50 Fun Facts About Famous Hoaxes

Which food did a 1957 BBC Panorama April Fools' report show a Swiss family harvesting from trees?

Spaghetti was an exotic delicacy in 1950s Britain, so hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC to ask how to grow their own. They were told to place a sprig in a tin of tomato sauce.

In 1726, Englishwoman Mary Toft tricked several doctors into believing she had given birth to which animals?

Rabbits were Toft's claim, and a surgeon to King George I's household judged the case genuine. Under close scrutiny she confessed and was imprisoned as a fraud.

Which famous author championed the Cottingley Fairies photographs, taken by two young cousins in 1917, as genuine?

Arthur Conan Doyle, a prominent spiritualist, used the photographs in The Strand Magazine. The cousins later said they were too embarrassed to admit the truth after fooling him.

The 1934 'Surgeon's Photograph' of the Loch Ness Monster was later revealed as a model head mounted on what?

A toy submarine bought from Woolworth carried the wood-putty head. Hoaxer M. A. Wetherell wanted revenge on the Daily Mail, which had ridiculed him over fake monster footprints.

Which showman displayed a plaster copy of the Cardiff Giant when the fake petrified man's owners refused to sell?

P. T. Barnum had the giant secretly modelled in wax, then claimed his copy was the real one and the original the fake. The original is still displayed in Cooperstown, New York.

Where was six-year-old Falcon Heene hiding while rescuers chased an empty balloon in 2009's 'balloon boy' hoax?

In the attic above the garage is where Falcon had been the whole time. The sheriff called the saucer-shaped balloon's flight a publicity stunt to help sell a reality show.

The 'dihydrogen monoxide' parody asks people to ban which everyday substance by using an alarming chemical name?

Water fits every scary claim the parody makes: it speeds up corrosion and can cause suffocation, which is the parody's way of describing rust and drowning.

The Turk, a 1770 'automaton' that beat Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin, secretly hid a human expert at which game?

Chess was the trick: a master crouched in the cabinet and moved the pieces with levers and magnets. The machine toured for 84 years before a fire destroyed it.

Which fast-food chain claimed in 1996 April Fools' ads that it had bought a cracked Philadelphia landmark?

Taco Bell said it had bought the Liberty Bell to help reduce the national debt. The White House joked back that Ford was buying the Lincoln Memorial.

Rosie Ruiz lost her 1980 winner's title after officials found she had jumped into which famous race near the finish?

Boston Marathon officials stripped Ruiz of the title eight days later. A photographer then recalled meeting her on the subway during the race she had used to qualify.

The Piltdown Man 'missing link', unearthed in England in 1912, paired a human skull with the jawbone of which animal?

An orangutan supplied the jaw, with its teeth filed down to look more human. The forgery was broadly accepted for decades and was only definitively exposed in 1953.

Which website hosted 'lonelygirl15', a teenager's video diary exposed in 2006 as a scripted series starring an actress?

YouTube viewers grew suspicious, and forum users traced the character's messages to the offices of a talent agency. Actress Jessica Lee Rose had been cast partly for her anonymity.

A 1998 internet hoax describes an endangered tree-dwelling species of which sea creature in the Pacific Northwest?

Octopus paxarbolis is the hoax's invented Latin name, and the site is now used in internet literacy classes. In one 2007 study, over half the schoolchildren tested rated it very reliable.

Doug Bower and Dave Chorley said in 1991 that they had started which English countryside mystery with a plank and rope?

Crop circles needed only a plank, rope and a cap fitted with a wire loop for walking in straight lines, the pair said. To prove it, they made one in front of journalists.

The 1995 'alien autopsy' film, which its producer admitted in 2006 was fake, claimed to follow which UFO incident?

Roswell was the claimed setting, but the footage was shot in a London living room. The alien bodies were plaster casts filled with offal, sheep brains and raspberry jam.

Which horror film's marketing listed its three lead actors as missing and posted fake police reports online?

The Blair Witch Project is thought to be the first widely released film marketed mainly through the internet. For a time its IMDb page listed the cast as missing, presumed dead.

A 1967 hoax recipe in the Berkeley Barb convinced people they could get high by smoking the peel of which fruit?

Banana peels drew enough interest that the Food and Drug Administration announced an investigation. The hoax was designed as a thought experiment about making psychoactive drugs illegal.

Australians scare tourists with tales of the 'drop bear', a predatory, tree-dwelling version of which animal?

Koala lookalikes that drop onto walkers' heads are the joke, and the Australian Museum's website has a tongue-in-cheek entry on them. Advised defences include Vegemite behind the ears.

Anna Anderson spent decades claiming to be which member of Russia's murdered imperial family before DNA disproved it?

Anastasia was the youngest daughter of the last tsar. DNA from a lock of Anderson's hair matched neither the Romanov remains nor the family's living relatives.

The news magazine Stern paid millions in 1983 for sixty forged volumes of which dictator's supposed diaries?

Adolf Hitler's 'diaries' were the work of forger Konrad Kujau, and a noted historian first pronounced them genuine. Forensic analysis then quickly confirmed they were fakes.

The girls behind the Cottingley Fairies photographs later admitted propping up their cardboard cutouts with what?

Hatpins held up figures copied from a popular children's book. The pair confessed in the early 1980s, though Frances kept insisting that the fifth and final photograph was genuine.

Sports Illustrated's 1985 April Fools' hoax invented Sidd Finch, a pitcher with a 168 mph fastball, for which team?

New York Mets staff played along, even providing a uniform and a number for Finch. The subhead's first letters spelled out an April Fools' greeting, yet many readers believed he existed.

Which future novelist joined the 1910 Dreadnought hoax, posing as Abyssinian royalty to tour a Royal Navy battleship?

Virginia Woolf, then Virginia Stephen, was disguised with a turban and skin darkener alongside her brother Adrian. Prankster Horace de Vere Cole organised the visit, which briefly made the navy an object of ridicule.

Which magazine hailed the 'Archaeoraptor' fossil as a missing link in 1999, before it proved to be a forgery?

National Geographic called it a link between birds and dinosaurs, but it was built from rearranged pieces of real fossils from different species. The scandal drew attention to illegal fossil deals.

Which university's star linebacker Manti Te'o was revealed in 2013 to have mourned a girlfriend who never existed?

Notre Dame said Te'o had been the victim of a hoax after the sports blog Deadspin reported that Lennay Kekua did not exist. Her published photos showed a different woman entirely.

Janet Cooke returned a 1981 Pulitzer after inventing 'Jimmy', an eight-year-old heroin addict, for which newspaper?

The Washington Post story caused such an outcry that the city's mayor organised a police search for the boy. When it found no one, suspicion grew that the story was a fabrication.

Dutch forger Han van Meegeren became a national hero for selling Hermann Göring a fake by which 17th-century painter?

Vermeer was the name on the canvas Göring prized, and Van Meegeren was arrested for selling cultural property to the Nazis. Facing a possible death penalty, he confessed that it was a forgery.

In 2017's 'Shed at Dulwich' hoax, Oobah Butler made his garden shed London's top-rated restaurant on which website?

TripAdvisor ranked the shed first after Butler's friends posted fake reviews. Swamped with booking requests, he opened for one night and served ten guests thinly disguised £1 ready meals.

In 1888 Margaretta Fox showed an audience that her famous 'spirit rappings' came from cracking which body part?

Her toes made raps that carried through the whole theatre, and doctors came on stage to confirm it. The Fox sisters had been famous mediums for 40 years, and she later retracted the confession.

Clifford Irving went to prison in the 1970s for selling a fake 'autobiography' of which famous American tycoon?

Howard Hughes, a recluse, broke his silence in a televised telephone conference to say he had never met Irving. Irving served 17 months and later wrote his own account, titled The Hoax.

Which TV host confronted James Frey on air in 2006 after his memoir A Million Little Pieces proved partly fabricated?

Oprah Winfrey had defended the book two weeks earlier, then asked Frey on her show whether he had lied to her. He admitted spending only a few hours in jail, not the 87 days he had claimed.

Students from which university secretly rewrote the 1961 Rose Bowl card stunt so Washington's fans spelled out its name?

Caltech students had one of their number pose as a high school reporter to learn the plan, then changed 2,232 instruction sheets. An estimated 30 million NBC viewers saw the result.

H. L. Mencken's 1917 hoax article invented an American history, complete with a president, for which household fixture?

The bathtub tale claimed Millard Fillmore ordered one built in the White House. Mencken later wrote that it had no truth in it at all, yet it was taken seriously and reached reference books.

Four Denver reporters invented an 1899 story that American firms were bidding to demolish which ancient landmark?

The Great Wall of China was supposedly to make way for a road, and a number of newspapers reprinted the tale. A later legend that it ignited the Boxer Rebellion has no known basis.

Which museum bought the golden 'Tiara of Saitaferne' in 1896, only for its maker to prove it was a modern fake?

The Louvre defended its Scythian treasure for years. Its experts refused to believe Odesa goldsmith Israel Rouchomovsky had made it until he reproduced a portion of the crown.

Which rock star hosted the 1998 launch party for William Boyd's biography of Nat Tate, an artist who never existed?

David Bowie read extracts aloud at the party, held on the eve of April Fools' Day. The invented painter's name combines two London galleries, the National Gallery and the Tate.

Forger W. H. Ireland passed off his own 1790s play Vortigern and Rowena as a lost work by which writer?

William Shakespeare's 'lost' play opened at Drury Lane two days after a scholar's book showed the papers behind it were modern forgeries. Earlier believers had included James Boswell.

The 'Feejee Mermaid' shown in New York in 1842 was half a fish sewn to the torso of which animal?

A monkey, a juvenile one, supplied the head and torso. In one account, an American sea captain bought the creature from Japanese sailors with money from his ship's expense account.

An 1835 New York newspaper hoax claimed astronomer John Herschel had found bat-winged humanoids living where?

On the Moon, the articles said, there were also unicorns and beavers that walked on two legs, all seen through an immense telescope. The newspaper never printed a retraction.

Physicist Alan Sokal's deliberately nonsensical 1996 paper on quantum gravity ran in which cultural studies journal?

Social Text did not practise peer review at the time, so no physicist checked the paper. Three weeks after it appeared, Sokal revealed the hoax in the magazine Lingua Franca.

Two poets invented the modernist 'Ern Malley' in the 1940s to fool which Australian journal, co-edited by Max Harris?

Angry Penguins devoted its next issue to the invented poet and hailed him as a genius. Once the hoax came out, Harris was put on trial and fined for publishing obscene poems.

Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed his 1760s epics Fingal and Temora were translations of which ancient Gaelic bard?

Ossian won admirers including Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson, who planned to learn Gaelic to read him. The consensus now is that Macpherson largely composed the poems himself.

George Psalmanazar, actually a Frenchman, won fame in 1700s Britain by posing as the first visitor from which island?

Formosa, today's Taiwan, became in his telling a prosperous country with a capital called Xternetsa. After he was found out, he became a friend of Samuel Johnson.

Which NHL team used a 1974 draft pick on Taro Tsujimoto, a Japanese forward invented by its general manager?

Buffalo Sabres boss Punch Imlach, frustrated by the length of the draft, made up a player from the fictional Tokyo Katanas. The team even gave him a locker and a number 13 jersey.

Which satirist, writing as 'Isaac Bickerstaff' in 1708, predicted and then reported astrologer John Partridge's death?

Jonathan Swift's joke worked so well that mourners cried outside Partridge's window at night. The astrologer ended up publishing a letter to proclaim himself still living.

Which American author wrote the 1844 newspaper 'Balloon-Hoax' about a three-day gas balloon crossing of the Atlantic?

Edgar Allan Poe presented the trip as real news, and the paper retracted the story two days later. He may have been inspired by an earlier hoax run by the same New York newspaper.

The Guardian's 1977 April Fools' supplement invented San Serriffe, an island whose place names punned on which subject?

Printing jokes ran through the seven-page supplement, starting with the country's name, and major companies bought themed advertisements. A runway disaster on Tenerife made the writers move the island to the Indian Ocean.

Staff of which newspaper wrote the deliberately terrible 1969 bestseller Naked Came the Stranger as 'Penelope Ashe'?

Newsday columnist Mike McGrady led two dozen journalists, and some chapters had to be edited for being too well written. His sister-in-law played the author for photographs.

Which university owns the Vinland Map, a supposed medieval chart of Norse America that its own experts declared a fake?

Yale unveiled the map in 1965 as a pre-Columbian original, but its ink turned out to contain an artificial pigment from the 20th century. Yale's specialists called the forgery settled in 2018.

The BBC's Ghostwatch, a 1992 drama staged as a live ghost hunt, alarmed thousands of viewers on which night of the year?

Halloween night's broadcast had been filmed months in advance but was presented as live television. The BBC received around 30,000 calls from distressed viewers.