List of hoaxes

The following is a list of hoaxes:

Proven hoaxes

These are some claims that have been revealed, or proven definitively, to be deliberate public hoaxes. This list does not include hoax articles published on or around April 1, a long list of which can be found in the "List of April Fools' Day jokes" article.

A–F

Cedric Allingham, fictitious author who wrote a book about meeting the pilot of a Martian spacecraft. Allingham was created by British astronomer Patrick Moore and his friend Peter Davies.
Alien autopsy, a hoax film by Ray Santilli
Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari, a fake Syrian blogger
Apollo 20, a series of YouTube videos claiming to show evidence of intelligent, extraterrestrial life on the moon
The Archko Volume, a collection of documents related to the life of Jesus
The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, a book about purported sexual enslavement of a nun
Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet co-authored the book China Under the Empress Dowager using a fake diary as a major source, and a manuscript of Backhouse's memoirs also was mostly fiction. He falsely represented himself as representing the Chinese Imperial Court in business deals, and donated apparently fake books to the Bodleian Library
The Balloon-Hoax, depicting a cross-Atlantic hot air balloon trip
The balloon boy hoax, a boy reported to be traveling uncontrollably at high altitudes in a home-made helium balloon but later discovered to be hiding in the attic of his house
Bananadine, a fictional drug made from bananas
Bathtub hoax, an imaginary history of the bathtub published by H.L. Mencken
Johann Beringer's Lying Stones
Berners Street hoax in 1810
Franz Bibfeldt, a fictitious theologian originally invented to provide a footnote for a divinity school student, which later became an in-joke among academic theologians
The Big Donor Show, a hoax reality television program in the Netherlands about a woman donating her kidneys to one of three people requiring a transplantation
Blue waffle, a supposedly contagious sexually-transmitted disease affecting only women, causing a blue discoloration of the vagina
C.W. Blubberhouse, whose letters in UK national newspapers were exposed as a hoax by the Sunday Times
Calaveras Skull was a human skull found by miners in Calaveras County, California, which was purported to prove that humans, mastodons, and elephants had coexisted in California.
The Cardiff Giant was a hoax of a hoax, when P. T. Barnum made up a replica because he could not obtain the "genuine" hoax item
CERN ritual, supposed occult sacrifice on the grounds of CERN.
The Cottingley Fairies, cut-out fairies accepted as real
Crop circles. English pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley claimed they started the phenomenon, and hundreds of "copycat" circles have been fabricated since by other hoaxers.
Dahu, a legendary creature well known in France, Switzerland and the north of Italy
Disappearing blonde gene
Document 12-571-3570, supposedly established that sex had taken place during a NASA space mission
Donation of Constantine, a forged imperial decree by which the 4th-century emperor Constantine the Great supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the Western Roman Empire to the Pope.
The Dreadnought hoax, perpetrated in 1910 by Horace de Vere Cole and a group of friends who, pretending to be an official delegation from Abyssinia, tricked the Royal Navy into giving them an official tour of the battleship HMS Dreadnought
Drop bear, a supposed dangerous species of koala
Emulex hoax, a stock manipulation scheme
The English Mercurie, a literary hoax purporting to be the first English language newspaper
Ern Malley, a fictitious poet
Fiji mermaid, the supposed remains of a half-fish half-human hybrid
Sidd Finch, fictional baseball player[1]
Furry trout

G–M

Geostationary Banana Over Texas, an apparent hoax to secure artistic funding
Gorgeous Guy, apparently motiveless hoax, which gained the perpetrator some media attention
Gosford Glyphs, a supposed group of Egyptian hieroglyphs discovered in the 1970s in Central Coast, New South Wales, Australia
Great Moon Hoax, a series of articles published in The Sun describing a Lunar civilization
Joice Heth, African-American slave exhibited by P. T. Barnum as George Washington's nurse.
Hanxin, a DSP microchip claimed to be developed completely by Chen Jin himself, which was proved as Motorola's microchip with its original trademark sanded away
Histoire de l'Inquisition en France, the 1829 book by Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon
The Hitler Diaries, purportedly written by Adolf Hitler
The Horn Papers, a genealogical hoax
Hunting for Bambi, a fictional competition to hunt semi-naked women with paintball guns in the deserts of Las Vegas.[2]
The Ireland Shakespeare forgeries, a collection of Shakespeare-related documents supposedly discovered by William Henry Ireland and published in 1795 by his father, Samuel Ireland; the discoveries included a "lost" play, Vortigern and Rowena
Clifford Irving's biography of Howard Hughes
The Jackalope, supposedly a form of rabbit with antlers
The Jacko hoax, a supposed gorilla or sasquatch caught near Yale, British Columbia, in 1884
Jussie Smollett attack, supposed anti-gay, anti-black attack on the Empire actor in Chicago
The Lady Hope Story, a claim of Charles Darwin's deathbed conversion to evangelical Christianity
Kryakutnoy, purported Russian inventor of the hot-air balloon
Lenin was a mushroom, a television hoax by Soviet musician Sergey Kuryokhin and reporter Sergey Sholokhov. It was first broadcast on 17 May 1991 on Leningrad Television.
Lucy Lightfoot, a supposed legend from the Isle of Wight about a girl who disappeared in 1831. Later admitted to have been made up in the 1960s by the vicar of St Olave's Church, Gatcombe.
Maggie Murphy hoax, a hoax that claimed a farmer grew an oversized potato.
Maine Penny, a coin of pre-Columbian Norse origin allegedly discovered at an archeological dig site in Brooklin, Maine in 1957, which has been labeled a hoax by the American Numismatic Society.
Mars hoax (also called the Two Moons hoax), a yearly hoax, started in 2003, falsely claiming that at a certain date Mars will look as large as the full moon[3]
The Masked Marauders, an album issued by a Warner Bros. Records subsidiary that reportedly featured a jam session between Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The perpetrator was Rolling Stone magazine.
The Microsoft acquisition hoax, a 1994 hoax claiming that Microsoft had acquired the Roman Catholic Church. The hoax is considered to be the first hoax to reach a mass audience on the Internet.[4] Despite debunking by Microsoft, similar stories about Microsoft and other companies implementing unrealistic acquisitions continued.
The Miscovich emeralds hoax, an attempt by a diver to pass modern emeralds off as treasures from a sunken Spanish galleon.
Monster of Lake Fagua, an 18th-century hoax about a dragon-like monster supposedly found in Spanish Peru.
The Momo Challenge hoax, a fake social media challenge supposedly encouraging children to self-harm and kill themselves.
Robert Mueller sexual assault hoax, perpetrated by far-right conspiracy theorists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl.

N–S

Naked Came the Stranger : a 1969 novel by a group of American journalists attempting to satisfy, and thus expose, what they perceived as degraded standards in popular American literature; it succeeded, selling about 90,000 copies before the hoax was revealed.
Nibiru cataclysm: a rogue planet and doomsday theory involving a planet collision with Earth. Debunked by NASA and others as a hoax.
Ompax spatuloides, a "fish" supposedly discovered in 1872 in Australia, made of a mullet, an eel and the head of a platypus, as a joke on Karl Theodor Staiger which also fooled Francis de Laporte de Castelnau into writing a scientific description of the "species".
The Works of Ossian, "translated" by James MacPherson
Our First Time, an early popularized Internet hoax, involving two purported 18-year-olds who claimed they would live broadcast themselves losing their virginity.
Our Race Will Rule Undisputed Over The World : fake document alleging Jewish superiority over Gentiles by a non-existent rabbi named Emmanuel Rabinovich.
Edward Owens, perpetrated on the English-language Wikipedia in 2008 by a class at George Mason University.
The Pacific Northwest tree octopus (Octopus paxarbolis)
Paul is dead (Paul McCartney death hoax)
The perpetual motion engines built by John Ernst Worrell Keely and Charles Redheffer
The Persian Princess, a mummy of an alleged princess which surfaced in October 2000, which proved to be an archaeological forgery and possibly a modern murder victim.
Pierre Brassau was a pseudonym for a chimpanzee whose art was exhibited in a gallery under the presumption that Brassau was a real human artist. The chimpanzee received positive reviews from several critics.
Piltdown Man, remains purporting to be "the missing link" between apes and humans.
Plainfield Teacher's College, a fictional school whose football scores ended up in major newspapers in 1941.
Platinum Weird, deliberate hoax by David A. Stewart and Kara DioGuardi about a fictitious band from 1974 promoted using false advertising.
The Poppy Fields, a made-up band that earned a number 24 hit for "45 RPM", a song they had not recorded.
Princess Caraboo, aka Mary Baker, a woman in England who alleged to be a princess from a far-off land.
The Priory of Sion, a made-up secret society that plays a prominent role in The Da Vinci Code[5]
Progesterex, a date-rape drug.
Prophecy of the Popes, a Latin document predicting the next Popes.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a book instrumental in the surge of antisemitism during the twentieth century[6]
George Psalmanazar and his "Formosa"
Psychic surgery, a pseudoscientific medical practice where the practitioner pretends to perform surgery on the patient.
Q33 NY, an Internet hoax based on the 9/11 attacks.
A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century: fake document.
Tamara Rand prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, which was actually made after the fact (Randi 1982:329).
Redcore, a browser purported to be developed in-house, but was revealed to be based on Chromium [7]
Rejecting Jane chronicles the rejection by publishing houses of the opening chapters of Jane Austen novels submitted to them under a pseudonym by British writer David Lassman.
The Report From Iron Mountain, a literary hoax claiming that the government had concluded that peacetime was not in the economy's best interest.
Rosenhan experiment: the admission of healthy "pseudopatients" to twelve psychiatric hospitals.
Rosie Ruiz, who cheated in the Boston Marathon
Frank Scully's 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers, which claimed that aliens from a crashed flying saucer were being held
"Seriously McDonalds", a viral photograph apparently showing racist policies introduced by McDonald's.[8]
Michael Shrimpton, who perpetrated a hoax that Germany was planning a nuclear attack on the 2012 Summer Olympics
The Skvader, a form of winged hare supposedly indigenous to Sweden.
The 'Sloot Digital Coding System' (SDCS), a method of digital compression devised by Dutchman Jan Sloot which allegedly could compress an entire movie into 8 kilobytes.
Songs of Bilitis, supposed ancient Greek poems "discovered" by Pierre Louÿs.
Space Cadets, a 2005 TV programme by Channel 4, in which contestants were fooled into thinking that they were training at a Russian space academy to become space tourists.
The "R. E. Straith" letter sent to George Adamski by Gray Barker and James W. Moseley (Moseley & Pflock 2002:124–27,331–32).
James Vicary's Subliminal advertising (Boese 2002:127–8)
The "Surgeon's Photo" of the Loch Ness Monster.
SETI: EQ Pegasus Hoax of 1998[9]

T–Z

Tania Head (Alicia Esteve Head), who claimed to be a 9/11 survivor and received widespread media attention for it
The Taughannock Giant, a petrified giant "discovered" in Ithaca, New York, in 1879. This copycat hoax was inspired by the Cardiff Giant ten years earlier.[10][11]
Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax
Thatchergate Tapes, a fake conversation with which the punk band Crass fooled the governments of the US and UK
Slowing of Satellites above Tirunallar Saniswaran Temple, because of mysterious UV rays from Saturn, claimed to have been admitted as a Miracle, by NASA[12]
Robert Tilton's "prayer cloths"
Mary Toft, the rabbit mother
Toothing, an invented fad about people using Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices to arrange sexual encounters
Tourist guy, fake photo of a tourist at the top of the World Trade Center building on 9/11 with a plane about to crash in the background
Trodmore Racecourse, a fictitious Cornish race meeting
Taro Tsujimoto, a fictional Japanese ice hockey player selected by the Buffalo Sabres in the 1974 NHL amateur draft. The Sabres' general manager, Punch Imlach, made the selection as a protest against the NHL's draft procedures.
The Turk, a chess-playing automaton that actually contained a person
Tuxissa, a computer virus hoax
Benjamin Vanderford's beheading video
Villejuif leaflet, a pamphlet distributed in Europe with claims of various food additives having carcinogenic effects.
Southern Television broadcast interruption hoax (1977), hoax message inserted into an IBA broadcast in the United Kingdom on 26 November 1977
David Weiss, a fictitious person that was used by the Jerusalem Post as a source
Laurel Rose Willson's claims to be a survivor of Satanic ritual abuse (as Lauren Stratford), and of the Holocaust (as Laura Grabowski)
Wolpertinger, a Bavarian cousin of the Jackalope
Yellowcake forgery, the false documents suggesting Iraq's Saddam Hussein was to purchase uranium from Niger
Zzxjoanw, a fictitious word that fooled logologists for 70 years

Proven hoaxes of exposure

"Proven hoaxes of exposure" are semi-comical or private sting operations. They usually encourage people to act foolishly or credulously by falling for patent nonsense that the hoaxer deliberately presents as reality. See also culture jamming.

The Amityville Horror – ghostly events reported by the buyers of a house where another family had been murdered.
The Atlanta Nights hoax
The British television series Brass Eye encouraged celebrities to pledge their support to nonexistent causes, to highlight their willingness to do anything for publicity
Dihydrogen monoxide hoax
Disumbrationism
Genpets, the bio-engineered pet creatures
Grunge speak, an alleged slang of the Seattle rock underground, concocted by a Sub Pop employee and profiled in The New York Times
ID Sniper rifle, a rifle that shoots GPS chips to mark and track suspects
The Lovelump bio-engineered sex toy
Project Alpha – orchestrated by James Randi, exposed poor research into psychic phenomena
Pacific Northwest tree octopus, by Lyle Zapato
SINA, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, the first media hoax of Alan Abel
Nat Tate, an imaginary artist, about whom a biography was published in 1998 by William Boyd intended to temporarily fool the art world
Media pranks of Joey Skaggs including Cathouse for Dogs(1976)
The Sokal affair
The Taxil hoax by Léo Taxil, poking fun at the Roman Catholic Church's attitude toward Freemasonry
The avant-garde "music" of "Piotr Zak"
The practice of growing Bonsai Kittens
January 2009 Quadrant Hoax
The Canadian House Hippo hoax briefly perpetrated by Concerned Children's Advertisers in public service announcements designed to encourage children to view items in the media with a critical eye.

Journalistic hoaxes

Deliberate hoaxes, or journalistic fraud, that drew widespread attention include:

"A Rape on Campus", written by Sabrina Erdely and published by Rolling Stone magazine, reported an alleged gangrape of a female college student by college men in graphic detail, but was later found to have been entirely fabricated by the "victim" and the journalist.[13]
Washington Irving created a hoax about the supposedly missing Diedrich Knickerbocker
Edgar Allan Poe created a hoax of moon travel in "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall," as well as The Balloon-Hoax, a hoax newspaper article about the first transatlantic balloon trip(1844)
Jayson Blair, reporter for The New York Times
Janet Cooke, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her fictitious Washington Post story about an eight-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy
The Flemish Secession hoax of 2006
Stephen Glass, reporter for The New Republic
Fuckart & Pimp a hoax art exhibition at London's Decima gallery, which purported to be the show of a female artist having sex with clients to consummate the sale of her paintings, created a worldwide media scandal but was later revealed to be a hoax.
The Great Moon Hoax of 1835; Edgar Allan Poe would later claim that this was inspired by his own story "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall," which was published only a few months before
Great Wall of China hoax of 1899
Johann Hari, journalist for The Independent, The New York Times, The Huffington Post and other media organisations, who committed acts of plagiarism, fabricated sources and quotes, and posted malicious comments to social media and edits to the Wikipedia biographies of his critics and opponents. Hari was forced to return the Orwell Prize (which he won in 2008) after it was withdrawn by the Orwell Prize Council.[14]
Jack Kelley, longtime USA Today correspondent
David Lassman who wrote the 2007 'Rejecting Jane' article, which chronicled Jane Austen's rejection by modern-day publishers
The New York Zoo hoax of 1874
Nik Cohn's New York magazine article, "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", which was the source material for the movie Saturday Night Fever, and which Cohn admitted decades later had been fiction, not reportage
Konspiration 58 about the soccer world cup of 1958
David Manning, a fictitious film-critic created by Sony in order to place good quotes on Columbia Pictures' film advertising
Holocaust teaching controversy of 2007
Cello Scrotum is a hoax medical condition originally published as a brief case report in the British Medical Journal in 1974.
San Serriffe, a fictional island nation made the subject of an extensive report created for April Fools' Day 1977 by Britain's Guardian newspaper

References

Plimpton, George (2004). The Curious Case of Sidd Finch. New York, NY: Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 1-56858-296-X.
Mikkelson, Barbara & David P. "Hunting For Bambi" at Snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages.
Mehta, Ankita (2014-08-28). "'Two Moons' Hoax: Absence of Twin Moon on 27 August Disappoints Many". International Business Times. Retrieved 2014-08-31.
Heyd, Theresa (2008). Email Hoaxes: Form, Function, Genre Ecology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 4. ISBN 978-90-272-5418-4. Retrieved October 30, 2010.
Brown, Dan (2003). The Da Vinci Code. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-50420-9.
Cohn, Norman (1966). Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. New York: Harper & Row..
Sarah Dai (2018-08-17). "Redcore CEO admits '100pc China-developed browser' is built on Google's Chrome, says writing code from scratch would 'take many years'". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 2018-08-17. Retrieved 2018-08-17.
"Maccas in damage control over Seriously McDonald's picture hoax". News.com.au. 14 June 2011. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
"Alien hoax dismays scientists". BBC News. 1998-11-03. Retrieved 2012-05-23.
Rogers, A. Glenn (1953). "The Taughannock Giant" (Fall 2003). Life in the Finger Lakes. Retrieved 28 June 2019.
Githler, Charley (26 December 2017). "A Look Back At: Home-Grown Hoax: The Taughannock Giant". Tompkins Weekly. Retrieved 28 June 2019.
"Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-12-23. Retrieved 2015-12-23.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
Johnson, K. C.; Jr, Stuart Taylor (May 22, 2018). The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. Encounter Books. ISBN 9781594039881 – via Google Books.
"The depressing tale of Johann Hari". September 15, 2011 – via The Economist.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[1] Plimpton, George (2004). The Curious Case of Sidd Finch. New York, NY: Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 1-56858-296-X.

[2] Mikkelson, Barbara & David P. "Hunting For Bambi" at Snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages.

[3] Mehta, Ankita (2014-08-28). "'Two Moons' Hoax: Absence of Twin Moon on 27 August Disappoints Many". International Business Times. Retrieved 2014-08-31.

[4] Heyd, Theresa (2008). Email Hoaxes: Form, Function, Genre Ecology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 4. ISBN 978-90-272-5418-4. Retrieved October 30, 2010.

[DVC-5] Brown, Dan (2003). The Da Vinci Code. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-50420-9.

[Cohn1966-6] Cohn, Norman (1966). Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. New York: Harper & Row..

[scmp-7] Sarah Dai (2018-08-17). "Redcore CEO admits '100pc China-developed browser' is built on Google's Chrome, says writing code from scratch would 'take many years'". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 2018-08-17. Retrieved 2018-08-17.

[8] "Maccas in damage control over Seriously McDonald's picture hoax". News.com.au. 14 June 2011. Retrieved 18 June 2011.

[9] "Alien hoax dismays scientists". BBC News. 1998-11-03. Retrieved 2012-05-23.

[Rogers-10] Rogers, A. Glenn (1953). "The Taughannock Giant" (Fall 2003). Life in the Finger Lakes. Retrieved 28 June 2019.

[Githler-11] Githler, Charley (26 December 2017). "A Look Back At: Home-Grown Hoax: The Taughannock Giant". Tompkins Weekly. Retrieved 28 June 2019.

[12] "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-12-23. Retrieved 2015-12-23.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

[13] Johnson, K. C.; Jr, Stuart Taylor (May 22, 2018). The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. Encounter Books. ISBN 9781594039881 – via Google Books.

[14] "The depressing tale of Johann Hari". September 15, 2011 – via The Economist.