About the Museum
The Museum of Hoaxes, founded by Alex Boese in 1997, is dedicated to promoting knowledge about the phenomenon of hoaxes. On our blog (to the left) we post about dubious-sounding claims — and whatever else strikes our fancy. But there's more to the museum than the blog. Check out our historical wing, which contains hundreds of articles about famous hoaxes, arranged chronologically from the Middle Ages right up to the present. Our Gallery of the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes Ever celebrates that one day of the year devoted to pranks and practical jokes. In our forum, you can chat with other MoH members. And there's much, much more.

Web Hoax Museum

BLOG CATEGORIES Advertising | Animals | April Fools Day | Art | Birth/Babies | Body Manipulation | Business/Finance | Celebrities | Con Artists | Conspiracy Theories | Crop Circles | Cryptozoology | Death | eBay | Email Hoaxes | Entertainment | Exploration/Travel | Extraterrestrial Life | Food | Free Energy | Future/Time | Gnomes | Gross | Hate Crimes/Terror | Health/Medicine | History | Hoax Websites | Identity/Imposters | Journalism | Law/Police/Crime | Literature/Language | Mass Delusion | Military | Miscellaneous | Music | Pareidolia | Photos/Videos | Places | Politics | Polls | Pranks | Psychology | Radio | Religion | Scams | Science | Sex/Romance | Sports | Paranormal | Tall Tales | Technology | Urban Legends

BLOG ARCHIVE July, 2008 | June, 2008 | May, 2008 | April, 2008 | March, 2008 | February, 2008 | January, 2008 | December, 2007 | November, 2007 | October, 2007 | September, 2007 | August, 2007 | July, 2007 | June, 2007 | May, 2007 | April, 2007 | March, 2007 | February, 2007 | January, 2007 | December, 2006 | November, 2006 | October, 2006 | September, 2006 | August, 2006 | July, 2006 | June, 2006 | May, 2006 | April, 2006 | March, 2006 | February, 2006 | January, 2006 | December, 2005 | November, 2005 | October, 2005 | September, 2005 | August, 2005 | July, 2005 | June, 2005 | May, 2005 | April, 2005 | March, 2005 | February, 2005 | January, 2005 | December, 2004 | November, 2004 | October, 2004 | September, 2004 | August, 2004 | July, 2004 | June, 2004 | May, 2004 | April, 2004 | March, 2004 | February, 2004 | January, 2004 | December, 2003 | November, 2003 | October, 2003 | September, 2003 | August, 2003 | July, 2003 | June, 2003 | May, 2003 | January, 2003 | November, 2002 | October, 2002 | September, 2002 | August, 2002 | July, 2002 |

I've heard of faking the death of people, but I've never before heard of a case of someone faking the death of an animal. Until now. The Chicago Sun Times reports on this bizarre case of a Pennsylvania couple who thought the vet had euthanized their epileptic dog, but then found out he had only pretended to do so:

A couple who thought they were watching their epileptic dog being euthanized actually witnessed a simple sedation procedure concocted so the veterinary clinic could later give the canine to another owner, they claim in a lawsuit... the lawsuit says, the dog was given a sedative to make it appear she was dead. The clinic then gave Annie to a new owner, Gene Rizzo of northeast Philadelphia, who cared for the dog until he had her euthanized Nov. 2.

I just don't understand the motivation of the vet here. Was he trying to make a buck by selling someone a sick dog? Or did he not think the dog was sick enough to be euthanized, but didn't want to tell that to the couple?
If you live in Cincinnati, watch out. Sometime during the next month you may feel a calm sensation wash over you. And that sensation may be caused by the "Maharishi Effect." At least, it might be if you believe tai chi teacher Vince Lasorso. Lasorso is hoping to convince 3000 residents of Cincinnati to pray or meditate for 30 days, starting on April 29th, in order to create a "peaceful field of consciousness" in the city and hopefully reduce its murder rate. As the Cincinnati Enquirer reports:

He says studies have shown that if 1 percent of a community practices meditation and other inner peace techniques, the crime rate can dip more than 20 percent. In transcendental meditation circles, that's known as the Maharishi effect, named for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a mystic who became famous in the 1960s after teaching the Beatles to meditate.

Check out Lasorso's website, movementsofpeace.org, where he states that "Research conducted at Princeton University demonstrates that human consciousness creates a field around the Earth as real and measurable as gravity. Experiments in over forty U.S. cities reduced crime rates as much as 24 percent when one percent of the population meditated on loving peace." I'd like to know what this research at Princeton is that he's citing. Or he is just making it up? (I can't find any references on his site.)

This kind of thing (praying for peace) seems to be a bit of a trend right now. I posted about Global Spell Casting day a few weeks ago. And Katy Kurione emailed me about a dial-a-prayer outfit called PrayLive.com that has a slightly different spin on the idea. On April 27 they gathered "clergy from around the Washington, DC and MD area... to pray for the lowering of gas prices." Forget about peace... just lower the price of gas!
A Japanese company is selling a portable ghost detector that fits on a keychain. I can't really understand the machine-translated text, but it looks like the detector glows red in the presence of a ghost, and glows blue otherwise. It costs 2,079 Yen, which is about $18. Not too bad. Compare this to the ghost detectors sold by Abate Electronics which start at $93 (and they don't even fit on your keychain!). It goes without saying that I'm sure these things have been rigorously tested to conform to the highest scientific standards. (via OhGizmo)
Last year I posted about a group of MIT students who created an Automatic Scientific Paper Generator, capable of creating "random Computer Science research papers, including graphs, figures, and citations." One of the papers created by this program was accepted for presentation at the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. To stop something like this happening again, researchers at the Indiana University School of Informaics have invented an Inauthentic Paper Detector. It's supposed to be able to tell whether a paper has been written by a human or a machine. The researchers write: "The main purpose of this software is to detect whether a technical document conforms to the statistical standards of an expository text... We are trying to detect new, machine written texts that are simply generated not to have any meaning, yet appear to have meaning on the surface."

I tested the Inauthentic Paper Detector by having it analyze the last couple of entries I've written. It told me: "This text had been classified as INAUTHENTIC with a 38.4% chance of being authentic text." I guess this confirms the theory that the real Alex drowned in Loch Ness back in September 2004 and was replaced by replicant Alex. (via New Scientist)
There's some debate over at Flickr concerning whether this image is real or photoshopped. The person who took it (Kris Kros) swears that it's real. But doubts have been raised by Hugo who argues that "such a crisp capture of a jet, in front of an extremely detailed moon, in complete darkness, with no apparent noise, was quite extraordinary." I can't tell one way or the other. Though Hugo is absolutely right to point out that in almost all pictures of planes flying in front of the moon, the turbulence of the jets is visible... but it's not visible in this picture.

This could be useful at baseball games. It's the Beerbelly, "a removable spare tire that serves a stealth beverage." Basically it's a bladder that you fill with your drink of choice and strap around your belly, thereby (when worn beneath a shirt) camouflaging it as a beer gut. (Thanks to Emily de Saint Jores for the link)

The beer bladder would definitely be more fun to wear than the empathy belly, which is a "a multi-component, weighted 'garment' that will -- through medically accurate simulation -- enable men, women, teenage girls and boys to experience over 20 symptoms and effects of pregnancy." (I thought I had linked to the empathy belly before, but it didn't come up on a search of the site.)

And while you're at it, you might as well strap on a whizzinator prosthetic penis as well. To complete the theme, I would post a link to an artificial lactating breast, like the one featured in Meet The Fockers, but I don't think any company actually makes such a thing.
Tamakia Gant asks: "Are these real? They look so amazing!!!"

Yeah, they are pretty cool. And they are real (real sculptures, not real people!) They're the work of Australian hyper-realist sculptor Ron Mueck. According to the Wikipedia entry about him, "Mueck's sculptures faithfully reproduce the minute detail of the human body, but play with scale to produce disconcertingly jarring visual images."

Following a post about how California got its name, Boing Boing added an interesting reader comment alleging that Idaho got its name because of a hoax:

"When a name was being selected for new territory, eccentric lobbyist George M. Willing suggested 'Idaho,' which he claimed was a Native American term meaning 'gem of the mountains'. It was later revealed Willing had made up the name himself, and the original Idaho territory was re-named Colorado because of it. Eventually the controversy was forgotten, and modern-day Idaho was given the made-up name when the Idaho Territory was formally created in 1863."

I had never heard this before, so I did a little research. It turns out that Willing did indeed claim to have invented the name Idaho. But whether he did or not is uncertain, since his claim was first published fifteen years after the first appearance of the word. Plus, he was a bit of a self-promoter and not entirely trustworthy. I found the following discussion of the Idaho question in an article by Erl H. Ellis published in Western Folklore, Oct. 1951:

Even if Idaho did get its name from a hoax, Des Moines can lay claim to a funnier name origin. The Peoria indians told the first white settlers that the tribe living in that area (their rivals) was named the Moingoana, which became the root of Des Moines. But it turns out that Moingoana was really the Peoria word for "shitfaces".
This outdoor advertisement transforming a New York City manhole into a steaming cup of coffee was apparently created by Saatchi & Saatchi for their client Folgers. The question is: was this actually done in real life (i.e. were vinyl covers placed on top of manholes), or has the picture simply been photoshopped? The picture itself seems to have been first posted at coloribus.com, and someone has posted a comment there claiming to be from Saatchi & Saatchi and confirming that the coffee-manhole campaign was real. But I can't find anything official from Saatchi & Saatchi in which they take credit for the campaign. Still, my hunch is that it's real.

This photo of a London bus displaying Google Adsense ads was posted on the Digital Point Forums on April 2nd. It since has been making its way around the internet. It's definitely photoshopped. The white google ads show no variation in color or shadowing. It was probably some kind of late April Fool's Day joke. Still, it would be a clever form of outdoor advertising. (via Fresh Creation)

Last Friday a man was found floating on a makeshift raft in the Skagerrak strait between Sweden and Norway. He claimed that he had been set adrift four days ago by another ship. He also said that his name was George Williams, and that he had been born in Cape Town. Within a day he had added details to his story and now said that his parents were Russian-Jewish parents, but that he had been given up for adoption at an early age. Authorities doubt that he could have been floating out there for four days, given the cold temperatures. So the guy presents a bit of a mystery. Who is he really? And how did he end up on a raft in the middle of the ocean? The story has shades of last year's Piano Man mystery. (Thanks to Asheim for the links)
Brussels Airlines has been experimenting with a bizarre campaign to raise awareness about the threat of getting pickpocketed in airports. Their agents have been covertly slipping plastic hands into the bags of people who aren't paying enough attention to what's going on around them. Imagine opening up your bag and finding a hand in there. I think I'd freak out. The campaign was created for Brussels Airlines by the agency LG&F. (via Coolzor)

Konrad Kujau was the forger responsible for creating the Hitler Diaries. After he served his prison sentence, he became something of a minor celebrity in Germany, and his "authentic fakes" of famous paintings became sought after in their own right by collectors. Kujau died in 2000, but now his great-niece, Petra, has been charged with selling hundreds of fakes of his fakes. The Times reports that:

Petra Kujau, 47, faces fraud charges for selling at least 500 fake Kujaus to clients worldwide through an internet auction site for more than €550,000 (£381,000). Some of the oil paintings, bought from art schools in Asia for as little as €10 apiece, fetched up to €3,500 because the Kujau signature inflated their value.

I wonder if these fake Kujau forgeries will now also become collector's items? I wouldn't mind having one to hang in my office, but only if I can get it for €10, not €3,500.
Thanks to Mark Holah (aka Rennet) for bringing the Sardinian specialty known as Casu Marzu to my attention. Casu Marzu is a type of pecorino cheese infested with thousands of wriggling maggots. If the maggots are still wriggling, then it's okay to eat (if you have a strong stomach). If the maggots aren't wriggling, that means the cheese has become toxic. The wikipedia entry for Casu Marzu is so bizarre, that you'd swear it has to be a joke:

Derived from Pecorino Sardo, casu marzu goes beyond typical fermentation to a stage most would consider to be decomposition, brought about by the digestive action of the larvae of the cheese fly, Piophila casei. These larvae are deliberately introduced to the cheese, promoting an advanced level of fermentation and breaking down the cheese's fats. The texture of the cheese becomes very soft, with some liquid (called "lagrima") seeping out. The larvae themselves appear as transparent, white worms, about 8 mm (1/3 inch) long. When disturbed, the larvae can jump for distances up to 15 cm (6 inches), prompting recommendations of eye protection for those eating the cheese. Some people clear the larvae from the cheese before consuming; others do not.

However, Casu Marzu is quite real. It's been described in a number of newspapers and magazines including The Wall Street Journal and Bon Appetit. Taras Grescoe recently wrote about it in The Devil's Picnic: A Tour of Everything the Governments of the World Don't Want You to Try.

Apparently Casu Marzu isn't even the most disgusting food Sardinians eat. According to a 2004 article in Australian Magazine, that honor goes to 'tordi':

These are small, 10cm-long songbirds that feed on the island's plentiful myrtle berries. They are netted and poached, then served cold, three or four at a time, garnished with myrtle leaves. Their eyes are black, haunting, their necks spindly. They look like a plateful of baby dinosaurs. You are supposed to eat them whole - everything but the beak - in a few crunches.

If one is going to try some Casu Marzu, I think the perfect drink to wash it down would be some Army Worm Wine.
Nettie forwarded me these pictures that are circulating around in Australia accompanied by this text:

A riding buddy of mine's father has some crazy fishing friends! These were taken down at Windy Harbour - off the South Coast of WA [Western Australia] near Northcliffe. See how close they are to shore!!

Nettie writes "I'd assume they were real enough as we do get some pretty big sharks around here although you'd have to be a complete moron to do what these guys are doing." True, but I'm guessing that the caption is wrong... that the guy in the picture isn't just some "crazy fishing friend." If you look closely at his shirt, you can see that it has a corporate logo on it that includes the word 'Shark' (the only legible word). So I'd assume the guy is a professional and knows what he's doing. Though I'm not sure what exactly it is that he's doing (or where he's doing it).