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 don't have any information about this picture. It's just an image of a cloud shaped like Godzilla that I came across on the web. Is it real or fake? Well, it looks real to me, and I can't see any obvious signs of photoshopping. But I couldn't say for sure. Also, I have no idea what type of cloud this is.

This picture of a cat having a whitewater adventure is doing the rounds. Amusing, but pretty obviously photoshopped. (I don't think many cats would willingly get into a raft.) Here's the original from which the cat was taken:

Divester.com has been posting more Scary Shark: Real or Not challenges. Their latest picture shows a "horny shark." Is it real or not? The answer will be revealed next week. I'm not sure about this one. The shark kind of looks like it's made out of paper mache, so I'm going to vote that it's fake.


They also had a good challenge last week which I forgot to post about. To me the picture looked like a rag-doll shark, so I voted that it was fake. But I was wrong. Turns out that it's a photo of a real creature known as a cookie cutter shark. It lives in the depths of the ocean and only ventures to the surface at night to feed.

Related Posts:
July 1, 2006: Shark Head
June 24, 2006: Shark Photos
A lot of sites have been linking to this video of a pair of quick-change artists performing on NBC's America's Got Talent. The video is fun to watch if you haven't seen them performing before. The pair are magicians David & Dania, who were recently profiled in this Slate.com article. Apparently the duo have become the most popular act during NBA half-time shows.

So how is the trick done? Slate.com reports that: In other words, it relies on special clothing and a lot of practice. If you watch the video closely, the moment when she has the hoop around her and changes from a green into a purple dress is the one time you can almost see the costume change occurring. I have no idea how she pulls off the trick at the end in which she changes clothes as glitter falls around her.
I missed this story last month, but better late than never. Early in June a lot of newspapers ran this photo of Qiao Yubo, a Chinese woman supposedly pregnant with five babies. Apparently it was one of the most viewed photos on Yahoo! News. The caption accompanying the photo stated that she was 1.67m tall, five months pregnant, had a waist measuring 1.75m, and was eating seven meals a day.

Honestly, I have a hard time understanding how anyone thought this was real. Her stomach looks obviously fake. And sure enough, a few days later it was revealed that what was really beneath her dress were "three bed quilts, a dozen sweaters, shirt, cushions, hats and so on." Other news sources state that she had as many as 20 bed quilts beneath her dress. This was only discovered after a clinic offered her a free medical check-up, prompting her to come clean. This is the story of why she did it according to the South China Morning Post: Readers of Hippo Eats Dwarf (particularly Reality Rule 1.1: Just because a woman looks pregnant, it doesn't mean she is) would not have fallen for this hoax. (Thanks to Robert Brewington for the link)
Last week the London Times printed a photo that, so it claimed, was the only known photograph of Mozart's widow (Constanze), taken in 1840 at the home of Swiss composer Max Keller when she was 78 years old. (She's supposedly the woman on the far left.) However, the photo has generated controversy online, where a number of scholars have labeled it a hoax.

The Sounds & Fury blog cites Agnes Selby, author of a biography of Constanze Mozart, who writes that: This is followed up by a message from Dr. Michael Lorenz of the University of Vienna's Institute of Musicology who points out that a) this 'newly discovered' photo has been circulating around since the 1950s and has long been thought to be a hoax, and b) "It was simply not possible in 1840 to take sharp outdoor pictures of people as long as the necessary exposure time still amounted to about three minutes. The first outdoor portraits of human beings originate from the 1850s and the picture in question definitely looks like an amateur snapshot from the 1870s."

However, this latter claim (about the technology for outdoor group-photo taking not existing in the 1840s) is contested by Dan Leeson.

But overall, it doesn't seem that there's any real evidence to suggest the woman in the picture is Constanze Mozart. So this should probably be listed as a hoax.
Some of the things I post about aren't the most intelligence-enhancing things in the world. I know that. But what follows is really scraping the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. It's a woman who appeared on the Maury Povich Show who claims to be Pickle-Phobic. The mere sight of pickles sends her into a state of screaming panic. Her fear of pickles is ruining her life. Here's what she has to say: I realize that people can have irrational phobias about things, but a phobia of pickles? She must be joking. No way can this be real. My vote is that she's either making this up completely, or exaggerating it a lot in order to get on TV. And even if she were terrified of pickles, surely it would be easier for her to simply avoid pickles, rather than to try to cure her of the problem.
I don't like to make fun of people's appearances (doing so disturbs my soft, liberal sensibilities), but when I saw this picture of Ann Coulter I thought that it was either photoshopped, or she had the strangest looking hand I've ever seen in my life. In fact, I would hesitate to even use the words 'hand' to describe that thing at the end of her arm. Instead, the phrase 'raptor claw' seems like it might be more appropriate. The thing is almost as long as her forearm! But a quick check on anncoulter.com (which, I assume, is her website) reveals that the picture is posted there. Which means that it must be real. Freaky. I think I'm going to be having nightmares about this. (Via US Magazine)

Supposedly this is a picture of a Russian nuclear sub cruising by a beach somewhere in Russia. I've noticed this picture posted on a number of blogs, but the info about it comes from strategypage.com. However, no source for the photo is indicated. Is it real? I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be. Here in San Diego it's quite common to see nuclear subs cruising past, especially if you're at Cabrillo Point or Coronado. I imagine the same must be true in Russia.

Update: For comparison, here's a photo I took about two weeks ago of an American submarine cruising off Cabrillo Point, San Diego. In my picture you can see sailors standing on top of the sub as it comes into harbor. Interesting that there are no sailors standing on the Russian sub, especially since it seems like a nice day when the photo was taken.


Update: Stone (in the comments) found a Russian site with more pictures of this sub at the beach, which leads me to conclude that the picture is real because it's unlikely that someone faked an entire series of pictures. According to the machine translation of the Russian site, the pictures were taken at Severodvinsk on the White Sea.


Museum of Hoaxers helped make last week's Real-or-Not Challenge at Divester.com it's most popular yet. So we're now getting a special heads-up (pun intended) each time they post a new Real-or-Not challenge. Their latest photo shows a shark in all its "bug-eyed, needle-tooth glory." I would vote real, but that's just my personal, non-expert opinion. Maybe it's a trick. I'll post the answer here (not in a new post) when it's revealed.

Update: It's real. This is a photo of a crocodile shark. It's a small shark with large eyes for hunting in deep waters.

Related Post: Shark Photos