History’s 20 Greatest Hoaxes
The fakes that fooled the world
The origin of the word ‘hoax’ comes from the verb ‘hocus’ as in ‘hocus pocus’, meaning magic, trickery and flimflam. It’s appropriate, then, that the masterminds behind the various hoaxes that have been committed throughout successive centuries have employed all manner of wizardry and artistry to pull them off. Whether committed for money, notoriety or simply for the hell of it, society’s fascination with hoaxes and the minds that created them continues to this day. Indeed, in this era of ‘fake news’ and internet scandals our obsession with hoaxes seems more prevalent than ever. Here, we examine 20 of the most successful and outlandish hoaxes throughout history.
SCAMMING WITH SHAKESPEARE 1795
The Bard has been the target of numerous hoaxes, none greater than that of William Henry Ireland, a 19-year-old whose father was a passionate Shakespeare fan. The fiendish fraudster claimed to have discovered poetry, letters and an unknown play in an old trunk. The hoax grew steadily, until the ‘discovered’ play, entitled Vortigen, was staged. By this time doubters had surfaced, chief among them the period’s foremost Shakespeare expert, Edmond Malone. As the play ended, the actors were booed and fighting broke out between believers and non-believers. Soon after, Ireland confessed. Tragically, he had conceived the stunt to impress his father but the old man could not be convinced that his son possessed enough literary talent to pull off the ruse and died still claiming they were genuine.
HOAXING HUGHES 1971
Clifford Irving claimed to have the literary scoop of the century – the autobiography of Howard Hughes. Billionaire business magnate, film director, pilot and all round success story, Hughes had retired from public life in 1958. Refusing to be interviewed or even photographed in the successive years, public interest in the recluse had soared. When Irving appeared with the autobiography and letters that he said proved its authenticity, Mcgraw-hill paid a $765,000 advance for the rights. But there was one thing Irving hadn’t counted on – that Hughes would break his silence. On 7 January 1972, during a telephone conference with journalists, Hughes denied any participation in the work. Irving would serve 14 months in prison as a result.
CONNING WITH THE COTTINGLEY FAIRIES 1917
In 1917 in Yorkshire Elsie Wright, 16, and Francis Griffiths, nine, produced numerous photographs of what appeared to be fairies. Investigated by members of the Theosophical occult movement, they claimed them to be authentic and proof of vast metaphysical changes in the earth. Even
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Coming Of The Fairies, a nonfiction tome in which he speculated upon what the results would be “if we have actually proved the existence… of a population which may be as numerous as the human race, which pursues its own strange life in its own strange way”. Unfortunately, he died before the truth was revealed. The fairies were in fact beautifully drawn cardboard cutouts that the girls had made and intricately staged before photographing them.
MANIPULATING MOVIEGOERS 1961
Film producer William Castle was known as the ‘King of Gimmicks’ and in the late 1950s and early 1960s produced a string of low-budget horror films, each with its own unique marketing ploy. For his 1961 film Mr Sardonicus, in which the titular evil villain’s face is twisted into a maniacal grin after seeing his father’s corpse, Castle came up with an equally maniacal plot. Towards the end of the film, a break was taken and the audience was given voting slips as Castle himself appeared onscreen and asked if they wished to see Sardonicus saved, or see him meet a cruel fate. Except evidence suggests, despite Castle’s claims to the contrary, that only one ending was shot. Believing that audiences would continuously vote to see the villain meet a horrific fate, Castle had created the elaborate trick.
THE IMPOSTERESS RABBIT BREEDER 1726
In September 1726 near Guildford, Surrey, 25-year-old Mary Toft went into labour. Having miscarried the previous month, this was something of a surprise, but that would be nothing compared to the shock as Toft proceeded to give birth to a rabbit and numerous other animal parts. The story quickly circulated and Toft became a national sensation. A number of physicians and doctors travelled to examine her, and even the king himself took an interest in her case, moving her to London for further examination. Doubt soon began to spread, however, as hay and soil were found on some of the animals. After being threatened with painful surgery by physician Sir Richard Manningham, Toft confessed to having placed the dead rabbit inside herself.
PRACTICAL JOKING WITH THE PILTDOWN MAN 1912
In 1912, archaeologist Charles Dawson discovered pieces of a human skull in gravel beds in Piltdown, Sussex. As he excavated further, he found even more, including a non-human looking jawbone, but with teeth that had been worn down in a classically human way. The theory that was widely speculated was that this all pointed to an ancestor who’d lived some 500,000 years ago, a missing link. Further sites and finds were discovered in
1913 and 1914 but it was not until the 1950s that the hoax began to unravel. Examining the bones, researchers realised they had been stained to match the surrounding earth. Recent research shows that the bones may have originated in Borneo, and X-rays reveal that human teeth had been artificially inserted into an orangutan jaw.
BLUFFING A BALLOON FLIGHT 1844
Despite being famous as the writer of horror fiction, including the poem The Raven and stories such as The Masque Of The Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe also published six hoaxes in his lifetime. The most successful of these was The Great Balloon Hoax of 1844, published in an article for the New York Sun. In an entirely fictional narrative Poe announced that the famous (and real) balloonist Monck Mason had flown across the Atlantic in 75 hours. Supposedly on the day of publication, Poe stood on the steps of the newspaper’s building and yelled that the story was a hoax – all in vain.
ENTERPRISING EROTICA 1969
In 1966, journalist Mike Mcgrady was sitting in a bar with several of his colleagues and lamenting over the state of the current literary scene. He was particularly enraged by popular books such as Harold Robbins’ The Adventurers and Jacquelene Susann’s Valley Of The Dolls. After ridiculing such pulp erotica, Mcgrady had the ingenious idea that as a team they could write one. Each penned a single chapter of what they joked would be a ‘best-selling’ novel, except none of them realised just how best-selling. The resulting parody book, Naked Came The Stranger, has to date sold some 400,000 copies and was turned into a film in 1975.
NAUGHTY NIXON’S APRIL FOOLS 1992
Following the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon, faced with an ongoing impeachment process, resigned from office. In successive decades the chances of him ever returning to the political stage must have seemed slim. However, in 1992 listeners to the radio programme Talk Of The Nation were horrified when the former president appeared to take to the airwaves declaring his comeback, defiantly stating, “I never did anything wrong and I won’t do it again.” Furious listeners called in to let Nixon know that they weren’t going to give him that chance. Of course, it wasn’t Nixon on the radio show at all – it was the comedian Rich Little.
A GULLING GOTHIC NOVEL 1764
Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle Of Otranto is regarded as the first gothic novel, starting a trend that would lead to classics such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Telling the story of strange happenings in a haunted medieval castle, Walpole sought to increase his chances of success by publishing the book first as a ‘lost’ medieval manuscript. He created an elaborate backstory that the work had been discovered in the library of an ancient Catholic family in northern England, the manuscript originally being printed in Naples in 1529. However, following the book’s success he admitted to authoring the work when the book went into a second print run in 1765.
THE SUN AND THE MOON MADE READERS BUFFOONS 1835
One night in 1835, astronomer Sir John Herschel was observing the moon when he saw a wondrous landscape full of mythical creatures such as unicorns, bat people and two-legged beavers – except of course he didn’t. The New York Sun, a popular penny paper, had completely invented the stories. Dr Andrew Grant, the supposed author of the articles, was made up and they were probably designed to poke fun at the outlandish speculation on extraterrestrial life that was popular at the time. Sales soared, however, and when the Sun was finally forced to admit that the entire thing had been a hoax readers were amused and continued to buy the paper anyway.
DECEITFUL DEMONOLOGY 1999
Alongside the likes of The Exorcist (1973), The Shining (1980) and Halloween (1978), The Blair Witch Project is renowned as one of the most terrifying motion pictures ever made. Not only that, but the independent horror film managed to make over 10,000-times its budget at the box office. When initially released, however, the film was the subject of an ingenious marketing campaign that claimed the footage was real. The key to this was a website that delved into the history of the titular witch and included snippets and outtakes as ‘“lost documentary footage”. As the film’s release approached, the Syfy channel aired a mockumentary entitled The Curse Of The Blair Witch, focussing on the fictional myth of the film. The creative hoax paid off and crowds flocked to cinemas.
HOAXING WITH HITLER 1983
In 1983, Germany was rocked when Stern magazine announced it was to publish extracts from Adolf Hitler’s ‘lost’ personal diaries, despite there being no record of any diaries having existed. Of course, they hadn’t, the diaries were actually the work of forger Konrad Kujau. Even the mislabelling of the diaries as
‘FH’ instead of ‘AH’, due to confusing gothic lettering, didn’t stop Kujau convincing the Stern editorial team that they were genuine. Over a two-year period beginning in 1981 the magazine spent 9.3 million Deutsche Marks on 60 volumes. Kujau was jailed when the diaries were discovered to be a forgery and the resulting scandal sent shockwaves through the German press that last to this day.
THE SENSATIONAL SPAGHETTI HARVEST 1957
In 1957, the
BBC’S Panorama programme presented a story about the tradition of spaghetti harvesting in Switzerland. Viewers watched as Richard Dimbleby (the famous commentator who’d served the same role during the coronation of Elizabeth II four years earlier) narrated the story of the tradition over shots of young Swiss maids plucking ripe spaghetti from trees. Dimbleby compared the Swiss industry to that of the Italians and even spoke of the meddlesome ‘spaghetti weevil’. A respected news programme, no one questioned the authenticity of Panorama’s broadcast until they registered the date – 1 April.
ARTFUL AUTOMATONS 1769
This chess-whizz automaton made its debut in the court of Empress Maria Theresa of Hungary in 1769. The creation of inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen, ‘The Turk’ was a dummy in colourful costume, seated behind a large wooden cabinet that was filled with a vast array of cogs and machinery. Challenging many of the court’s noblemen, it beat them all and became a sensation. For successive years it beat all opponents until Kempelen’s death in 1804. However, this was not the end of The Turk and new owner, German showman Johann Maelzel, continued to tour the device – the automaton even beating Napoleon Bonaparte (shaking its head when he attempted to cheat). Eventually, following Maelzel’s death, the ruse was discovered. The cogs and machinery extended only halfway and behind these a skilled, and short, chess player could wedge himself inside. The Turk was assigned to a museum and largely forgotten until 1854 when it was destroyed in a fire. It was claimed that as the flames consumed it The Turk’s voice box could be heard wailing “Check!”
SWINDLING WITH SAITAPHERNES 1896
On 1 April 1896, the Louvre Museum in France paid 200,000 Francs for a gold tiara linked to the third-century BCE Scythian King Saitaphernes – failing to note the obvious dents made by a hammer and signs of soldering. It had in fact been made by Russian goldsmith Israel Rouchomovsky for a client who wanted it for an archaeologist ‘friend’. In 1903 Rouchomovsky travelled to Paris to prove it was his work by demonstrating to officials from the Louvre how he did it, recreating a portion of the tiara on sheet of gold as they watched. Rarely displayed, the tiara has become a warning sign to museums the world over to be cautious when acquiring artefacts.
THE CARDIFF GIANT 1860
On 16 October 1869, a group of stone workers uncovered something strange – the body of a vast giant. The story quickly became a sensation and people flocked to see the bizarre find, with land owner William Newell charging them 25 cents each. There were numerous theories over what the creature was, but the most popular stated it was without doubt the mummified remains of a giant. This didn’t seem too far-fetched, after all the Bible states in Genesis 6:4, that “there were giants in the earth in those days” and the find was seen as concrete proof of this. The debate over whether the words of the Bible should be taken literally was at its peak, as science and religion frequently clashed. The giant was in fact a fraud concocted by George Hull. Working with Newell, the atheist Hull had devised the scheme to embarrass those who took the Bible literally. The hoax was discovered when the clumsy chisel marks were finally noticed.
PRANKING PERPETUAL MOTION 1812
In 1812, inventor Charles Redheffer unveiled what he termed the “perpetual motion machine”. The idea of a machine caught in continuous motion, not requiring the use of additional power, is one which fascinated 19th century engineers – despite the obvious contradictions of the laws of physics. When Redheffer claimed to have invented such a device, numerous parties were fooled. But when his machine was displayed in New York, engineer Robert Fulton noticed the gears wobbled slightly. Realising there was a belt hidden by fake support beams, Fulton discovered an old man hidden inside, turning a crank. Furious visitors destroyed the machine and Redheffer fled.
WELLES’ WAR OF THE WORLDS 1938
On the night of 30 October 1938, Martians invaded the United States. Not really, of course, or this would be a very different magazine – it was just a radio drama by the young Orson Welles. At 23, Welles had already made a name for himself as an innovative voice in the theatre with his Mercury Theatre troupe. Taking them to the airwaves, he devised the clever notion of staging HG Wells’ War Of The Worlds as if it was a live radio news broadcast. While the level of the resultant panic has been debated, Wells was forced to publicly apologise for the stunt. No matter, as a result he was offered a contract with RKO and made Citizen Kane.
CONNING CASABLANCA 1982
Considered by many to be one of the greatest films of all time, Casablanca’s witty and intelligent script became the subject of a hoax when literary trickster Chuck Ross decided to resubmit the script to contemporary film studios. Changing the title to that of the play, Everybody Comes To Rick’s, he sent it to 217 agencies. The script was rejected by 90 for being unsolicited, 33 for being recognised as Casablanca, and by 40 for reasons such as “too much dialogue, not enough exposition, the storyline was weak”. Perhaps the most damning rejection was one which suggested the young writer “come up with an action adventure type of thing, I mean T&A, I’m talking tits and ass”.