Hoaxes That Fooled Journalists

The exhibition at P.T. Barnum's New York museum of the body of a mermaid supposedly caught near the Feejee Islands generated enormous excitement. Huge crowds waited to see it, lured by ads showing a beautiful, bare-breasted creature. What they found inside was a small, wizened, hideous creature, that was actually the head of an ape stitched onto the body of a fish. The mermaid is remembered as one of Barnum's most infamous humbugs. More…

The London Times offered an example of the violence of American society. It printed a letter from an Englishman living in America who described bloody gunfights fought with "Monte Christo pistols" during a train ride through Georgia. American papers denied the story, but the Times stubbornly defended it, only relenting a year later after learning that "Monte Christo pistols" was slang for bottles of champagne. More…

An attempt at stockmarket manipulation. Several New York papers were tricked into printing bad news about the Civil War. In response, investors dumped stocks and bought gold, perceived as a safer investment. But the bad news had been planted by a newspaper insider who had previously invested heavily in gold, hoping to profit from the anticipated rise in its price. He was tracked down and arrested within 3 days. More…

During the late 19th century, Joseph Mulhattan was perhaps the most famous hoaxer in America. He was a traveling salesman, not a reporter, but he was notorious for repeatedly succeeding in having his farfetched tales reported as news. If an outrageous or bizarre story appeared in the papers, reporters would often assume it was the work of Mulhattan. The media showered him with epithets. They called him a "professional liar," "the author of more hoaxes than any other man living," "Munchausen Mulhattan," and the "liar-laureate of the world." He was also widely known by his pseudonym, "Orange Blossom." More…

Six years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight in a heavier-than-air craft, aviation technology was still fairly primitive. Planes could only fly a few miles. But in 1909, Massachusetts inventor Wallace Tillinghast announced a breakthrough, claiming to have built a plane capable of flying 300 miles. His announcement generated enormous excitement. In the next few weeks thousands of people throughout New England reported seeing his plane flying in the sky at night. But as the months went by and Tillinghast failed to offer any tangible proof of his claims, the media came to realize he had no airplane. One man confessed that the lights people had seen in the sky were actually small lanterns he had tied to the legs of owls as a practical joke. More…

Morris Newburger, a Wall Street stockbroker, phoned the sports desks of major New York City papers and reported a football score for a fictional New Jersey college team, the Plainfield Teachers. To his amusement, the score was faithfully recorded the next day in the papers, so he decided that Plainfield needed to complete its football season. For the next few weeks, he kept calling the papers, and scores for Plainfield kept appearing. The team was always victorious, crushing its opponents in lopsided wins. Newburger's deception was exposed within a month, but because of its gentle humor it's remembered as a classic sports hoax. 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…

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…

The New York Times announced the death of Alan Abel on its obituary page on January 2, 1980. The well-known media hoaxer, it said, had died of a heart attack at a ski resort in Utah. The Times provided a flattering account of Abel's career, but there was just one problem. Abel wasn't dead. The Times learned this when Abel held a press conference the next day in which he revealed that the news of his death was a hoax engineered by himself and a team of twelve accomplices. More…

Dr. Josef Gregor held a press conference in New York in May 1981 to announce he had developed a miraculous pill that could cure colds, acne, anemia, and menstrual cramps. And it could even make people immune to nuclear radiation! The key ingredient in the pill, he said, was a hormone extracted from cockroaches. Over 175 newspapers published articles about the discovery. However, Dr. Josef Gregor was really long-time media hoaxer Joey Skaggs. Upon revealing the hoax, Skaggs commented, "I guess no one reads Kafka anymore." [More info: joeyskaggs.com]

Buckwheat was the wide-eyed, African-American character played by William Thomas in the 'Our Gang' comedies of the 1930s and '40s. After leaving the show, Thomas dropped from the public eye. But in 1990, the news show 20/20 claimed it had found him working as a grocery bagger. Unfortunately for 20/20, the man they interviewed was not William Thomas. It was an imposter named Bill English who had been claiming to be Buckwheat for 30 years. The real William Thomas had worked as a film lab technician before dying in 1980 at the age of 49. The week after it aired the segment, 20/20 admitted its mistake. More…

On November 15, 1992 the New York Times published an article analyzing the roots and evolution of the "grunge" movement. It reported that Grungers had developed their own lexicon of "grunge speak" which included phrases such as Cob Nobbler (a loser), Lamestain (an uncool person), and Wack Slacks (old, ripped jeans). Three months later, The Baffler magazine revealed that the Times had been the victim of a hoax. The grunge terms didn't exist. Megan Jasper of Seattle-based Sub Pop Records, whom the Times had used as its source for the glossary, had simply invented the terms as a joke. More…

A press release distributed to the media in Columbus, Ohio announced the formation of a new charity for the homeless. But instead of giving food or shelter, this charity planned to provide guns and ammunition. It called itself the "Arm the Homeless Coalition." News of this charity soon spread nationwide and generated enormous controversy. But when an Ohio reporter tried to track down the director of the Coalition, his investigation led him instead to a group of university students who admitted the entire thing was a hoax, designed, they said, "to draw attention to the issues of guns and violence, homelessness and media manipulation in our society." More…

The Final Curtain Cemetery promoted itself as a different kind of cemetery. Artists would design their own tombstones before they died. The result would be a cemetery that would be part memorial, part art gallery, and part theme park. Visitors to the cemetery could dine at restaurants such as Heaven's Gate Cafe, or shop at the museum gift shop. The cemetery received widespread media coverage before being revealed to be a hoax designed by veteran prankster Joey Skaggs who explained that he wanted to draw attention to the death-care industry which he described as "a giant corporate scam, exquisitely successful at commercializing death." More…

It's legal to sell donor eggs to infertile couples. But Ron Harris, an erotic photographer, proposed taking this process one step further. He established a website at which nubile supermodels auctioned off their eggs to the highest bidders. The concept outraged the infertility industry. News of the website was broken by the New York Times, but suspicions were raised when people noticed that no bids were being logged on the site. It turned out that the supermodel egg auction was a publicity stunt designed to attract visitors to Harris's real business, a pornography site. More…

A report circulated via email detailing the findings of a four-month study by the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania in which it had calculated the IQ of all the US Presidents of the past 50 years. Franklin Roosevelt ranked at the top with an IQ of 147. But then President George W. Bush came in at the bottom with an IQ of only 91. These findings were repeated as fact by media outlets around the world, including The Guardian. However, the "Lovenstein Institute" wasn't a real organization. Nor had a study of presidential IQ ever been conducted. The report had originated as a joke on a humor website called linkydinky.com. More…

A chart that circulated online during the first months of 2004 purported to show that American states whose populations possess higher average incomes and higher average IQs voted for Gore in the 2000 Presidential elections. Their poorer, lower-IQ counterparts voted for Bush. The implication was that smart people vote Democratic, and stupid people vote Republican. Major newspapers and magazines, including the St. Petersburg Times and the Economist, printed the chart before it was exposed as a hoax. More…

On the 20th anniversary of the chemical disaster in Bhopal, the BBC broadcast an interview with Jude Finisterra, whom they believed to be a representative of Dow Chemical, the company that had inherited responsibility for the disaster via a corporate acquisition. During the interview, Finisterra shocked everyone when he declared that Dow had decided to accept full responsibility for the incident, and was going to pay $12 billion in compensation to the victims. In response to the news, Dow's stock value promptly dropped. Only later was it discovered that Finisterra was actually anti-corporate prankster Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men group. More…

AptiQuant Psychometric Consulting Co. released a study revealing that Internet Explorer users scored lower on IQ tests than users of other web browsers and were therefore "dumb". This result was duly reported as fact by numerous news outlets, including CNN, the BBC, NPR, CNET, and Forbes. However, not only was the study fake, but also AptiQuant wasn't a real company. The staff photos and information on its site had been copied from the site of a legitimate French firm. The hoax was the work of Tarandeep Gill, a Canadian web developer, who later said he had hoped to "create awareness about the incompatibilities of IE6." [wikipedia]