Nostradamus's believers, of which there are many, claim that this 16th century French prophet foretold events of the future in the Centuries, his most famous work. Skeptics, of which there are regrettably probably fewer, argue that Nostradamus foretold nothing—but admit that he was a master of writing vague verse full of ambiguous symbols and hints of dire catastrophe, which verse could be (and has been) interpreted by later generations to apply to just about anything. But even his fans have to admit that Nostradamus has been a favorite prop for hoaxers to hide behind and exploit. Thus, national leaders have been fond of claiming that Nostradamus foretold their success, and the downfall of their enemies. For instance, during World War II the Nazis spread propaganda claiming that Nostradamus had prophesied the success of Hitler. The Allied countries retaliated by spreading propaganda claiming Nostradamus had foreseen Germany's defeat. After 9/11 interest in Nostradamus surged thanks to some verses of his, circulated by email, in which he seemed to predict the tragedy. Except that the verses hadn't actually been written by him. They were modern-day creations. The hoaxers were once again exploiting his name to sow fear and uncertainty. November 9, 1966: Paul McCartney, singer and bassist for the Beatles, dies in a fiery car crash on his way home from the EMI recording studios. The surviving band members, fearful of the effect his death might have on their careers, secretly replace him with a double named William Campbell (an orphan who had won a Paul McCartney lookalike contest in Edinburgh). However, they also plant clues in their later albums to let fans know the truth, that Paul is dead. Of course, Paul McCartney didn't really die in 1966. Nor was he replaced by a double. But for a few weeks in the Fall of 1969 millions of people seriously considered the possibility that the bizarre story of his death and replacement was true. It remains one of the most persistent and elaborate false death rumors in history. The big question is: was it just a rumor that grew on its own, or was it a deliberately planted hoax (perhaps created by the Beatles themselves to boost record sales)? The answer is that the initial rumor itself (that Paul was dead) probably wasn't a deliberate hoax, but later elements of the story (such as the claim that McCartney was replaced by a lookalike named William Campbell) were definitely intentional fabrications, invented by college students in the midwest. MORE" style="color: red;font-weight:bold;">More >>> In September 1726 Mary Toft, a woman living in the small English town of Godalming, started giving birth to rabbits. The local doctor was promptly summoned to her home. To his surprise, he witnessed her give birth to a few more rabbits. (Rabbit parts, to be specific.) Realizing how unusual this medical case was, the doctor sent word to the royal court in London which dispatched the King's two top physicians to investigate. Like the local doctor, the King's surgeons witnessed Mary giving birth to more rabbits — about eighteen in total. They brought her back to London, for further examination, and there she quickly became the most talked-about sensation in all of England. But her story unravelled when a skeptical surgeon proclaimed that, for the sake of science, he would need to operate on her to examine her uterus. Fearing the surgeon's knife, Mary immediately confessed, admitting she had been hoping to get a lifelong pension from the King by being declared a medical curiosity. So how did she pull off the trick? The obvious way. She shoved rabbit parts up into her body, held them there a while, and then gave birth to them on cue as the incredulous doctors watched. Which goes to show that some hoaxes depend not on brains or craftiness, but instead on being willing to do what no one else in their right mind would do. Mary's deception did almost kill her by giving her a raging infection, but remarkably she got better and managed to give birth to a healthy baby boy (who had no rabbit features) a year later. MORE" style="color: red;font-weight:bold;">More >>> April 3, 1817: A woman showed up on the outskirts of Bristol, England. She spoke an unknown language, communicated solely by hand gestures, and wore a turban. Her identity was a mystery to the townsfolk until, by various means, she was able to tell her story: that she was a princess from the far-away land of Javasu who had been kidnapped by pirates and escaped by jumping overboard in the English Channel. The people of Bristol were captivated by her story, and soon she was famous throughout England, known everywhere as Princess Caraboo. She lived in luxury at the home of a local magistrate, while scholars and socialites traveled from all over the country to meet her. But as word about her spread, a woman came forward who identified the Princess as her former house servant, Mary Baker. Mary then confessed her ruse. She had woken up one day, wrapped some fabric around her head to make herself look exotic, and thereby reinvented herself as a foreign princess. MORE" style="color: red;font-weight:bold;">More >>> 1983: The German news magazine Der Stern thought it had scored a journalistic coup when it obtained the secret diaries of Adolf Hitler, supposedly hidden in East Germany since the end of the World War II. The magazine's editors wanted so badly for the diaries to be real that they ignored obvious evidence to the contrary, such as Hitler's well-known dislike of keeping personal records. Der Stern only admitted the diaries weren't real after it became clear that they were written on paper manufactured well after the war's end, and that their contents had been lifted from an edition of Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations. All told, the debacle cost the magazine upward of $24 million. MORE" style="color: red;font-weight:bold;">More >>> In 853 A.D. John Anglicus became Pope John VIII. There was just one problem. John was actually a "Joan." For two years he/she ruled over the Church with no one being the wiser (except her secret lover). But during a papal procession in 855 A.D., tragedy struck. Joan went into labor and proceeded to give birth by the side of the road, in full view of a horrified crowd. She was promptly stoned to death.

So goes the infamous story of Pope Joan, the female pope. If the Pope Joan story is true, it's the most outrageous example of gender concealment in history. However, many modern scholars deny her existence, pointing out the long gap (over 300 years) between when she supposedly ruled and the first mention of her in print. But there is a sizable group of Pope Joan enthusiasts who argue for her reality. If she is fictitious, it's possible that Protestant scholars invented her as anti-Catholic propaganda (again making her an outrageous hoax). Or her tale could be a medieval folk legend, perhaps inspired by stories of high-ranking female leaders in the early church. But barring some new discovery in the Vatican archives, it's doubtful we'll ever know the true story of Pope Joan. MORE" style="color: red;font-weight:bold;">More >>> In 1971 a small group of extremely primitive, leaf-wearing, "Stone-Age" people was discovered living in a remote region of the Philippine rain forest. Called the Tasaday, after a nearby mountain, these people had apparently never had contact with the outside world. Even more remarkable was their gentleness. It was said they knew no word for enemy, war, or conflict. Their example offered a sharp contrast to the horrors of modern warfare on display in Vietnam. The Tasaday immediately attracted a flurry of interest. Politicians, reporters, anthropologists, and celebrities all made the trip out into the rainforest to visit them. But in 1974 the Marcos government (which had been basking in the positive pr generated by them) declared martial law, restricted access to the rainforest, and all contact with the Tasaday was lost... until 1986, after the overthrow of Marcos, when a Swiss journalist named Oswald Iten trekked out into the jungle to see them. He found the Tasaday dressed in western clothes living a simple, but definitely not Stone-Age, life. They told him they weren't really a Stone-Age tribe, that the Marcos government had pressured them into posing as such. This revelation caused an international uproar. The Tasaday were branded a hoax. But fast-forward to the present, and their status as a fake tribe no longer seems as clear. Many academics have swung back around to the belief that the Tasaday were real enough, though not as primitive or isolated as initially thought. They base this belief on extensive post-1986 fieldwork and linguistic research, and note that the Tasaday's confession to Iten may have been engineered by anti-Marcos factions hoping to discredit the Tasaday, who were viewed by many as a symbol of the Marcos regime. In other words, it's looking increasingly likely that the hoax was, itself, a hoax. MORE" style="color: red;font-weight:bold;">More >>> Rob and Fab, of the musical duo Milli Vanilli, forever proved that to succeed in pop music it's more important to have great abs than to actually be able to carry a tune. Flaunting their ripped physiques every chance they got, the pair rocketed to stardom and Grammy success in 1988 with the singles "Girl You Know It's True" and "Blame It On the Rain". Fans naively assumed that Rob and Fab were the ones singing those catchy pop ditties. Ah, the innocence of youth. It turned out the dynamic duo were mere eye candy, lip-syncing everything. The real singing was done by anonymous studio vocalists. Their manager Frank Farian (who devised the entire scheme) blew the whistle on them in 1990 when he got tired of listening to the two whine about wanting to be real artists. MORE" style="color: red;font-weight:bold;">More >>> In September 1957 market researcher James Vicary convened a press conference to announce the startling results of an unusual experiment he said he had conducted at a Fort Lee, New Jersey movie theater that summer. He had added split-second messages such as "Hungry? Eat Popcorn" and "Drink Coca-Cola" to the movies being shown at the theater. Audiences weren't consciously aware of seeing the messages, but apparently the "subliminal" ads influenced their subconscious minds, causing concession sales to rise dramatically.

The advertising industry immediately loved the idea of subliminal advertising. What could be better than invisible commercials? Vicary cashed in on this excitement by offering the services of his Subliminal Projection Company. The general public, meanwhile, hated the idea since it sounded like a form of mind control. But there was no need for anyone to worry. During a 1962 interview with Advertising Age Vicary admitted that he actually "hadn't done any research, except what was needed for filing a patent." In other words, he had invented the results of the Fort Lee experiment in order to boost his business. No researcher since then has been able to find any evidence that subliminal messages can influence people's everyday behavior. Despite this, many people continue to believe in the power of subliminals, which has made subliminal tapes ("lost weight while you sleep") a multi-million dollar industry. The reality is that consciously perceived ads have a far more powerful effect on our behavior than subconsciously perceived ones. July, 1842. A British naturalist, Dr. J. Griffin, arrived in New York bearing a most remarkable curiosity: a real mermaid. This strange creature had supposedly been caught off the Feejee islands in the Pacific (thus giving it the name "The Feejee Mermaid"). The mermaid was put on display at Barnum's American Museum, and advertisements showing a beautiful, bare-breasted mermaid were placed in all the papers to lure the public in. Soon ticket receipts at the museum tripled. But what people who paid their money to see the mermaid encountered was not a thing of beauty. Instead they found a small, wizened creature — in the words of one reviewer, "the very incarnation of ugliness." It also wasn't a real mermaid. It was a fake crafted decades before by a Japanese fisherman who had stitched the head of an ape onto the body of a fish. Barnum, who engineered the mermaid's publicity campaign (including having a friend of his pose as the phony Dr. Griffin) was quite aware of the artificial nature of the creature. The Feejee Mermaid eventually came to be regarded as his most infamous humbug, in a career full of outrageous humbugs. Because of its notoriety, 'Feejee Mermaid' also came to be the generic term for the many fake mermaids that can still be found on display in sideshows, behind bars, or in the back corners of curiosity shops. MORE" style="color: red;font-weight:bold;">More >>>