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→

On October 22, 1730 an article appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette describing a witch trial that had recently been held in Mount Holly near Burlington, New Jersey.

According to the article, over 300 people had gathered to witness the trial of two people, a man and a woman, who had been accused of witchcraft. The charges included "making their neighbours sheep dance in an uncommon manner, and with causing hogs to speak, and sing Psalms, &c. to the great terror and amazement of the King's good and peaceable subjects in this province." More→

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was born the son of a candle and soap maker, but by his own efforts and intellect he rose to become arguably the most admired man of the eighteenth century. Throughout his long and illustrious career he was many different things: a printer, philosopher, man of science, man of letters, and statesman. He was also a hoaxer. Like other eighteenth-century literary figures such as Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, he used hoaxes for satirical ends, to expose what he perceived as foolishness and vice to the light of public censure. More→

In 1747 the London General Advertiser printed the text of a speech said to have been given by a woman, Polly Baker, at her trial. She had just given birth to her fifth child, was unmarried, and had been charged with having sexual intercourse out of wedlock.

Polly Baker readily admitted her guilt but argued that the law itself was unreasonable. Why was she being punished, she asked, while the men who committed the crime with her were let off scot free? According to the article, Polly's argument so moved the judges that one of them asked her hand in marriage the next day.

The text of Polly Baker's speech subsequently circulated widely throughout Europe and America, and it was widely believed to be real. However, thirty years later Benjamin Franklin admitted he had written it. It is not clear how he managed to insert the article into the General Advertiser. However, almost all scholars accept that he wrote it. His intention appears to have been to draw attention to the unfairness of the law which punished mothers, but not fathers, for having children out of wedlock. Franklin himself had fathered a son out of wedlock. The hoax was also Franklin’s first criticism of the penal system, a subject which he devoted much attention to in later decades. More→

In 1782 a shocking letter was printed in the Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle. It alleged that Indian warriors were sending hundreds of American scalps as war trophies to British royalty and Members of Parliament. The scalps included those of women, as well as young girls and boys.

Soon the letter had crossed the Atlantic and began to circulate throughout Europe, where it shocked European public opinion. But in fact, the British had not received scalps from any Indians. The Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle was a fake newspaper which Benjamin Franklin had printed and distributed to his friends.

Franklin intended his hoax to aid the American war effort by turning European opinion against the British.

Sir Richard Phillips (1767-1840) founded the Leicester Herald in 1792. One day, while preparing the paper for print, he is said to have perpetrated a hoax that became legendary among journalists. The story, told in Phillips' own words, was first reported almost one hundred years after the fact in the journal Notes and Queries:


A postscript adds that Sir Richard claimed he later met a man from Nottingham who had kept the "Dutch Mail" edition of the Leicester Herald for thirty-four years, hoping to one day get it translated.

The tale is probably an urban legend. There is no surviving copy of the "Dutch Mail" edition of the Leicester Herald. The Notes and Queries article also observes that similar tales were told of other newspapers.

An article titled "The Unparalled Adventures of One Hans Pfall" appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger in late June of 1835. It claimed to be the text of a note dropped from a hot-air balloon that had appeared recently above Rotterdam. The note described Hans Pfall's journey to the moon in order to escape his earth-bound creditors. Pfaall had spent five years living among the inhabitants of the moon before sending one of the lunar inhabitants back to Earth in his balloon in order to deliver a message that he would return to Earth to tell his tale if the citizens of Rotterdam granted him a full pardon for past crimes he had committed; however, the lunarian had been scared by the sight of all the people on the ground and, after throwing Pfall's note down to the crowd, had fled back up into the clouds, thus preventing the residents of Rotterdam from responding to Pfaall's message.

The article, though it purported to be factual, was actually a story written by Edgar Allan Poe. It was his first, and somewhat unsuccessful, attempt at a hoax. Few people were fooled, perhaps because, as Poe himself later acknowledged, it was written in a "tone of mere banter."

Poe never finished Pfaall's tale of life on the moon. Shortly after the first installment of his article appeared it was upstaged by a similar hoax about lunar life that appeared in the New York Sun. The success of the New York Sun's hoax dissuaded Poe from continuing with his own tale.

On August 25, 1835 the New York Sun announced the discovery of life on the moon. It explained that the discovery had been made by the famous British astronomer Sir John Herschel, who had invented a new telescope "of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle." Over the course of the next week the Sun printed details about the moon creatures Herschel had supposedly spied with his telescope. These creatures included lunar bison, fire-wielding biped beavers, and winged "man-bats." The public was fascinated by the reports. Papers throughout the nation reprinted the Sun's articles. But over time, as word from Europe failed to arrive corroborating what the Sun claimed, people realized they had been hoaxed. More→

The New York Sun included a broadside, or extra page, in the midday issue of its April 13, 1844 edition, announcing that the famous European balloonist Monck Mason had succeeded in flying across the Atlantic Ocean in 75 hours. This was major news, being the first time the Atlantic had ever been crossed in a balloon.

The balloon, named the Victoria, had supposedly taken off from England on a trip to Paris, but had been blown off course due to a propeller accident and ended up floating across the Atlantic and landing on Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.

The story was quickly revealed to be a hoax, authored by Edgar Allan Poe. Monck Mason, however, was a real person who had ballooned from London to Weilburg, Germany in 1836, a journey which he had described in 1837 in a book, Account of the Late Aeronautical Expedition from London to Weilburg.

An illustration of the "Steering Balloon Victoria" accompanied Poe's article. Poe had obtained this image by redrawing it from the frontispiece of an anonymous 1843 pamphlet (the author of which was probably Monck Mason) titled Remarks on the Ellipsoidal Balloon, propelled by the Archimedean Screw, described as the New Aerial Machine.

On the day of the article's publication, Poe stood on the steps of the Sun's building in New York City telling crowds that his own story was a hoax. But apparently, amidst the general excitement, not many people paid attention to him. He later wrote an account in the Columbia Spy of the scene following the publication of the balloon news:

On February 6, 1858 the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that a ferocious hyena had broken loose from his cage and was at large in Paulding County. It had already been spotted attempting to dig up several graves in search of food, and it had killed a man who tried to capture it.

Understandably, readers were concerned. But a few days later, a correction appeared in the paper. There was no hyena. "He is not there now, never was there, and, it is firmly believed, never will be again."

The hyena reporting and correction were the work of Charles F. Browne, a humorist who would later be better known as Artemus Ward. It is not recorded if he was reprimanded in any way for terrifying the readers of the Plain Dealer. More→

On October 4, 1862, Nevada's Territorial Enterprise reported that a petrified man had been found in nearby mountains. The body was said to be in a sitting posture, leaning against a mountainside to which it had become attached. The brief news report eventually appeared in newspapers throughout the world. However, it was pure fiction. It had been written by a young reporter, Samuel Clemens, who would later be better known as Mark Twain. More→

A news report that appeared in the Territorial Enterprise on October 28, 1863, detailed how advice to invest in San Francisco utilities had resulted in tragedy for one man. According to the story, this man, after losing all his money when his investment went bad, went insane and slaughtered his entire family except for his two young girls who miraculously survived. He then rode into town carrying the “reeking scalp” of his wife and collapsed dead in front of a saloon. The story caused a sensation and was widely reprinted. Readers were simultaneously horrified and captivated by the gruesome news. Almost no one thought that it might be false. But it was. It was the invention of a young reporter named Mark Twain. More→

Shortly before Christmas, 1863, a 72-page pamphlet appeared for sale on newsstands in New York City. It was titled Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro. The pamphlet opened with an explanation of its title. 'Miscegenation' was a word the author of the pamphlet had coined, and he explained that he had invented it by combining two latin words: miscere (to mix) and genus (race). The pamphlet went on to expound a social philosophy which, by modern standards, sounds enlightened, but which by the racist standards of 1863 was highly inflammatory. He wanted to promote the practice of miscegenation. In other words, he wanted to encourage white and black people to have children with each other. The pamphlet ended by suggesting that Lincoln should add a miscegenation plank to the Republican party platform.

It was eventually revealed that the Miscegenation pamphlet was written by a couple of Democratic newspapermen as a way to insert the inflammatory issue of miscegenation into the presidential election. They had hoped to spread the idea that Republicans encourage miscegenation, and by doing so turn white, working-class voters against the Republican party. The hoax didn't work. Republicans won the election anyway. But the hoax did bring a new word, miscegenation, into the English language. More→

Journalist Dan De Quille published an article in the Territorial Enterprise on October 26, 1867, describing some stones with a curious property. Whenever separated from each other, these stones, which he said had recently been discovered in Nevada's Pahranagat Valley, spontaneously moved back together. The article, written in a semi-scientific style, was a joke, but De Quille discovered that a lie once told cannot easily be untold. Years later, despite efforts to expose his own hoax, he was still receiving letters from people wanting to know more details about the traveling stones. More→

On December 16, 1873 the Los Angeles Evening Express published an article describing a man in San Bernardino who, because of a loophole in the law, was legally allowed to remain married to two women, despite the efforts of townsfolk to force him to divorce at least one of his wives. News of the case caused an uproar in California. However, the story was entirely fictitious, as the Evening Express revealed two weeks later. Unfortunately, the retraction was not as widely publicized as the original story, and so the case made its way as fact into a number of legal textbooks. More→