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 | Books | Business/Finance | Celebrities | Con Artists | Conspiracy Theories | Crop Circles | Cryptozoology | Death | eBay | Email Hoaxes | Entertainment | Exploration/Travel | Extraterrestrial Life | Fashion | Food | Free Energy | Future/Time | Gnomes | Gross | Hate Crimes/Terror | Health/Medicine | History | Websites | Identity/Imposters | Journalism | Law/Police/Crime | Literature/Language | Mass Delusion | Military | Miscellaneous | Music | Pareidolia | Photos/Videos | Places | Politics | Pranks | Products | Pseudoscience | Psychology | Radio | Religion | Scams | Science | Sex/Romance | Social Networking Sites | Sports | Paranormal | Tall Tales | Technology | Videos | Urban Legends

BLOG ARCHIVE July, 2009 | June, 2009 | May, 2009 | April, 2009 | March, 2009 | February, 2009 | January, 2009 | December, 2008 | November, 2008 | October, 2008 | September, 2008 | August, 2008 | 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 |

Punk rock is supposed to celebrate anti-commercialism and anarchy. Which makes a case of forgery in the market for punk-rock memorabilia somewhat ironic.

A flyer for a 1978 Sex Pistols show at Randy's Rodeo in Texas, which was being auctioned by Christie's, has been found to be fake. Sex Pistols fans noticed that the letters forming "land" in "England" were written with Microsoft Comic Sans font, which only became available in 1995 with the release of Windows 95. The fans notified Christie's who pulled the item from the auction. Emvergeoning.com



Thanks, Joe!
Blogger Susie Of Arabia reports that after buying a copy of Katy Perry's album One of the Boys in Saudi Arabia, she realized that all the pictures of Katy Perry had been heavily doctored by Saudi censors. Below (left) is the original album cover, and on the right is the Saudi version.

This is standard practice in Saudi Arabia. A few years ago I posted about Mariah Carey album covers that were similarly doctored by the Saudis.



Susie suggests that the Katy Perry albums were individually doctored by hand, by censors armed with magic markers. She writes: "the Saudi government is actually paying religious police members of the Committee for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CVPVP) to remove the plastic wrap from these CDs, open up the CD cases, remove the front and back inserts, and carefully and painstakingly color in with a marker any photos baring exposed female flesh that is deemed objectionable."

I really doubt that. It would take far too long. Instead, I'm almost certain that a more modest version of the cover would have been printed specifically for the Saudi market.

Of course, America has its own history of moral censorship of photos. However, in America the censors typically don't try to reclothe people who are wearing too few clothes. Instead, they remove offending details such as exposed nipples or belly buttons, creating anatomical mutants.
Pete Waterman wrote the song Never Gonna Give You Up, which is the focal point of the massively popular Rickrolling prank. But he's now complaining that, despite the millions of times that video has been viewed online, he's earned only £11 from Google for all those views. He earns more from his local radio station playing the song than he does from YouTube. Welcome to the internet economy, Mr. Waterman! [Telegraph]
Someone circulated a bogus press release claiming that rap star Lil' Kim was running for mayor of Hoboken. Local media in New York duly reported it as fact. But in a world where Ronald Reagan became president and Arnold Schwarzenegger is Governor of California, I can understand why they took it seriously. [NY Daily News]

The following cease-and-desist letter, supposedly written by Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart to John McCain, has started doing the rounds. Warning: NSFW language!



Is it real? Well, the Wilsons did email out a statement asking the Republican campaign not to use their music, and in a phone interview, after the Republicans used their music anyway, Nancy Wilson said, "I feel completely f--ed over."

However, the article above seems to be satire. It comes from Seattle's The Stranger newspaper and ran as their "New Column" feature, which usually is a spoof piece. (Thanks, Big Gary!)
You have missed your chance to bid on an "Air guitar owned by JFK":



(Thanks, Joe! via wonkette)
Maxim recently published a review of the Black Crowes' new album, Warpaint. It didn't like it much, giving it only 2.5 stars out of 5.

There was just one problem. The album hadn't been released yet, and advance copies hadn't been made available. So how had the Maxim reviewer heard the album? Turns out he hadn't. Maxim explained to the Black Crowes that the reviewer made an "educated guess." Maxim later released this statement: "It is Maxim's editorial policy to assign star ratings only to those albums that have been heard in their entirety. Unfortunately, that policy was not followed in the March 2008 issue of our magazine and we apologize to our readers."

Nothing new here. As I point out in Hippo Eats Dwarf, reviewers are notorious for not listening to albums or reading books before they review them. As the Scottish reverend Sidney Smith famously remarked, "I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so."

The Kirkus review of Elephants on Acid had me wondering if the reviewer had actually read the book. It was a pretty good review (the reviewer described the book as "One of the finest science/history bathroom books of all time"), so I didn't want to make a fuss, but in summarizing the contents of the book the reviewer gave this description:


That's all completely wrong. The 1931 experiment was to see if a chimp could be raised as a human, not the other way around. The 1977 experiment had nothing to do with scratch-n-sniff paper; it involved pretending to transmit smells over TV sets. And the multi-orgasmic male experiment occurred in 1998, not 1928. But like I said, the reviewer seemed to like the book, so I'm not complaining.
The Patry Copyright blog has posted details of an interesting copyright case: United States v. Chalupnik. It doesn't, strictly speaking, have anything to do with hoaxes, except that it raises the question of whether there actually was a crime committed, or whether it's an example of a big corporation trying to invent a crime. Here are the facts, as summarized by William Patry:


So the guy took the CDs out of the trash and resold them, prompting BMG to complain that he had caused them lost sales. Does this mean that if I threw away a box full of my books, I could sue anyone who found them in the trash and sold them? That doesn't seem to make sense. After all, I threw them away, presumably forfeiting my ownership of them.

The court overturned the defendant's sentence on appeal -- but it sounds as if he still might face some other form of sentencing.

The complicating factor here is that he was a post office employee, and thus was obligated to honor the post office's promise to BMG that it would actually throw away the material.

In this video some guy, who calls himself One Man Sho, sings gibberish while performing various actions such as knocking over wooden blocks and drinking a glass of orange soda. Then the video plays in reverse to reveal that he was actually singing the national anthem backwards.

It would be possible to fake this. For instance, you could dub over the voice, though I imagine it would be a technical challenge to match the dubbed voice to the movement of his lips. Or you could sing gibberish and then dub over the reversed portion of the video. So I downloaded the video to check that the second half really is the first half played in reverse. It is.

So I'm concluding that the video is real. This guy actually memorized how to sing the national anthem backwards. An impressive, but odd talent.


Caught Lipsyncing
Amusing video on youtube of a guy caught lipsyncing. I like how he tries to pretend that nothing happened.


Live Frog in Lettuce
Yet another case of a family finding a live frog in their lettuce. The amazing thing is that instead of trying to sue someone, the family has adopted the frog as a pet. They call him "curious."


Fake Leg as Weapon
"Police said Donna Sturkie-Anthony took her elder sister's prosthetic leg and beat her with it."