I found your site doing a search on Jean Hardouin, whom I had never heard of before seeing a reference to him in Herder's "Journal of My Travels in the Year 1769", where a footnote explained his astonishing theory that nearly the entire corpus of classical literature was a "fake".
You ask for other hoaxes. My old Oxford Companion to French Literature has a heading which lists a bunch. (Coincidentally I was looking at this the other night, several days before I came across the Hardouin reference). I don't believe any are included on your site. If you like I can scan the pages and send the individual entries to you.
Other hoaxes. How about the "Book of Mormon" with the "golden plates" which Joseph Smith "translated". with the aid of an Angel? (Was that the story?) I note in passing that you don't have a category for religious hoaxes. This seems to be a rather fertile field from which numerous examples might be harvested.
I see that you have on your site Koestler's Case of the Midwife Toad, which calls to mind a hoax that he himself perpetrated while a newspaperman in France during the 1930's. (This is recounted in Arrow in the Blue or the Invisible Writing, the two volumes of his Autobiography) He was the foreign correspondent of a German Paper and his job consisted in summarizing debates from the Assembly and in abstracting articles from the French Press. He was utterly bored by it all. To amuse himself, he would fabricate specious stories, passing them off as real "items" taken from the press. He said that his favorite which he succeeded in getting printing invovled an accident which took place between two trucks, one carrying a load of cheese and eggs and the other a load of butter. These two trucks collided at a particular intersection (He gave names, and places in the story natch), without injury to either driver but with the creation of a giant omlet.
The statement about lake webster not being known by the extremely long name is false. That name is in fact a correct name in a Native American Language, even if it isn't the original name. It has been officiall named with the long name.
Hi. Great site!
The website of one of Southampton FC's fans contains all the info you could possibly want on the footballer in question. His name was "Ali Dia", and the site for all the facts is:
http://www.onthecross.co.uk/Personnel/zDiaA.htm
Cheers,
Steve
Here is the info I've managed to gather about the Great Southampton Soccer Hoax. Ali Dia was a 30-year-old Senegalese player. He had tried out for two second division and two first division clubs, but hadn't made the cut in any of them. Then someone called Graeme Souness, Southampton's manager, claiming to be George Weah of AC Milan, World Footballer of the Year. The fake Weah highly recommended Dia, so Souness signed him on. Dia debuted with Southampton on November 23, 1996 in a game against Leeds. He substituted for Matthew Le Tissier, but after 53 minutes on the field Souness decided that he was so bad that he substituted Dia out (and managers almost never substitute a substitute) and put on a defender as an emergency striker. Leeds won the game 2-0. Dia later was quoted as saying, "I've been made to look a con man. It's not true. I do know George Weah, but I'm certainly not his best mate. I employed an agent when I came to England and he is the con man. He must have been calling all these clubs pretending to be George." Dia went on to play for Gateshead.
How about the Margaret Mead hoax discussed by Derek Freeman in his book The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead? I don't see that in the museum--which is delightful, by the way, and nicely designed.
This has been on my list for inclusion in the site for quite a while, but I've just never gotten around to adding it. Here's the hoax (or accusation of a hoax) briefly summarized: Margaret Mead conducted some anthropological studies in Samoa during the 1920s. Based on this work, she asserted in Coming of Age in Samoa that teenage Samoan girls were sexually promiscuous before marriage. Derek Freeman later tracked down the subjects whom Mead had interviewed and discovered that they had been joking when they told Mead this information. Therefore, according to Freeman, Mead (and through her the entire anthropological community) was the victim of a hoax perpetrated by a few teenage Samoan girls.
Reference the surgeons picture of the Loch Ness monster.
When the picture was taken, it included a section of shoreline. This showed that the 'monster' was only 1-2 feet in height. However, when the local newspaper published it, they chopped the shoreline out of the photo and we have the picture we see today.
The original photo was located in the local newspaper offices during a documentary on Loch Ness in the 1990s.
As the Surgeon submitted the photo with the shoreline, it is unlikely he would have claimed anything about the 'monster' picture. He would know that if anyone looked they would come across the original in the newspapers archives.
I am sorry I have no references for the above.
I have read about a hoax in a book called "The Big Book of Hoaxes." It was called "Bill Stump's Stone", about a supposedly ancient stone that was excavated in West Virginia in 1838. The stone had a mysterious inscription on it that stumped the world's linguistic experts. No one could figure out what the stone said, and so many possibilities were offered that it just added to the confusion. Finally, a researcher cracked the code in 1930. He noticed something odd and glanced at the stone in a cockeyed manner. The language was English and the inscription read "Bill Stump's Stone, October 16th,1838." The whole thing was a fraud.
So, have you ever heard of this? I was intrigued when I read it and have been looking for more info on the hoax, but cannot find any at all. Is this a hoax of a hoax? Have I been had? I'm wondering. Please let me know if you have any knowledge of this supposed hoax. It actually sounds like it might be an urban myth or the plot to a book or movie. Any details?
The stone you're referring to is also known as the Grave Creek Stone.
As you note, it was discovered in Moundsville, West Virginia in 1838. It bore a mysterious inscription which many scholars in later years tried, unsuccessfully, to decipher. According to legend, Andrew Price of the West Virginia Historical Society, glanced at it sideways one day in 1930, and noticed that when viewed from a different angle the inscription spelled out this English phrase: "Bill Stump's Stone. October 14, 1838." Bill Stump was presumably a reference to the character of that name in Dickens's Pickwick Papers, which had been published in 1837. So apparently the great linguists who had examined the stone for over a century had all been fooled by someone idly carving on a stone.Andrew Price did indeed describe this moment of discovery in a short monograph he published about the stone, and the story of this strange archaeological hoax entered the popular culture and was repeated with its details virtually unchanged in numerous books, including The Big Book of Hoaxes published by Paradox Press.
However, Stephen Williams in Fantastic Archaeology revealed that he took the time to locate Price's monograph and concluded that Price must have intended the account of his discovery as a spoof, since it was clearly written in "a jocular fashion." Furthermore, a simple examination of the stone (shown to the right) suggests that no matter how the inscription is viewed, it's not going to spell out an English phrase.
So what we have here is a hoax within a possible hoax. Stories about great scholars who are so clouded by their own genius (or lack of common sense) that they fail to recognize the simple meaning of what's right in front of their eyes are quite popular. For some other examples of this see the accounts of Athanasius Kircher, Dr. Johann Beringer, and the recent Social Text controversy.
As far as I know, the true meaning of the Grave Creek inscription remains unsolved.
there was a anti-snoreing device being advertised in one of the papers, for about �10.00. When they recieved there package, a small package witha red chilly pepper inside,they wondered what it was for. Yes it was a swindle, the hot pepper was to be stuck up the backside,this is of course to keep the snorer awake,and giving your partner a goodnights sleep?
There's a famous hoax that you haven't got here: it's about the Principality of Sealand - the fake-country-that-is-not-so-fake-after-all that exists since the 1960s and has been involved in money laundry, fake passports and documents for escaped criminals. You can find the "official" Sealand site in "http://www.sealandgov.com/" and other stuff in "http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven.html".
In the 1998 dragon story, it should be noted the the University of Southern North Dakota was made famous by Peter Schickele of the Hoople campus and his authoritative works on PDQ Back.
Surely their must have incidents that people believed were hoaxes at the time but actually turned out to be true.
A few examples of hoaxes that were not hoaxes include: the duckbilled platypus (discovered by Europeans in the 1790s); and photography (when the process was first discovered during the 1830s it was denounced as a hoax by a number of scientists). Other phenomena that have been denounced as hoaxes by anthropologists and later shown to be real include cannibalism, firewalking, and acupuncture.
I'm not really clear what the differences are between an urban legend and a hoax.
The question of authorship separates urban legends from hoaxes. Hoaxes are authored by someone or some group, who typically have some kind of agenda in mind when creating the hoax. Urban legends, however, don't have clear authors. They're like folktalkes that keep recirculating within the culture, though people update them to suit the changing times.
The shroud of turin: Showed a man of the height 5'10, six inches above the average height of a man around the birth of christ. Nowhere in the bible did it say that jesuse was a giant, and goliath in the story of david and goliath was estimated to be about 6 feet tall
Hi, whilst searching for tips on bonsai farming me and a friend came across this web site. http://www.bonsaikitten.com I would be most grateful if you could confirm this as a hoax. If you like fluffy kittens, don't go to this site.
Don't worry. Bonsai Kittens is definitely a hoax. I have it listed on my page of hoax websites. It was created by an MIT student with a strange sense of humor. The FBI has investigated it and found no evidence that any animals were actually harmed.
April fools: Titanic at the white cliffs of dover. I think it was 98 or 99, BBC local radio announced that a full size replica of the titanic would sail past the white cliffs of Dover. Apparantly hundreds of people turned up on the top of the cliffs along with tv news crews and reporters expecting to see the life size titanic replica, they waited for hours and obviously saw nothing until the hoax was announced on the radio. I can't remember all the details but it was funny at the time.
I like the site, it provides hours of entertainment. I wondered if you have seen www.jesus.com it appears to be real site but somethings just do not add up, maybe it is a hoax?
Looks like a religious parody to me.
An amusing hoax is the Christian Women's Wrestling site: http://www.jesus21.com/poppydixon/sports/cww.html Loved your site!
Chris Morris' announcing Michael Heseltine's death on radio, then calling MPs for their reactions. Not so much a hoax as a "wind-up" (admittedly.)
One of my favorite Chris Morris pranks was the one where he managed to get Sir Rhodes Boyson to agree during a televised interview that a good solution to London's crime problem would be to call up a "specialist vigilante agent" during times of trouble by projecting a "huge luminous emergency bat sign" into the sky, like they do in the United States.
Try cadaverinc.com. Sick and Wrong! Unfortunately, now seems to have a splash screen tellin you its a fake. But its possible to link straight to cadaverinc.com/default2.asp Enjoy!
Hi.Unfortunately i can not remember the exact date, or the young mans name, but about 4 years ago a young student got himself a game of soccer for southampton football club in england. he claimed he was the cousin of George Weah(at the time he was world footballer of the year). he played about fifteen minutes of a match before being substituted. Southampton FC are a team in the English premiership, one of the three biggest and best leagues in the world. It is the equivalent of a 'nobody' lining up with the new york yankees or getting a start for the dallas cowboys.
If anyone can remember the date that this occurred, let me know.
Just seen your site on The Web Review - great stuff. Here's a few sites I like which you don't seem to have:
www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/1356/main.htm - Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail: very funny site about a man's obsession with female cartoon characters. The outraged comments in the guestbook are the best bit! Not for the easily offended.
www.bonsaikitten.com/ - Bonsai Kitten: immensely detailed site explaining how specially-reared kittens can be 'grown' into a multitude of aethetically-pleasing shapes. Again, the guestbook is filled with a mix of outraged readers plus a fair number of people who've obviously had a go themselves!
www.winkingjesus.com/ - The Miraculous Winking Jesus: says it all, really!
All the best!
Hi, A Hoax was played on a Premiership Soccer team in England called Southampton FC. They recieved a call from(allegedly) George Weah (very famous football player who won European footballer of the year a while back) He asked the club if his Cousin could have a trial with them, Southampton were in a bad patch with many players out with injuries and had a game the next day. Hastilly they agreed and registered the player without checking him out properly. He made the subs bench but was introduced on 70 mins to replace an injured player. This is when Southampton realised that this supposed Cousin of George Weah, had no talent or skill and basically couln't play to save his life. He lasted 5 minutes on the field only to be re-subbed. He made the record books being the first player as a substitute to be substitued himself and not being injured!!
Your picture of The Tasmanian Mock Walrus, is in fact a legitimate photograph of the Naked Mole Rat (Heterocephalus glaber). Perhaps more improbable than your own hoax details, it is an African mammal that lives in a 'hive' of tunnels, in a social group that has grown to mimic that of ants or bees. Presided over by one breeding a queen, a huge female with a belly constantly seething with its current crop of gestating young. She keeps an obedient cotiery of non-fertiles worker moles by dint of pheremones in her urine.
They eat the roots of plants they burrow upwards to from below, and I am sure they are not averse to the odd cockroach. They are probably not suitable for domestication however...
You can check out scientific details at http://natzoo.si.edu/Animals/nmrats/datasht2.htm
Do you know anything about the film Three Men and a Baby where in one scene, a young boy is standing behind a curtain whilst filming is going on. It was said that a young boy was killed in the room that the film was being shot in. Was this a hoax.
This is more of an urban legend than a hoax. A figure can be seen behind the curtains during one scene in Three Men and a Baby. However, the figure is actually a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson that was accidentally left there by a propman. The cutout was supposed to play a role in the movie, but the scenes involving it were deleted, leaving that one scene with the cutout mysteriously standing behind the curtain. The cutout looks like a child because it is only about four and a half feet tall.
Is this a hoax? Has all the makings of one .... Egyptian Artifacts in the Grand Canyon - The Phoenix Gazette - April 5, 1909 see website: http://www.xpeditionsmagazine.com/magazine/canyon/canyon.html
There are many other references to this as well - but no actual proof. Did the paper actually run this article back in 1909?
Without access to the archives of the Arizona Gazette, it's impossible to know if this article actually ran. However, the history of American archaeology is full of unusual claims such as this, so I wouldn't be surprised if this article did run. For more of this history, check out Stephen Williams's Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory.
I am writing to ask if you heard of this story which circulated in the eighties. I can't find it on the internet. Christianity Today published an article on the subject of Satan being discovered in an sub-oil field down a pipe and so forth. Of course this was a hoax. Do you have any knowledge of this one?
Thanks for any help you might offer.
I think you're referring to the 'Hell in Siberia' hoax. Supposedly some scientists in Siberia drilled down nine miles into the earth and reached Hell. They then lowered microphones down into the hole and could hear voices crying out in agony. For some reason the microphones didn't melt, even though the temperature was recorded as being 2000 degrees. An article about this hoax appeared in Christianity Today, as you indicated. The reference is: Rich Buhler, "Scientists discover hell in Siberia." Christianity Today. 34 no. 10 (July 16, 1990): 28-29.
Hi, My favourite hoax at the minute is definitely the Jack the ripper diary, supposedly found in Liverpool and which identify Jack the ripper with a famous liverpoodlian coton merchant of the time caled James Maybrick. It is perfect in every respect as it establishes a link with another mystery of the time surrounding Maybricks death. unfortunately, the handwriting, style and manufacture as well as any test of any kind that has been carried out on the manuscript point towards a date after maybrick's death. fair play, though, to whoever did it, as the book published on the subject got big media coverage and I want to bet that its author, who I believe is still very much alive must have made a few bobs out of it.
About 1975, a Seattle bicycle racer, Bob Ostrow had allegedly discovered a new metal called ostronium which is as strong as steel and has a density of .5. A source of ostromium was subsequently discovered at a concentration of 200 ppm in the agpaitic granites of the Golden horn batholith in Washington State. There has been no further disclosures about this aerospace material. note: synonym unobtanium.