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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People have been crowding around a seven-metre betel nut tree in Kuala Lumpur. The tree has developed what looks like a human face on one of its fronds, the reports say. The owner, Miah Majid, told reporters that the tree had previously sported the shape of an eye.

"Superstitious village elders have advised onlookers not to make any comments when they pass the tree, reports said. Other enterprising villagers are selling photographs of the face for 2 ringgit (US$0.55)."

Good to see a slightly lower-tech way of making money off it, rather then using eBay...

(Thanks, naiart.)
Katie Couric recently shed about twenty pounds, thanks to a magic mouse diet (i.e. the click of a mouse did the reducing for her). A CBS magazine distributed a photo of her in which she looked dramatically slimmed down. But the original photo reveals her slightly more plump, actual self. Of course, magazines doctor the photos of celebrities all the time to make them look better. I suppose the only reason this instance is attracting attention is because she's now a news anchor. But regardless, I always find it entertaining to see before and after photos like this. (Thanks, Joe)
I received links to two different pages featuring a series of pictures showing what is described as a 'monster' and an 'unknown creature'.

On one of the sites, this description is given:


Ignoring the unverified description, I'm fairly sure it's a beluga whale.
A site describes them as: "... a small white whale measuring 9 to 15 feet in length (Seems about right, sizewise). Belugas are found throughout the Arctic Ocean and in a few other isolated populations. Belugas were once heavily hunted for their meat, hide (for leather) and oil.

(Thanks to Sarah and Gerrit for the links, and Charybdis for his excellent googling skills.)
Following hot on the heels of the chocolate Virgin Mary (which, as many people pointed out, looked more like the Maltese Falcon) comes: Jesus as seen on an ultrasound picture.

Seven months through her pregnancy, Laura Turner went for a routine ultrasound. She already knew that her son had a cleft lip, and she and her partner had been told there was a possibility of the child having Down's Syndrome. She says that she didn't notice anything particularly odd about the scan until a friend pointed it out once they got home.


I suppose that, what with the difficult pregnancy, it's a very heartening sign for her.
I received this in my inbox from an unnamed correspondant:
"I've been sent this photo by several people in the past few days. Looks too perfect to be real."

(ETA: After comments, I've removed the image from the page, but you can view it here.)

Well, it's certainly been posted to the BridalBloopers website, but all the information with it states is that it has been posted by a woman named Amanda Sell from Mount Vernon, WA.

As to whether it's real or not, it's hard to say. The description on the website says: "If you can laugh after flashing 200 guests, you'll be able to handle anything in marriage right?" Of course, given the shot, it's impossible to tell whether or not this is a photograph from a real wedding or some sort of photo shoot, or whether the alleged 'flashing of 200 guests' occurred (isn't the bride usually facing away from the wedding party when throwing the bouquet?)

The photograph doesn't appear to be photoshopped, but the muscle structure and colouration of the bride's chest seem a little odd.
The following pictures of an extreme roller-coaster have been circulating around via email. Yes, the roller-coaster is real. It's the Top Thrill Dragster at the Cedar Point Amusement Park in Ohio. On their website they've got some cool point-of-view videos of the ride in action.



Appended to the pictures of the rollercoaster is this next one, with the caption: "And this last picture says it all..."



I'd be willing to bet that isn't really a picture of someone who just rode the Top Thrill Dragster. It's probably just a random picture that someone tacked on.
Teddy Tour Berlin, run by Karsten Morschett and Thomas Vetsch, cater for those who can't themselves afford to tour the German capital, but want the next best thing.

Expatica.com reports that customers send their teddies and the payment details to the company, who then take the bears around sites such as Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Olympic Stadium, and remnants of the Berlin Wall.


If you want to send your ursine friend to Berlin, it will set you back between $25 and $150 for the deluxe tour.


Japanese TV (especially their game shows and reality shows) is notorious for airing some pretty bizarre and cruel stunts. Here are two good examples of that. These videos come from a candid-camera style show. I don't know it's name. In the first video an outdoor porta potty is equipped with a hydraulic lift that, ten seconds after the door is shut, lifts the bewildered occupant high into the air. And as NetNewsAsia points out, "for many people, ten seconds is evidently more than enough time to get down to the job at hand."

In the second video a massaging chair at a ski resort is rigged to send the occupant flying backwards through a trapdoor into the snow. The prank is then updated to make the chair jet-powered. Now its terrified occupants are sent blasting at top speed down the ski slope in a runaway chair.

If these pranks were done in America, I can't imagine someone not getting sued. Assuming, that is, that the pranks haven't been staged (i.e. that the victims aren't really actors). I think there's a good probability that they are. The Japanese have a term for staged events on shows like this: Yarase. Yarase is so common over there that many viewers just assume that most of the weird stuff they see on TV is fake.

Card Trick
YouTube video of a well performed card trick. I think it's a version of the "ambitious card" trick, in which one card keeps coming to the top again and again. I don't know how it's done, but I'm guessing it involves double-lifting cards and using a false shuffle to keep certain cards at the top (or bottom).

Tom Dundee Condoms Banned in Thailand
Thai authorities have banned a line of condoms named Tom Dundee, since Dundee in Thai means "Good Penetration," a phrase that they regard as "ambiguous, boastful and provocative." Big Gary notes: The only interesting thing about this story is that country singer Tom Dundee's real name is Puntiva Poomiprates, but "Dundee" is the name the authorities thought was "too suggestive."

Dalai Lama Moon
People throughout India and Tibet have been reporting seeing "the reflection of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the halo of the moon." The Dalai Lama's office would not confirm whether he was really the man in the moon.

Fake Fish
The St. Petersburg Times visited 11 restaurants featuring grouper on their menu, and found that 6 of them were surreptitiously serving cheaper fish instead. "One Palm Harbor restaurant charged $23 for "champagne braised black grouper" that actually was tilapia." This doesn't surprise me at all. As I noted in Hippo Eats Dwarf, snapper is another often-faked fish. PoynterOnline writes that the National Seafood Inspection Laboratory found, after testing samples from random vendors, that "80 percent of the red snappers tested have been mislabeled.
The Miami New Times have reported on the publicisation of the lives of crack cocaine users through Headliners Productions' range of Crackheadz Gone Wild DVDs. Crackheadz Gone Wild Miami will be the fifth such film.

Debatable is the motives behind these films:

The guys who run Headliners Productions deny this claim - having previously spent time in prison on drug charges, they now work as counsellors and donate 'a portion' of their profits from the DVDs to an anti-drug counselling centre. They say that:

Although the Miami edition isn't out yet, Crackheadz Gone Wild New York is still available through their website and, unlike most hoax websites, there's actually a method to buy them.

(Thanks, Cranky Media Guy.)