TOP TEN MOST FAMOUS HOAXES in HISTORY

One of the hallmarks of being human is the desireand some may say the needto try and fool ourselves and
each other. Weve even set aside a special dayApril 1stto celebrate this aberraton in human nature, making
the quest to ofer fcton as fact a never ending roller coaster ride. Of course, sometmes these innocent atempts
to fool the general public can cause some real problems, though usually they prove to be ultmately harmless
(except for the occasional bruised ego.) So here, without further ado, is my top ten list of the all tme greatest
hoaxes ever perpetrated upon an unsuspectng public.
10. The Cardif Giant: One of the earliest hoaxes of modern
tmes, in 1869 workers digging a well near Cardif, New York unearthed
a massive 10-foot tall statue of a giant that many believed at the tme
was a petrifed man and evidence that the biblical passage concerning
the existence of giants once living on the earth (Genesis 6:4) was true.
However, the petrifed man actually turned out to be the brainchild
of one George Hull, an atheist and tobacconist from New York City who
was intent on bestng a Christan fundamentalist with whom he had ar-
gued over the biblical passage. Hiring a stonemason to carve the image
of a man out of a massive piece of gypsum and burying it on the farm if
his cousin, William Newell, it was discovered there a year later and served as a source of income for mister
Newellwho charged people a quarter to see itfor the next few years. Hull turned out to come out ahead
in the afair, however, by selling his interest in the statue to a syndicate of fve men headed up by Newell for
$23,000ten tmes the amount he had spent on the hoax. In the end, however, the scammers were scammed
themselves when none other than the famous showman, P.T. Barnum, made his own copy of the Cardif Giant
and declared Newells a fake. The case ended up in court, with Hull admitng to the fake and both statues be-
ing declared a hoax by the courts.
9. The Loch Ness Monster Surgeons Photo: Its not so
difcult to accept that the most famous photo of the Loch Ness Mon-
ster ever taken turned out to be a fake; whats hard to understand is
how it took sixty years to fgure that out. Supposedly taken by a London
surgeon named Robert Wilsona man known as something of a pract-
cal joker himself, it turns outthe photo was the brainchild of a fellow
named Marmaduke (yes, I said Marmaduke) Wetherell as payback for
being humiliated years earlier when the supposed monsters footprints
he found were nothing but dried hippos footsteps. In collusion with Wil-
son and an apprentce named Christan Spurling (who was to confess the
hoax on his deathbed in 1994, thus solving the mystery) Wetherall atached a head and neck shape to a toy
submarine and set it adrif, capturing the famousif fuzzyphoto and immortalizing Nessie for ever more.
The admission that the photo was a hoax didnt hurt the beastes reputaton however, and she (or he?) re-
mains as popular, and illusive, as ever.
8. The Alien Autopsy Film: In one of the more brazenand rela-
tvely successfulhoaxes ever, in 1995 London-based flm producer Ray
Santlli presented a few minutes of grainy black and white flm footage that
purported to show a dead alien (supposedly from the Roswell crashbut
thats another story) undergoing an autopsy. Though the footage was at
frst hailed by many in the UFO community as authentc, a number of dis-
crepancies regarding the footage soon came to light (some of them pointed
out by modern forensic experts knowledgeable about autopsy procedures)
which, along with Santnis hesitancy to have the flm tested and other eva-
sions, made it appear increasingly dubious. Since then the flm has been
thoroughly debunked, though Santlli came out of it well when he made a spoof of the hoax himself in a 2006
Britsh comedy. Playing both sides of the middle, it sounds like to me.
7. Orson Wells 1938 War of the Worlds Broadcast:
Orson Wells (no relaton to the more famous H.G. Wells) was a virtual
unknown 23-year old radio producer working out of New York City in
1938 when he directed the radio adaptaton of H.G. Wells famous novel
War of the Worlds on Halloween eve, 1938. Unfortunately, and despite
the fact that he inserted two disclaimers that the broadcast was fctonal,
thousands missed them and believed the story of Martan invasion was
real. While reports of the extent of the ensuing panic has been traditon-
ally overstated, what cant be overstated is that it made the young man
an overnight celebrity and skyrocketed him to fame. He was to become
an acclaimed producer, director and actor untl his death in 1985, but in all that tme he never repeated the
broadcast again (although recordings of it have been rebroadcast for years since). Whats diferent about this
hoax when compared to others is that Wells was unintentonal, making it the most successful inadvertent
hoax of all tme.
6. Cotngley Fairies: It all began back in 1917 when two English
girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Grifths, decided to have some fun by cut-
tng pictures of faeries out of a popular childrens book of the era and
mountng them in pins, afer which they took photos of them. Not surpris-
ingly, they looked prety fat, but they were apparently convincing enough
that the photosthere were fve in allbecame quite a sensaton in Eng-
land at the tme (which was probably looking for a distracton from all
the depressing war news at the tme). The pictures eventually came to
the atenton of famous writer Arthur Conan Doyleand ardent spiritual-
istwho promptly proclaimed them authentc, setng of a frestorm of
debate and, in the end, badly tarnishing the brilliant mans post mortem reputaton. The hoax was fnally and
uterly exposed in 1983 when in a magazine artcle the woman admited to faking the photos, though curiously
one of them insisted that at least one of the fve photos was authentc. Whats even more curious is how they
managed to fool so many people for so many years, especially when a copy of the book the fgures were cut from
(Claude Arthur Sheppersons Princess Marys Gif Book) was readily available for a comparison.
5. Piltdown Man: The never ending quest to locate the famous
missing link that is supposed to conclusively te man to the ape bit sci-
ence in the but back in 1912 when fragments of a skull and a jaw bone
were discovered in a gravel pit near Piltdown, England. Claimed to be the
missing link by many otherwise quite knowledgable scientsts, in 1953
it was determined to be a cleverly aged human skull that had been at-
tached to the jaw of a Sarawak orangutan and imbedded with the teeth
of a chimpanzee. Who produced the forgery and why remains a mystery
to this day, but that they managed to keep scientsts on the run for over
forty years has to be considered one of the great feats of the century
and possibly the reason scientsts dont talk so much about fnding miss-
ing links nowadays.
4. Hitlers Diary: This one was truly a work of art. It seems that in
1983 a personal diary kept by Adolf Hitler himself came to light, only
to be snatched up by the big German magazine Der Stern for a cool six
million bucks and serialized in future editons. The only problem was
they were quickly proven to be the work of a notorious Stutgart forger
known for his ability to mimic der Fuehrers handwritng and for being
most prolifc (the diaries comprised no fewer than 60 small books that
purportedly covered the years 1932 to 1945). The giveaway may have
been the fact that the Fuehrer wannabe wrote it all on modern paper us-
ing modern ink, and included a number of historical inaccuracies as well.
For that he got 42 months in the slammer and Im sure some executve at Der Stern lost his much antcipated
Christmas bonus.
3. Crop Circles: While there is evidence that at least a few crop cir-
clesthose mysterious litle swirls of stomped wheat that appears with
some regularity in English felds each summerthat do exhibit some true
physiological anomalies, the fact is that most of them are hoaxes. This
wasnt entrely clear untl 1991, however, when Britsh farmers Doug Bow-
er and Dave Chorley, two men with obviously way too much tme on their
hands, came forward to not only admit that they had been making many
of the circles themselves, but even demonstrated how they did it using
ropes and wooden planks. Of course, there were far too many circles for
too many years for them to have been responsible for more than a fracton
of them, but to the science community that was proof enough it was all a hoax. Since then, there are even clubs
that have formed dedicated to bestng other crop circle clubs in producing the most sophistcated and complex
circles imaginable. Its become quite the art form, Im told, though even the best of them pale in comparison to
true circles. And who says extraterrestrials dont have a sense of humor?
2. Zionist Protocols: Ever wonder where Hitler and those Nazis got
their silly ideas about the Jews from? It might be in part due to a docu-
ment that surfaced in Russia in 1905 enttled the Protocols of the Elders
of Zion that outlined the super secret Jewish plan for world dominaton.
Of course, it was a complete fakeas demonstrated in 1921 by a London
Times reporter who demonstrated it to have been largely plagiarized from
a 1864 satrical novelbut that maters litle to those who enjoy hatng.
In fact, it became a major fuel for ant-Semitsm throughout the twenteth
century and was even used as justfcaton by Hitler for his gas chambers.
Despite that, it remains a popular book in much of the Middle East and can
even be found on Amazon.com. The lesson to be learned here is that one
must be careful about writng satrical literature for one never knows what
morons will do with it in the future.
1. The Man Who Never Was
(Operaton Mincemeat): Who
says hoaxing cant be useful, especially in wartme? Not the Britsh, who
decided to confuse the Germans by taking the body of a deceased pneu-
monia victm, dressing him in a Royal Marine Uniform, handcufng him
to a briefcase full of top secret invasion plans, and setng him adrif of
the coast of Sicily. The payof? The Italians found the body and turned the
briefcase over to their German allies, who learned from it that the allies
planned to invade Greece and Sardinia rather than Sicily. The only prob-
lem was the allies had no such intenton, making the landings in southern
Sicily in July, 1943 a piece of cake thanks to the Germans thoughtully leav-
ing the coastline largely undefendedall because of a nameless hero and
a bit of simple but clever hoaxing.
Dishonorable Mentons: The Fox Sisters (faked paranormal actvity, thus jump startng the spiritst move-
ment of the nineteenth century); The Beatles Paul is Dead Hoax (the belief that the Beatles hid secret mes-
sages regarding the death of Paul McCartney that can only be heard if certain records are played backwards.);
William Mumler (the frst man to make a living successfully hoaxing pictures of ghosts); Douglas Corrigan
(an American pilot who claims he got lost over New York City and accidently few to Ireland, making him the
second man to make a solo crossing of the Atlantc and earning him the lifetme moniker of Wrong Way Corri-
gan); and, of course, Balloon Boy (the Colorado dad who falsely reported his son was trapped in a fying-saucer
shaped helium balloon in an efort to get his own reality TV show.) My hats of to all you goofalls.