When the website OurFirstTime.com debuted in early 1998, it promised to offer an internet first. Web surfers would be able to share in the experience as two wholesome 18-year-olds, Mike and Diane, lost their virginity together at 9 pm on August 4, 1998. The event would be broadcast live, as it happened. More→

In 1999 The Blair Witch Project became a multimillion-dollar box-office sensation. Much of this success owed to a clever marketing scheme centering around a website, blairwitch.com.

The premise of the site (and the movie) was that in 1994 three student filmmakers had disappeared in the woods near Burkitsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary about the local legend of the Blair Witch. Supposedly the Blair Witch was Elly Kedward, a woman who had been accused of witchcraft and child murder back in 1785 and had been banished from the town, left to die of cold in the woods. Her spirit was said to still haunt the area.

Visitors to blairwitch.com could view detailed historical information about the legend of the Blair Witch, including old photographs, police reports, letters, and interviews with officials. It was all so convincing that many people were fooled into believing that Elly Kedward was a real historical figure, and that there really was a legend of a Blair Witch. There wasn't. The entire tale was fictitious.

The site revolutionized internet marketing. Movie studios started churning out hoax websites to accompany their movies, in the hope of generating the same kind of buzz that the Blair Witch Project enjoyed. But none of these efforts has yet matched the success of BlairWitch.com.

In March 1999, an ad appeared in a variety of weekly magazines, such as the L.A. Weekly and the Village Voice. It read, "Death got you down? At last an alternative! www.finalcurtain.com"

The website that it led to announced the imminent launch of a novel kind of cemetery. At the Final Curtain Cemetery artists would be allowed to design their own graves before they died. The result would be a cemetery that would be part memorial, part art gallery, and part theme park. As the website explained:

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It is legal to sell donor eggs to infertile couples. However, Ron Harris, an erotic photographer, proposed taking this process one step further. He established a website, Ronsangels.com, at which nubile supermodels auctioned off their eggs to the highest bidders. The concept outraged other members of the infertility industry. More→

Getting a potato to power a clock is a popular high school chemistry project. The website Spud Server purported to take this concept a step further by using potatoes to power an internet server.

Visitors to the site (which loaded extremely slowly) could marvel at their interactive participation in such a technological feat. The site reached the peak of its popularity in March 2000 when both USA Today and the BBC, among others, ran stories about it.

A few days later the media had to admit that they had been taken for a ride. Spud Server was a joke created by Temple ov Thee Lemur, a nonprofit net company. But Steve Harris, one of the hoaxers behind Spud Server, noted that while their site was a sham, the concept itself was technically feasible.

Inspired by this thought, Fredric White later tried to create an actual, working spud server. He brought it online in June 2000. However, he didn't use potatoes to power the entire server, only the server's cpu. As White noted, powering the entire server would have required over one thousand potatoes. White eventually abandoned his experiment in potato-powered computing after growing sick of the smell of rotting potatoes.

The website MalePregnancy.com, which first appeared online in 1999, claimed to document the case of Mr. Lee Mingwei, who was supposedly the first human male to become pregnant. Visitors to the site could inspect a variety of documentary evidence about Mr. Mingwei's pregnancy. There were news reports, pictures, video clips, Mr. Mingwei's EKG, ultrasound images, and blood-pressure measurements. The site stated that the delivery date of Mr. Mingwei's child had not yet been determined. The site has now stated this for nine years (as of 2009).

The site was a hoax created by artist/filmmaker Virgil Wong, who described it as an "art installation." Wong's work, especially his art projects on the internet, often explores themes arising from contemporary medicine. The site received extensive media attention in 2000. Wong has claimed that it fooled thousands of people, and that he was contacted by numerous men seeking to become the next pregnant man. More→

Bonsai describes the ancient Japanese art of growing miniature trees by rigorous pruning of their roots and branches. Because of their small size, aesthetic appeal, and minimal upkeep requirements, Bonsai trees have long been popular additions to offices and homes.

In late 2000 the website bonsaikitten.com debuted. It described how to apply the same Bonsai principles to kittens. The idea was to seal kittens inside glass containers. As they grew (fed and watered through a tube), the bones of the cats would supposedly conform to the shape of whatever container held them. At the end of the process a uniquely shaped 'Bonsai Kitten' would emerge -- sure to be the envy of all.

BonsaiKitten.com almost immediately generated a huge amount of controversy. Furious animal lovers insisted that it be closed down. The Humane Society of the United States, among others, denounced it... More→

The website Manbeef.com appeared online in early 2001 and immediately generated controversy. The site claimed to sell human flesh for the "sophisticated human meat consumer." Visitors to the site could read the 'recipe of the day' as they viewed pictures of attractive cuts of homo sapiens. Pictures of meat being squeezed through a grinder underscored exactly what they were selling. More→

Kaycee Nicole was a nineteen-year-old girl from Kansas dying of cancer. Or so believed the thousands of people who visited her website on which she kept a diary of her fight against leukemia.

For over a year Kaycee Nicole had added updates to her diary, letting people know about the ups and downs of her struggle with the disease, about her hope as the cancer went into remission, and about her fear as it reappeared. Kaycee's mother, Debbie, maintained a companion journal in which she discussed what it was like caring for a child with cancer. Many people grew extremely close to Kaycee. They communicated with her via e-mail, chatted with her in online chatrooms, and some even phoned her.

Then on May 15, 2001 Kaycee Nicole died of a brain aneurysm. Her online friends were distraught. They sought for ways to express their sorrow. They wanted to send gifts to her family. Some even wanted to attend her funeral. And that's when things began to get suspicious... More→

The website of Colin Mayhew offered details on how this eccentric, but apparently brilliant, engineer had built an "autonomous crash-preventing robot" from the body of a BMW Mini Cooper r50. Video showed the humanoid robot in action, stopping a car from crashing into a wall. The Mini Cooper Autonomous Robot was eventually revealed to be an elaborate viral marketing campaign designed to promote the new Mini Cooper. More→

The comedian Andy Kaufman died of lung cancer on May 16, 1984. But twenty years later, on May 16, 2004, a press release announced that he was still alive and living in New York City on the Upper West Side. Simultaneously, a blog authored by Kaufman appeared online. The press release explained that Kaufman had merely faked his death twenty years ago. But now he was back! During his life Kaufman had been fascinated with the idea of faking his death, and had even promised that if he did 'pull an Elvis' he would return 20 years later to tell everyone about it. Consequently there was a flurry of speculation on the internet about whether Kaufman really had returned from the dead. There is no evidence he had. After several weeks, the joke got old for whoever was behind it, and new posts stopped appearing on Kaufman's blog.

On December 3, 2004 the BBC broadcast an interview with Jude Finisterra, who claimed to be a representative of Dow Chemical. The date was the 20th anniversary of the chemical disaster in Bhopal, and the BBC had sought out a representative from Dow to speak about the tragedy since Dow had inherited responsibility for the disaster via a corporate acquisition. During the interview, Mr. Finisterra shocked the BBC's audience when he said that not only had Dow decided to accept full responsibility for the incident, but that it was going to pay $12 billion in compensation to the victims. In response to the news, Dow's stock value promptly dropped. More→

The website MarryOurDaughter.com appeared online in September 2007. It claimed to be "an introduction service assisting those following the Biblical tradition of arranging marriages for their Daughters." In plainer language, it purported to be a service that would arrange marriages between underage girls and older husbands. More→

The website IBuyStrays.com appeared online in late December 2007 and quickly achieved notoriety. The site purported to represent a business that bought unwanted pets and stray animals and resold them to research labs for animal experimentation. More→

When composer Maurice Jarre died on March 28, 2009, many of the journalists given the job of writing an obituary for him turned to Wikipedia for information about his life. There they found the following quotation attributed to him: "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear." More→