List of hoaxes: Difference between revisions

The following are lists of hoaxes:

Proven Hoaxes

• Alek Komarnitsky's Christmas Lights Webcam hoax - the christmas webcamWSJ storyAlek's explanation of the hoax
• Bananadine
• Bathtub hoax
• Bill Stump's stone
• Drake's Plate of Brass accepted for forty years as the actual plate Francis Drake posted upon visiting California in 1579
• Johann Beringer's lying stones
• The Cardiff Giant, of which P. T. Barnum made up a replica when he could not obtain the genuine hoax
• The Cottingley Fairies
• Some Crop circles
• The Donation of Constantine
• Emulex hoax
• Feejee Mermaid
• Furry trout
• George Adamski's claims to have gone into space in UFOs. His book was based on his earlier book of fiction.
• Histoire de l'Inquisition en France, the 1829 book by Etienne Leon de Lamonthe-Langan
• The Hitler Diaries
• The Horn Papers
• The Hundredth Monkey
• Clifford Irving's biography of Howard Hughes
• Jackalope
• Jdbgmgr.exe virus hoax
• The Killian memos (see Rathergate)
• Lobsang Rampa
• The Moles' "We Are The Moles", a 1967 single widely promoted as having been The Beatles recording under a pseudonym. It was actually recorded by Gentle Giant.
• Palisade, Nevada
• Pickled dragon
• "Piltdown Man"
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
• A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century
• George Psalmanazar and his "Formosa"
• The Report From Iron Mountain
• Mary Toft, rabbit mother
• the Turk, a chess-playing automaton
• The Priory of Sion
• Steve Brodie, who did not jump from the Brooklyn Bridge
• George Dupre, who claimed to have worked for SOE
• Milli Vanilli, duo that did not sing its own songs
• Rosie Ruiz, who cheated in Boston Marathon
• Benjamin Vanderford's video of his own beheading in Iraq, which circulated on the Internet for months before being reported in the news as fact and subsequently exposed.
• "The War of the Worlds"
• Well to hell hoax
• Richard Bachman
• The Amityville Horror, ghostly events reported by the buyers of a house where another family had been murdered, but later found to be false.
• Thatchergate Tapes. A punk band fools the governments of the U.S. and the U.K. with this fake conversation.
• Time-travelling claims of John Titor
• The Penny Brown E-mail

Probable Hoaxes

• The Ashtar Galactic Command broadcast on Southern Television
• The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed, book supposedly by AI program Racter
• Kensington Runestone
• Loch Ness Monster: the famous photograph, admitted decades later as a prank
• Roswell alien autopsy film
• Mon cher Mustapha letter
• Zeno map; Shows lands known not to exist, such as Estotiland, Drogeo, Frisland, Podalida, Estland, and Neome.
• NESARA, a purported secret law under gag order by The Supreme Court, which when implemented, will abolish the IRS and eliminate all credit card debt.

Possible Hoaxes

• The Patterson-Gimlin film of Bigfoot
• The Vinland map
• Tasaday tribe in the Philippines. Much debated. Note: the term "hoax" in relation to the Tasaday is a very overloaded and overused term, which would be better enunciated as multiple questions: Are the Tasaday a genuine people? Yes. Were some early reports of the Tasaday overstated? Yes. etc.
• Philippines historical figure Kanatiaw
• the Shroud of Turin was "cunningly painted" by a monk in the 14th century, according to the local bishop.
• The Voynich Manuscript
• The Book of Veles
• Mel's Hole
• Josef Papp's solo 13-hour trans-Atlantic submarine voyage
• The Book Communion by Whitley Strieber; classed as non-fiction, but controversial because of the claims of alien abduction in the book.
• Zinoviev Letter

Practical Joke Hoaxes

• The Balloon-Hoax
• The Dreadnought Hoax
• Forgotten Silver
• I, Libertine, originally nonexistent book
• Naked Came the Stranger
• Sawing off of Manhattan Island
• Dihydrogen Monoxide Hoax: a call to outlaw the 'dangerous' chemical H₂O

Known pranksters

• Horace de Vere Cole, British aristocrat
• Benjamin Franklin
• Brian G. Hughes, US banker
• Reginald Jones, British professor
• Harry Reichenbach, Hollywood publicist
• Joey Skaggs, US media prankster
• Edward Askew Sothern, British actor
• Hugh Troy, US painter
• Andy Kaufman, US comedian and inter-gender wrestling champion
• Alan Abel, US professional hoaxer
• Dick Tuck, US political prankster

Hoaxes of Exposure

"Hoaxes of exposure" can be thought of as semi-comical, private sting operations. Their usual purpose is to expose people acting foolishly or credulously, to encourage them to fall for something that the hoaxer hopes to reveal as patent nonsense. See also culture jamming.

• The Atlanta Nights hoax
• Disumbrationism
• The Sokal Affair
• The Spectra hoax
• The Taxil hoax
• Media pranks of Joey Skaggs
• The avant-garde "music" of "Piotr Zak"
• The Arm the Homeless Coalition
• The British television series Brass Eye encouraged celebrities to pledge their support to nonexistent causes, to highlight their willingness to do anything for publicity. For instance, Phil Collins was invited to campaign against paedophilia using the slogan "I'm talking Nonce Sense", and an MP was enticed to ask questions in Parliament about a non-existent drug called Cake.
• Benjamin Vanderford, created a video depicting his own beheading in Iraq and distributed it over the Internet. He claimed that one reason he created it was to show how easily such videos could be faked and yet taken by the news media as fact, pointing out that he gave information such as his address in the video that would make its inauthenticity easily verifiable.

Too-creative journalists

Journalist may be over-eager to "get a story", both to increase his own prestige or write something that would increase the sales of the publication. Also see Journalistic fraud.

• Harry J. Anslinger's magazine pieces on the dangers of marijuana
• Reefer Madness a propaganda film for the "public good" is a secular counterpart of pious fraud
• 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.
• Janet Cooke, who wrote about an eight-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy
• Stephen Glass
• Killian memos
• Joseph Mulholland
• Operation Tailwind, CNN's report
• William Randolph Hearst, inventor of tabloid journalism
• The Great Moon Hoax of 1835
• Great Wall of China hoax
• The New York Zoo hoax of 1874
• Terry Milewski vs the Forces of Darkness. Over dramatic coverage of the APEC inquiry.

Fictitious people

• George P. Burdell, eternal student
• Allegra Coleman, nonexistent supermodel
• Sidd Finch, nonexistent baseball prodigy
• Lester Green, inventive farmer
• Bruno Hat, nonexistent painter
• Chimezie Kudu, nonexistent 7-foot-11 basketball player (ESPN.com readers' responses)
• Ern Malley, Australian poet
• Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre
• Simonya Popova, nonexistent tennis player
• Henry Root, fictitious correspondent, and Henry Raddick (possibly the same person)
• H. Rochester Sneath, nonexistent headmaster of the nonexistent Selhurst School
• Udo of Aachen, fictional monk
• Nat Tate, fake 1950's American artist
• Francis Wagstaffe, fictitious candidate for the priesthood
• Edna Welthorpe (Mrs.), nonexistent morality campaigner
• Michael Fitzpatrick, fictional Irishman