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.

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I just heard from a voice from the past. "Gorgeous Guy," who was briefly a web celebrity back in 2001, sent me an email to let me know that he's going to be filing a lawsuit against me for defamation of his character.

Sigh . Seems like Carrie Devorah all over again.

So I'm looking at the brief article I have about Gorgeous Guy and trying to figure out if there's anything even conceivably defamatory in there. Consider what I say versus what's on wikipedia. CNN even claims that "Gorgeous Guy" admitted he was responsible for the hoax, though it was my understanding that he always claimed to have no knowledge of how the whole thing transpired.

I've had occasional email from him before. He actually uses "TheRealGorgeousGuy" as his email name. In the past he's let me know whether there still seems to be interest in the case, based on the volume of his email. Odd that he waited eight years to decide I was making defamatory claims about him.
I recently created a twitter page for the Museum of Hoaxes, so if you're on twitter, check it out.

I'm pretty inept at this social networking stuff. I created a personal twitter page months ago, but almost never posted to it. Hopefully I'll be more disciplined about tweeting on the MOH page.

There may be a bit of a learning curve, because I still haven't figured out all the twitter lingo. RT is the only abbreviation I understand.

But I'm excited that I already have nine "followers," and I hadn't even told anyone about the page yet.
I periodically get bored with how the site looks and decide it needs to be overhauled. That's the kind of mood I was in today, so I redesigned the blog.

I'm not sure if the new look is better or worse than the old one, but it is different, which is the important thing. (I haven't yet changed the comments or permalink pages, so if you're nostalgic for the old look, you can see it there, for now.)

In another year or two I'll probably get bored of this look and change it again.

More importantly, I'm also adding a new section to the site: the Hoax Archive.

One of the problems with the site has been that, although it contains a lot of information, that information has been very disorganized. There are all kinds of stray articles in forgotten corners of the site. So I'm trying to import all that information into one central database. I'm also merging the hoaxipedia into the archive, so that everything will be in one place, and easily searchable.

There's still a lot of work to do on it. I've only imported about one-third of the site's articles into it. But since I'm unveiling a new front page, I figured I might as well unveil the Hoax Archive as well.
I'm back, after a two-week absence! It was two weeks spent doing the always fun job of home remodeling (sarcasm).

My wife and I are slowly remodeling our home. Since we figure we can't afford to move any time soon, we're fixing up the house we have to make it nicer to live in. But since we also can't afford to hire real contractors, I get stuck doing all the work. Last year I redid the hallway bathroom. This time, it was the master bathroom. I thought I would be able to keep blogging as I did the remodeling, but after the first day of back-breaking work I realized that wasn't going to happen and decided to focus on getting the remodeling done as soon as possible. Luckily I had my dad to help me. He traveled out from the east coast to give me a hand.

Fun discoveries made during the remodeling process included finding that the sub-flooring was completely rotten and needed to be replaced, and that the old cast-iron pipes were so clogged that they also needed to be entirely replaced.

The job isn't done yet, but I made a lot of progress in the past two weeks. Some pics are below. In the meantime, I should now be able to pay some attention to hoaxes.


Marc Silver of National Geographic interviewed me about the history and customs of April Fool's Day. The interview is now up on the Nat Geo blog.

And in other news, programmer Mark Greenfield turned the list of the Top 100 April Fool's Day hoaxes into an iPhone app (for those people who want to have the list in an easy-to-read format on their phone). The app is now available at the iPhone store. I don't have an iPhone, so I haven't been able to test the app. I think it costs $1, of which I get about ten cents. Now, if only I could get everyone who reads the list on my site on April 1st to pay me a dollar, I'd be a rich man.
Topps has announced it plans to release a set of cards featuring the "world's biggest hoaxes, hoodwinks, & bamboozles." The entire set, according to visualeditors.com, will consist of:

• Charles Ponzi
• Bernie Madoff
• The Runaway Bride
• Idaho
• The Turk
• Enron
• Anna Anderson
• Ferdinand Waldo Demara
• San Serriffe
• D.B. Cooper
• Spaghetti Trees
• Victor Lustig
• The War of the Worlds
• George Parker
• The Bathtub Hoax
• The Cottingley Fairies
• James Reavis
• The Piltdown Man
• The Cardiff Giant
• Cold Fusion

Looks good, though I'm not sure why they include Idaho. Probably because of the rumor that Idaho got its name from a hoax. Or maybe they're referring to the theory that Idaho does not exist.

And D.B. Cooper? Is hijacking a plane and parachuting out really a hoax? And I think Cold Fusion was bad science, but it wasn't a deliberate hoax.

Anyway, Topps will also have a set featuring "creatures of legend, myth & terror."

What I'm not sure of is how one goes about buying these sets. I suspect you can't buy them as a stand-alone pack, but rather you'll have to buy the $3 packs of trading cards and hope a) you get a hoax card, and b) that you can eventually build up the entire set. I'll probably be one of the few people throwing out the baseball cards to get the hoax cards.
I've had no time to post anything recently, and that'll likely continue until the end of this month. The problem is that a British version of my second book, Hippo Eats Dwarf, will be coming out this year, but it'll be a significantly revised version. I have to get the manuscript to the publisher by February 1, and I still have a lot of work left to do on it. The next two weeks are going to be busy.

When I have to choose between blogging and doing something that actually makes some money, the money, in the short term, usually wins. In the long term, of course, my non-commercial instincts always kick in sooner or later, and I return to my poverty-making pursuits.
In the past few days I've had a number of people report that there seems to be a virus on the site. I've also had it happen to me twice that I'll try to load a page of the site and instead be transferred to a spam site.

Could you all let me know if you're having similar problems. The more info I have, the easier it will be to track down the source of the problem.

I suspect the virus is being loaded onto the site via the ads, and I've contacted the ad hosting company. But there's a remote possibility a virus is actually on my server.

Anyway, I'm working on the problem.
There's quite a bit of news to report about the activities of MOHers throughout the world.

First, and most amazingly -- belated congratulations to Smerk and Accipiter who got engaged while I was in Germany. The two met in the MOH forum, making this the very first MOH marriage! That's quite a milestone. I can't quite get over the idea that this site, which I created as a way to procrastinate while I was supposed to be working on my dissertation, has played a role in allowing two people to meet, fall in love, and get married. That's incredible. More details about the engagement are posted in the forum.

Second, Scottish MOHers WaveOfMutilation, Boo, and Madmouse recently visited Aussies Nettie and Smerk in Perth. Nettie sent this great picture of the whole gang.



Tah and Oppiejoe met up in Hell, Michigan.



And finally, Nettie (subsequent to the Perth get-together) traveled to North America where she had the chance to meet up with Tah and Transfrmr in Seattle.


I'm back from my European vacation. Thanks to Cranky Media Guy for minding the madhouse while I was gone.

I spent nine days in Germany and four in England. The purpose of the vacation was to visit relatives, but since I was over there I, of course, had to take the opportunity to drag family members around to visit various hoaxy stuff.

For instance, I found the approximate spot on top of the Reichstag in Berlin from which Yevgeny Khaldei, in 1945, took his famous shot of soldiers raising a Soviet flag. Khaldei's shot (below on the left) was actually posed, and Soviet censors later erased the multiple wristwatches on the soldiers' arms (evidence they had been looting). Khaldei also added smoke into the background. On the right is what the same scene looks like today. (Well, as close as I could approximate it. It's not possible to stand in exactly the same place where Khaldei stood because there's a restaurant there now.)

I next visited the town hall of Köpenick (a suburb of Berlin), in front of which stands a statue of Wilhelm Voigt, the so-called Captain of Köpenick. In 1906 Voigt, who was an out-of-work shoemaker, dressed up in a second-hand German officer's uniform, approached a group of soldiers marching down the street, and assumed control of them. He then led them to Köpenick, where he arrested the mayor, took 4000 marks from the treasury, and disappeared with the money. The incident became famous as a symbol of the blind obedience of German soldiers to authority -- even fake authority. Inside the town hall is also a museum dedicated to Voigt (a Museum of a Hoax, as opposed to a Museum of Hoaxes). On display is a German officer's uniform identical to the one Voigt wore.

Finally, in London I tried to locate 54 Berners Street, site of a famous prank in 1810. Author Theodore Hook had bet a friend that he could make any house the most talked-about address in London in only a week. His friend chose 54 Berners Street as the address. Hook won the bet by sending letters to tradesmen and dignitaries throughout the city, asking them to come to that address... on the same day. This resulted in a massive crowd gathering outside the house. Even the Mayor of London supposedly showed up there, having received one of Hook's letters.

I found Berners Street, but 54 Berners Street no longer exists. On the site now stands the swanky Sanderson Hotel. There's not even a marker to note where the hoax occurred. I was quite disappointed. People nowadays just don't value the history of hoaxes.