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→

Between April and October 1722 a series of letters appeared in the New England Courant written by a middle-aged widow who called herself Silence Dogood. In her correspondence she poked fun at various aspects of life in colonial America, such as the drunkenness of locals, religious hypocrisy, the persecution of women, the fashion for hoop petticoats, and particularly the pretensions of Harvard College.

Silence Dogood's letters became quite popular. Some of the male readers of the Courant were so taken with her that they offered to marry her. But unfortunately for these would-be suitors, Silence Dogood did not exist. She was the invention of sixteen year-old Benjamin Franklin, who was working at the time as an apprentice to his older brother, James, a Boston printer.

Franklin initially concealed his authorship of the letters from his brother. When he finally confessed to his brother that he was the author, his brother grew quite displeased, fearing that all the compliments paid to Silence Dogood would make young Benjamin grow vain. Soon after this, Franklin decided to run away and seek his fortune in Philadelphia.

Silence Dogood was the first of many hoaxes Franklin perpetrated throughout his life. More→

Tanis Chandler was a 20-year-old woman working as a teletypist in a Hollywood brokerage office, but dreaming of becoming a movie star. However, she was having trouble getting any roles, so she decided to try another strategy. There was a shortage of male actors in 1943 because of the war, so Tanis figured she might have better luck if she were a man. She put on a pair of pants and presented herself at a casting office as "Robert Archer." The casting office, believing she was a man, gave her a part as a sheik in a Warner Brothers movie, The Desert Song. Luckily for her, the part required her to wear long flowing robes that covered her curves. More→

Billy Tipton (1914-1989) got his start in the predominantly masculine world of jazz during the 1930s. He made a name for himself playing the saxophone and piano, and during the 1950s formed his own group, the Billy Tipton Trio. Throughout his life he had a number of wives and adopted three sons. Therefore, when he died at the age of 74 on January 21, 1989, it came as a surprise to almost everyone to discover that Billy Tipton was really a woman. Even his wives claimed not to have known his secret during their marriages to him. More→

In July 1990 Carina Guillot and her 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, were visiting relatives in Florida when they wandered into a Toys 'R' Us store and spotted something very unusual. Standing inside a sealed cardboard package among the ranks of Ken dolls dressed in their standard-issue outfits was a Ken decked out in a purple tank top and sporting a lace apron on top of a polka-dotted skirt. Mrs. Guillot immediately thought, "Oh my God, now we have a crossed-dressed Ken." More→

Samukeliso Sithole was a rising female star in the world of Zimbabwe athletics. The 17-year-old track-and-field athlete had won awards at various regional athletic events, including five gold medals at the Southern Region Youth Championship in 2004. But in 2005 her career came to an abrupt halt when it was revealed that she was actually a he. More→

In 1994 a teenage boy called JT (or Jeremy "Terminator") LeRoy began to attract attention in the literary community. He published a few short stories, but he also aggressively reached out to other, older writers, communicating with them by phone, email, and fax. He was a sympathetic character — a transgendered, homosexual, drug-addicted, pathologically shy teenager who had been living on the streets, forced into a life of truck-stop prostitution by his mother. Writing seemed to offer a means for him to escape that life, and other writers strongly supported his efforts. In 1999 he published his first novel, Sarah, which was a critical success. More books followed, as well as celebrity friendships. By 2005, when he was in his mid-twenties, his stature as a literary star appeared to be secure. His books were selling well, and one of them, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, was being made into a movie. But this stature was shaken when, in October 2005, author Stephen Beachy published an article in New York Magazine that asked a simple question: Was JT LeRoy a real person? More→