This Day in the History of Hoaxes: July 24

July 24, 1907: The Old Librarian's Almanack
On this day, Edmund Leaster Pearson first mentioned the existence of the Old Librarian's Almanack in his column in the Boston Evening Transcript. It was, he said, a small almanac from 1773 that contained the "opinion and counsel" of a rather curmudgeonly librarian whose ideas were strikingly non-modern. For instance, the Old Librarian felt it was the duty of all librarians to "cast out and destroy" any book that was "merely frivolous." Pearson later arranged for the reprinting of this 18thC curiosity. Very few people realized that he himself had written it as a joke. [Internet Archive]