On April 1, 1977, The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic said to consist of several semi-colon-shaped islands located in the Indian Ocean. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian's phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Only a few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer's terminology. The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that gripped the British tabloids in subsequent decades. More…

May 21, 1977: Anthony 'Doc' Shiels claimed that he took this picture while camping beside Urquhart Castle. Its startling clarity (it's probably the clearest picture of Nessie ever taken) has made it popular with the public. But it's hard to find any expert willing to take it seriously, simply because the creature depicted in it looks so obviously fake. (And it's odd that there are no ripples in the water around the neck.) Skeptics refer to Shiels's monster as "The Loch Ness Muppet." The fact that Shiels was a showman, "wizard," and psychic entertainer who was developing a side business as a professional monster hunter didn't help his credibility. Shiels himself commented that while he definitely took photos of lake monsters, he didn't believe in them. More…

On the morning of May 15, 1977, a busload of people watched a Bigfoot cross Highway 7 east of Vancouver. But a few days later a trio of young men confessed that the Bigfoot was their work. It had taken them weeks to prepare, since they had fashioned resin-cast Sasquatch feet to make convincing footprints. They also planted a phony witness on the bus to see the Bigfoot first and get the other passengers excited. Strangely, the people on the bus described seeing a 7-foot Bigfoot with a strong smell. But 24-year-old Ken Ticehurst, who wore the gorilla suit, was only 5-foot-11 and weighed 165 pounds.

On June 20, 1977, a documentary titled Alternative 3 aired in England, on ITV. It revealed to viewers the existence of a secret plan by the governments of the world to create a Noah's Ark colony of humans on Mars in anticipation of a looming environmental catastrophe that would soon make the Earth uninhabitable. The earnestness of the show's delivery convinced many that it was real. However, it was intended as a mock documentary, originally intended to be aired on April Fool's Day. More…

Scientists researching the link between diet and heart disease visited the small town of Vilcabamba, located high in the Ecuadorian Andes. They found that the town residents had very low cholesterol levels and very few of them ever suffered from heart disease. But more remarkable was their longevity. Many of them claimed to be over 100 years old. A few of them stated their age as being over 140 years old. These ages appeared to be confirmed by birth and baptismal records. 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…

Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to cross the finish line in the 1980 Boston Marathon. However, she looked remarkably sweat-free and relaxed as she climbed the winner's podium, and race officials almost immediately began to question her victory. The problem was that no one could remember having seen her during the race. An investigation soon revealed that she had jumped into the race during its final half-mile and had then sprinted to the finish line. Officials stripped her of her victory and awarded the title to the real winner, Jackie Gareau. More…

Janet Cooke's article in the Washington Post about 'Jimmy,' an 8-year-old heroin addict, won her a Pulitzer Prize. But pressure mounted for Cooke to reveal where Jimmy lived so that authorities could help him. As Cooke steadfastly refused to do this, rumors began to swirl suggesting there was no Jimmy. Finally, the editors at the Post confronted Cooke and demanded she provide proof of the boy's existence. Cooke then admitted that she had never met Jimmy and that much of her story was fictitious. Cooke resigned, and the Post, humiliated by the incident, returned the Pulitzer Prize. More…

A few days after President Reagan was shot in March 1981, a startling piece of footage ran on many news programs, including NBC's Today show and CNN. It appeared to show that psychic Tamara Rand had accurately predicted that the attempt on Reagan's life would occur when she had appeared on a Las Vegas TV show, Dick Maurice and Company, two months earlier. If genuine, it was a remarkable prediction. But an AP reporter discovered that the footage had actually been taped the day after Reagan was shot. The Las Vegas show had collaborated in making it appear as if her prediction had been made before the assassination attempt, not after it.

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]

If an unknown screenwriter submits a masterpiece to a movie agent, what are the chances that the agent will actually read the screenplay and recognize its value? Freelance writer Chuck Ross designed an experiment to find out. He slightly disguised the script of Casablanca (changing its title, the name of the author, and the names of some of the characters) and submitted it to 217 agencies. The majority of these returned it unread, while 33 recognized the script, but 38 claimed to have read it and rejected it, saying the script simply wasn't good enough. More…

The announcement by the German news magazine Stern that it had discovered the personal diaries of Adolf Hitler generated a media frenzy. Magazines bid for the right to serialize them. Historians anticipated what revelations they would contain. Skeptics, however, insisted they had to be a fake, since Hitler had never been known to keep a diary. The skeptics turned out to be right. Less than two weeks after the initial announcement, forensics experts denounced the diaries as a "crude forgery." When all the dust settled, the diaries turned out to be one of the most expensive fakes in history. By some accounts, the debacle cost Stern as much as 19 million marks. More…

In 1984, the city of Livorno spent $35,000 to dredge a canal in an attempt to find sculptures by Amedeo Modigliani rumored to have been dumped there back in 1909. To the city's delight, three carved heads were fished out and were appraised by experts as worth $1.5 million. But then three university students revealed they had made one of the heads as a joke, using a screwdriver and drill. They had a video to prove it. Hopes that the other two heads were genuine were dashed when local dockworker (and former art student) Angelo Froglia proved to be their creator. He said he did it "to reveal the false values of art critics and the mass media."

According to legend, when artist Amedeo Modigliani left Livorno, Italy in 1909, he dumped a number of sculptures in a canal, upset because they had been criticized by a friend. So in 1984, the city of Livorno decided to spend $35,000 to dredge the canal to see if they could find the lost works. They were delighted when three carved heads were fished out. Appraisers estimated them to be worth $1.5 million. But then three university students came forward and revealed they had made one of the heads — and had a videotape of its creation to prove it. Hopes that the other two heads were genuine were dashed when a local dockworker proved to be their creator.

The Diary of a Good Neighbor by Jane Somers received little attention, and only modest sales, when it was published in 1983. The novel told the story of a magazine editor who befriends a lonely old woman. But when a sequel appeared a year later, a surprise announcement accompanied its publication. The book's true author was the acclaimed writer Doris Lessing (who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature). Lessing explained that she had concealed her authorship in order to show how difficult it is for unknown authors to attract attention. Also, she wanted to play a prank on critics who insisted on pigeonholing her as one type of writer or another. More…

During the 1980s a rumor began to circulate alleging that the luxury department store Neiman Marcus had once charged a customer $250 for a cookie recipe. The rumor was first reported in newspapers during the late 1980s. However, the tale was likely older than that. Pat Zajac, a Neiman Marcus spokeswoman in Dallas, when interviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times in 1992, said that the tale had been circulating since she came to work for the chain in 1986. More…

During the taping of the Donahue talk show, on January 21, 1985, seven members of the audience fainted. The producers of the show theorized that the hot temperature inside the studio caused the people to collapse, but a few days later it was revealed that "professional hoaxer" Alan Abel had paid them to pretend to faint. He said that the stunt was a protest against the deteriorating quality of daytime talk shows and claimed that a group called FAINT (Fight Against Idiotic Neurotic TV) had spearheaded the protest. "We want to raise the consciousness of the public by going unconscious," he said. More…

Sports Illustrated revealed that the New York Mets’s were hiring a new rookie pitcher, Sidd Finch (short for Siddhartha Finch), who could throw a ball with startling, pinpoint accuracy at 168 mph. Sidd Finch had never played baseball before but had mastered the “art of the pitch” in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the “great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa.“ Mets fans celebrated their teams good luck and flooded Sports Illustrated with requests for more information. They were crestfallen to learn that Sidd Finch was nothing but an April Fool's Day hoax who sprang from the imagination of author George Plimpton. More…

Residents of Enola, Pa. reported seeing a "hairy creature" in the woods of nearby East Pennsboro Township. One man described the creature as being hairy, 6 ½-feet tall and with arms that extended below the knees. The report created an air of panic in the town. Residents locked their windows and many took up weapons. But the panic settled after police identified 24-year-old Craig A. Brashear as the creature. He had bought an ape-suit and mask with fangs then stood in an area where his furry body would be illuminated by headlights. He did so, the police chief said, in order to "stir up more activity, to make it seem like there was a creature out there."

On 27 April 1986, late night HBO subscribers were surprised by a sudden interruption of service. A color bar test pattern appeared on the screen for 4 ½ minutes. It was accompanied by a text message: "Good Evening HBO from Captain Midnight. $12.95/month? No Way! (Showtime/Movie Channel Beware!)" The FCC launched an investigation to track down "Captain Midnight." It eventually identified him as John MacDougall, a 25-year-old engineer at a satellite transmission facility in Ocala, Florida. MacDougall explained that his hacker attack was motivated by frustration at HBO, whom he felt was overcharging satellite customers and hurting his business. More…

The news that a private investment firm was buying the retailer Dayton Hudson for $6.8 billion sent the company's stock price soaring, and then crashing back down again when investors learned the report was false. The source of the news was a 46-year-old investment adviser, P. David Herrlinger, who had phoned the Dow Jones News Service and told them he was buying the company. The news service had taken his word for it, but Herrlinger, it turned out, was suffering a nervous breakdown and was delusional, which sparked concern at how easily a single irrational individual had manipulated the market. More…

During a game between the double-A Williamsport Bills and the Reading Phillies, everyone thought they saw catcher Dave Bresnahan throw the ball wild past third base. So how was it that when the man on third came running toward home, Bresnahan still had the ball and tagged him out? It was because Bresnahan had actually thrown a peeled potato into left field, and not a ball. The stunt cost Bresnahan his job with the Bills, but it also earned him an immortal place in baseball history. A year after the event, fans paid one dollar and one potato as admission to celebrate Dave Bresnahan Day. More…