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Hoaxes spread by newspapers

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Hoaxes Spread by Newspapers — Daily trivia Sunday, June 21, 2026: questions and answers

All 10 questions with answers and explanations. Play this daily

  1. Q 01Which celestial body did a famous New York Sun hoax claim was home to winged, intelligent man-bats?

    • AThe Moon
    • BVenus
    • CSaturn
    • DJupiter
    Show answer

    The Moon

    The brine

    The Sun's 1835 series put bat-winged humanoids on the Moon and falsely credited the discovery to the astronomer Sir John Herschel.

  2. Q 02Which New York Times reporter resigned after being found to have invented quotes and datelines?

    • ANorman Mailer
    • BStephen Glass
    • CJayson Blair
    • DJanet Cooke
    Show answer

    Jayson Blair

    The brine

    Jayson Blair's fabrications and plagiarism caused such a furor that the Times's top two newsroom executives resigned in his wake.

  3. Q 03What was the fossil hoax of 'prehistoric' remains from a Sussex gravel pit called?

    • AThe Neanderthal Man
    • BPiltdown Man
    • CBroken Hill Man
    • DCro-Magnon Man
    Show answer

    Piltdown Man

    The brine

    Piltdown Man was hailed as a 'missing link' until 1953, when tests showed its jaw came from an orangutan, stained to look ancient.

  4. Q 04Which Orson Welles radio broadcast did newspapers claim sent America into a panic that historians now call exaggerated?

    • AThe War of the Worlds
    • BDracula
    • CThe Shadow
    • DThe Time Machine
    Show answer

    The War of the Worlds

    The brine

    The War of the Worlds panic was largely a press creation: newspapers ran thousands of stories about hysteria, but later researchers found few listeners had been fooled.

  5. Q 05The 'Paul is dead' rumour spread widely after a satirical student review of which Beatles album?

    • ALet It Be
    • BAbbey Road
    • CThe White Album
    • DSgt. Pepper
    Show answer

    Abbey Road

    The brine

    Fred LaBour's review of Abbey Road invented many of the clues, and he was astonished when newspapers across the United States picked up the story.

  6. Q 06H. L. Mencken published an invented history of which household fixture, later reprinted as fact?

    • AThe radiator
    • BThe kitchen sink
    • CThe flush toilet
    • DThe bathtub
    Show answer

    The bathtub

    The brine

    Mencken's history of the bathtub invented city bans and a Millard Fillmore connection, and even after he confessed, the fake facts turned up in reference books.

  7. Q 07Which Manhattan daily falsely reported deadly escapes from the Central Park Zoo on its front page?

    • ANew York Tribune
    • BNew York World
    • CNew York Herald
    • DBrooklyn Eagle
    Show answer

    New York Herald

    The brine

    The New York Herald's story began with a rhinoceros goring its keeper and ended by admitting not one word was true, but panicked readers had already taken it seriously.

  8. Q 08Which writer invented the New York Sun's report of a balloon crossing the Atlantic in 75 hours?

    • AHerman Melville
    • BWashington Irving
    • CEdgar Allan Poe
    • DNathaniel Hawthorne
    Show answer

    Edgar Allan Poe

    The brine

    Edgar Allan Poe had balloonist Monck Mason land on Sullivan's Island near Charleston, and the Sun soon had to admit the story was false.

  9. Q 09Which city's papers printed the hoax that American firms were bidding to demolish the Great Wall of China?

    • AChicago
    • BSt. Louis
    • CSan Francisco
    • DDenver
    Show answer

    Denver

    The brine

    Four Denver reporters with nothing to file invented the story at the Oxford Hotel; a later legend that it helped spark the Boxer Rebellion is itself unfounded.

  10. Q 10Which West German magazine paid 9.3 million marks for the forged 'Hitler diaries'?

    • ADer Spiegel
    • BBild
    • CBunte
    • DStern
    Show answer

    Stern

    The brine

    Stern's scoop collapsed when federal archive tests found postwar materials in the diaries, and forger Konrad Kujau and reporter Gerd Heidemann were both jailed.

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