Creelman was in Europe at the time the telegram was supposedly sent, so he either heard the story second-hand or invented it himself. Since he was known for exaggeration, the latter is likely. Hearst himself denied having sent such a telegram.

Louis Timothy Stone (1875-1933), more popularly known as Lou Stone, or the Winsted Liar, was a journalist famous for the hundreds of fanciful articles he wrote about the strange flora and fauna surrounding his hometown of Winsted, Connecticut. It was said he had a "faculty for seeing the unusual in stories." More >>>

In August 1895 New York City papers received a wire story about a naked, hairy man that was terrorizing townspeople in Winsted, Connecticut. Intrigued, the papers sent reporters up to Winsted to find out what was happening.

At first the reporters did not find much happening up in Winsted. But as they began asking local residents if they had seen an unusual creature lurking around, memories and tongues began to loosen. Soon reports of a "wild man" began to trickle in, and the trickle quickly grew into a flood. With each new sighting the wild man grew progressively fiercer. He seemed to gain at least a foot or so in size every day, and in some accounts he sprouted tusks. Then he became a massive gorilla with thick arms that hung all the way down to the ground. More >>>

During the final decades of the nineteenth century, a conservation movement coalesced around a campaign to save the nation's birds, whose populations were under pressure because of the fashionability of hats decorated with feathers. The Audobon Society and the American Ornithological Union both formed out of this campaign. The campaign was given renewed urgency in the early 1890s when a report appeared in various publications, including the Northwest Sportsman of Oregon and the Sportsmen's Review of Chicago, that millions of waterfowl eggs were being collected in breeding grounds in Alaska and then shipped east for sale. The eggs, it was said, were a source of dried albumen used in a variety of commercial applications such as photography, the manufacture of leather, and candy-making. The magazines warned that the collection of these eggs threatened the existence of the duck and geese populations of the entire west. More >>>

During the 1890s reports began to emerge from Bosnia (at the time, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire) of peasants, innocent of any crime, surrendering themselves to the authorities with the request that they be beheaded. When the authorities investigated, they discovered that the peasants had heard a rumor alleging that the wealthy Austrian banker Albert Salomon von Rothschild had been sentenced to death for some crime and had offered a million florins to anyone willing to undergo the penalty for him. More >>>

In 1887 a "disappointed literary aspirant," hoping to illustrate the ignorance of publishers and the diffulties faced by unknown authors, copied out the text of Milton's drama "Samson Agonistes," retitled it "Like a Giant Refreshed," and sent it as an original work of his own to publishers and editors. None recognized the work. One rejected it because it was too like a sensational novel. Another said it was "disfigured by Scotticisms." A third offered to publish it, but only if the author contributed thirty pounds toward the expenses.

The literary aspirant (whose name is not known) published the results of his experiment in a letter sent to the St. James's Gazette.

When the six-volume Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography was published between 1887 and 1889, it was one of the first and most definitive works of its kind in America. It contained biographical information about thousands of people (some famous, some obscure) in American history. It was hailed as a valuable source of information for both scholars and students alike.

But thirty years after the Cyclopedia's publication, questions began to be raised about its reliability. The botanist Dr. John Hendley Barnhart published a brief article in the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden suggesting some of the Cyclopedia's biographical sketches might be fictitious. He had specific doubts about fourteen botanists. He had never heard of these people, nor could he find references to them anywhere else. More >>>

The British Columbia Daily Colonist reported that a gorilla-type creature had been captured by railway workers and was being held in a local jail. It was given the nickname "Jacko." However, the entire thing turned out to be a hoax, as the hundreds of people who visited the jail and tried to view Jacko discovered, since Jacko was nonexistent. This story languished in obscurity until the 1950s when a reporter came across a reference to it (unaware it had turned out to be a newspaper hoax) and publicized it as an early example of a Sasquatch sighting.

The December 13, 1884 issue of Medical News included a letter from a correspondent who identified himself as Dr. Egerton Yorrick Davis. The letter described "an uncommon form of vaginismus" that the doctor had been summoned to treat. Apparently a maid had experienced a severe vaginal spasm while engaged in sexual intercourse. Consequently her lover, the coachman, became unable to remove himself from inside of her. Dr. Davis wrote that he relaxed the woman with chloroform and managed to separate the unhappy couple.

In reality, this medical case never occurred, nor was its author, Dr. Egerton Yorrick Davis, a real person. He was the pseudonym of William Osler (1849-1919), who is regarded as one of the most highly respected figures in modern medical history. Dr. Osler served for many years as Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and was instrumental in founding the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City. But throughout his illustrious career he submitted letters to medical journals under the pseudonym of Dr. Egerton Yorrick Davis.

These letters often dealt with sexual subjects, such as his 1903 letter to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal titled "Peyronie's Disease—Strabisme du Penis" describing "an old codger" who experienced "a most remarkable change in his yard." Apparently these bizarre (and fictitious) sexual case histories were an expression of the mischievous sense of humor lurking behind the respectable façade of the famous doctor.

The Taughannock Giant was a stone giant unearthed on July 4, 1879 on the shores of Lake Cayuga in Ithaca. It was pronounced to be of ancient origin by scientists and physicians. However, it turned out to be the work of Ira Dean who had spent months carving it in his home, with the simple desire of fooling someone.

During the 1870s and 1880s Joseph Mulhattan was perhaps the most famous hoaxer in America. He was a traveling salesman, not a reporter, but he was notorious for repeatedly succeeding in having his farfetched tales reported as news. If an outrageous or bizarre story appeared in the news, reporters would often assume it was the work of Mulhattan. The media showered him with epithets. They called him a "professional liar," "the author of more hoaxes than any other man living," "Munchausen Mulhattan," and the "liar-laureate of the world." He was also widely known by his pseudonym, "Orange Blossom." More >>>