Hoaxes of the 1950s

Police in Miami, Florida accidentally discovered a crime ring that had been stealing thousands of dollars from the local phone company for years — in a highly unusual way. The thieves were young women, employed by Southern Bell Telephone Company to count coins collected from pay phones. They were smuggling coin rolls out of the building by hiding them in their bras. The exploits of the "brassiere brigade," once exposed, made headlines across the nation, and later inspired several movies. More…

After going missing for several days, French actress Nicole Riche reappeared claiming that she had been kidnapped by "Puritans" who kept her in a room without food while they lectured her about the immorality of her life. Finally, she said, her captors abandoned her in the Fontainebleau Forest, where she was found and helped to safety by kindly gypsies. The police believed none of her tale, and rightly so. Her "kidnapping" turned out to have been an elaborate publicity stunt designed to promote Paris's infamous Grand Guignol theater. More…

Science reporter Hugh Stewart approached his editors at the Chicago Herald-American with a hot tip. He had learned that a Chicago mother was about to give birth to sextuplets — the first time a confirmed birth of sextuplets had occurred in America. Stewart offered no verifiable sources for the news. Nor would he disclose the mother's name. Nevertheless, the Herald-American decided to run his story on its front page. They shouldn't have, because it turned out that Stewart had made the whole thing up. More…

A small ad ran in the Washington Post offering the services of "ghost artists" for those who wanted to be an artist, but lacked skill. The company's staff would produce art, to which clients could attach their name. This curious business quickly attracted media attention, until some reporters eventually recognized that the spokesman for the company was the notorious prankster (and professional illustrator) Hugh Troy. More…

The story of Rudolph Fentz was long considered an unsolved mystery, and a case of possible time travel. In June 1950, Fentz was said to have suddenly appeared in New York City's Times Square, as if from out of the blue, wearing old-fashioned clothes and sporting mutton-chop sideburns. Glancing around, a look of astonishment and then of panic flashed across his face. He sprinted forwards, and was then struck down and killed by a car. More…

Three young men reported running over a space alien on a rural Georgia highway. What made this case unusual is that the body of the alien was lying on the highway to prove their tale. The incident quickly made national headlines. But when scientists from Emory University examined the 'alien,' they determined it was actually a Capuchin monkey with its tail cut off and fur removed with depilatory cream. The boys confessed they had created it as a prank. More…

When political newcomer Douglas R. Stringfellow was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from Utah, much of the appeal of his candidacy lay in his decorated past as a hero during World War Two, a past which he made frequent references to during his revival-style campaign speeches. He served one term, and was running for reelection, when his heroic past was exposed as a fraud by his Democratic opponents. More…

In the 1950s, bestseller lists were partially based on the number of requests for a title at bookstores. So nighttime deejay Jean Shepherd hatched a plan to throw a wrench in this system by having his listeners descend on bookstores en masse and ask for a non-existent book titled I, Libertine. Requests for this title, relayed by puzzled bookstore owners, eventually made their way to publisher Ian Ballantine who (once he figured out what was going on), decided it would be interesting to publish I, Libertine as an actual book. Author Theodore Sturgeon was commissioned to write it, and the book was released to stores (for real) on Sep 20, 1956. More…

In his book The Third Eye, Tuesday Lobsang Rampa claimed to offer an autobiographical account of growing up in Tibet. He described being born into a wealthy family and studying in Lhasa to become a lama. He said that he had then undergone an operation to open up the "third eye" in the middle of his forehead, which bestowed upon him amazing psychic powers. The more prosaic reality was that he had been born in England, the son of a plumber. More…

In 1956, runners bore the Olympic flame across Australia. When it was scheduled to arrive in Sydney, thousands lined the street to see it. Finally the runner appeared, bearing the flame aloft. With a police escort around him, the runner made his way to the Town Hall, bounded up the steps, and handed the torch to the waiting mayor who promptly turned to begin his prepared speech. Then someone whispered in the mayor's ear, "That's not the torch." It was a wooden chair leg topped by a plum pudding can inside of which a pair of kerosene-soaked underwear was burning with a greasy flame. Meanwhile, the runner had already disappeared into the crowd. More…

On April 1, 1957 the British news show Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the show's highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The report generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." To this day the Panorama broadcast remains one of the most famous and popular April Fool's Day hoaxes of all time. More…

The French doctor Emile Coudé (1800-1870) was the inventor of the curved "Coudé catheter" used by urologists to relieve urinary obstruction. Except that he wasn't. The man and his biography were invented as a joke by Welsh medical students in the 1950s. However, some physicians didn't realize it was a joke and referred to the man in medical textbooks. A few sources still mistakenly claim that the coudé catheter was named after a French physician. In reality, the coudé catheter was invented by Louis Mercier (1811-1882). In French, coudé (the adjective) means bent; coude (the noun) means elbow. More…

Michigan motorists began to report sightings of a glowing "little blue man," like a spaceman from a science-fiction movie, who would appear out of nowhere on rural roads, and then just as suddenly disappear. Police couldn't figure out what was going on, until eventually three young men confessed that the blue man was their work. They had created a costume consisting of long underwear, gloves, combat boots, a sheet, and a football helmet with blinking lights. One of them, wearing this costume, would hide in a ditch and leap out when a motorist approached. More…

While working on a rural road construction project near Bluff Creek, California, tractor-operator Jerry Crew found a series of massive footprints in the mud. Due to the size of the prints, the media began referring to the creature that created them as "Bigfoot." The name stuck and soon became the most widely used term for North America's legendary ape-man. However, it was suspected that Crew's prank-loving boss, Ray Wallace, created the prints by strapping carved wooden feet to his boots and stomping around in the mud. Wallace's family confirmed this after his death in 2002. More…

G. Clifford Prout was a man with a mission, and that mission was to put clothes on all the millions of naked animals throughout the world. To realize his dream, Prout founded the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA). Prout's campaign continued until it reached a high point in August 1962, when SINA was featured on the CBS News with Walter Cronkite. But as the segment was airing, a few CBS employees recognized that Prout was actually Buck Henry, a comedian and CBS employee. SINA was subsequently revealed to have been an elaborate hoax. More…

Cacareco, a 5-year-old female rhinoceros, was elected to an empty seat on the city council in Sao Paulo, Brazil after students printed up 200,000 ballots, urging people to vote for her. Not only did Cacareco win, but she did so by a landslide. The voters hadn't been deceived. They were quite aware they were voting for a rhino. One of them even commented, "Better to elect a rhino than an ass." The election of Cacareco is considered to be the most famous example of a protest vote in history. More…

Colgate-Palmolive aired TV ads claiming that the moisturizing action of its Rapid-Shave shaving cream was so powerful that it would not only soften up even the heaviest beard in seconds, but also make sandpaper shaveable. To prove this, it showed sandpaper being shaved. But what viewers were led to believe was sandpaper was actually plexiglass covered with sand. The Federal Trade Commission objected to the misleading demonstration, and this became a landmark case defining false advertising. More…