Hoax!

Arrested in 1945 for selling a Vermeer masterpiece to high-ranking Nazi Herman Goring, dutch painter Han van Meegeren had an innovative and shocking defense: he was guilty not of collaboration but of art forgery, faking half a dozen "Vermeers" over the previous decade. But under the reign of the Third Reich, where do you draw the line between opportunism and profiteering?

SOURCES
https://museumhack.com/anniversary-forgery-meegeren/
https://www.essentialvermeer.com/misc/van_meegeren.html
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/27/dutch-master
https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2023/03/16/han-van-meegeren-forgery-nazi-vermeer/
https://www.salon.com/2016/11/27/faking-it-does-the-forged-vermeer-that-fooled-goering-belong-in-a-museum/
The Man Who Made Vermeers by Jonathan Lopez
How Pleasure Works by Paul Bloom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnnkuOz08GQ
https://www.npr.org/2008/07/12/92483237/how-mediocre-dutch-artist-cast-the-forgers-spell
https://www.thecollector.com/han-van-meegeren/
Van Meegeren: The Forger Who Fooled The Nazis (BBC)

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In December 1912, Arthur Smith Woodward, a paleontologist at the British Museum, presented something extraordinary to the Geographical Society: a "missing link" fossil, a species he named "Dawson's Dawn-man" after the Sussex solicitor who found the original fossil. It was the find of a lifetime, and a much-needed bit of national pride for the English. The only problem? It wasn't real.

SOURCES:
The Piltdown Man Hoax: Case Closed by Miles Russell 
Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson by Miles Russell (Tempus, Stroud, 2003)
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-problem-of-piltdown-man/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/23/piltdown-man-remains-exposed-as-fake-1953
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/08/folklore-piltdown-man-hoax/
'The Perpetrator at Piltdown' by J Winslow and A Meyer, Science (September, 1983)
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2016/august/piltdown-man-charles-dawson-likely-fraudster.html
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/piltdown-man-paleoanthropologys-april-fools-176401927/

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Midcentury New Yorkers who couldn't sleep found a friend in Jean Shepherd, the iconoclastic radio personality whose middle of the night monologues made him a cult comedy figure and leader of the underground Night People movement. When he proposed to prank the book world by demanding a novel that didn't exist, the title became so popular his followers more or less willed it into being.

SOURCES
https://web.archive.org/web/20020427051336/https:/flicklives.com/Articles/Wall_Street_Journel/8-1-56/8-1-56.jpg
https://www.theawl.com/2013/02/the-man-behind-the-brilliant-media-hoax-of-i-libertine/
Excelsior, You Fathead! By Eugene B Bergmann
I, Libertine by Theodore Sturgeon
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/25/handbook-for-mortals-by-lani-sarem-pulled-from-nyt-bestsellers-list
https://www.pajiba.com/book_reviews/did-this-book-buy-its-way-onto-the-new-york-times-bestseller-list.php
https://www.vulture.com/2017/09/handbook-for-mortals-lani-sarem-23-hour-new-york-times-bestseller.html
https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/lani-sarem-blues-traveler-manager-novelist-bestseller-list-7957648/

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During the 18th century, as the industrial revolution picks up.... steam, people are dazzled by expertly constructed mechanical marvels: automatons. But Wolfgang von Kempelen brings something to the royal court in Vienna that people have never seen before: an automaton capable of playing chess.

SOURCES:
The Mechanical Turk by Tom Standage
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/debunking-mechanical-turk-helped-set-edgar-allan-poe-path-mystery-writing-180964059/
Maelzel’s Chess Player by Edgar Allan Poe 
Last of a Veteran Chess Player by Silas Weir Mitchell

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When YouTube was barely a year old, the the site's users were gripped by the slowly unfolding tale of Bree, the sheltered, beautiful 16 year old girl whose parents  kept her locked in her bedroom with no one but the internet and her only friend, Daniel, for company. As Bree's situation grew more dire, she became one of the first online obsessions, paving the way for hundreds of hoaxes to come.

SOURCES
https://www.youtube.com/@lonelygirl15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-m-JXcppo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5S2Kdb8Io4&t=3s
https://medium.com/@vocativ/the-strange-saga-of-lonelygirl15-an-oral-history-dd94687e9976
https://www.businessinsider.com/where-are-they-now-creators-of-lonelygirl15-turned-web-series-into-a-multi-million-dollar-company-2010-7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnjZzDeepE8
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/16/lonelygirl15-bree-video-blog-youtube
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-lonelygirl15-story.html
https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/how-the-secret-identity-of-lonelygirl15-was-found/
https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/comments/154b603/how_did_people_of_the_2000s_fall_for_lonelygirl15/

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It's the Civil War, and the nation is in deep mourning. William Mumler of Boston has something to help: "spirit photographs" of you and a deceased loved one. Is it a scam, or is technology now capable of traversing the thin line between life and death? Eventually, it will be up to the court to decide. 

Sources:
Special thanks to u/Naturalog on Reddit and Stephen Berkman
'The Apparitionists' by Peter Manseau
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/meet-mr-mumler-man-who-captured-lincolns-ghost-camera-180965090/ 
https://www.vox.com/22918581/mumler-victorian-spirit-ghost-photography
https://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=sat2698811#page/33/mode/1up 
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/when-cameras-took-pictures-of-ghosts/281010/ 

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At the height of the Cold War, a "leaked Top Secret Memo" from inside the government proposed a controversial and radical idea: the worst thing that could happen to humanity was worldwide ... peace.

Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/30/us/l-c-lewin-writer-of-satire-of-government-plot-dies-at-82.html
Ghost of Iron Mountain by Phil Tinline
JFK (1991, O. Stone)
https://hvmag.com/life-style/a-history-of-iron-mountain-an-information-storage-facility-in-germantown-ny/
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-many-lives-of-iron-mountain
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/16/iron-mountain-hoax-anti-vietnam-war-satire-conspiracy-theories

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The court anatomist returned the King George I with astonishing news: a woman named Mary Toft has been giving birth.... to rabbits. 

Sources: 
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/07/05/an-extraordinary-delivery-of-rabbits/
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mary-toft-gave-birth-to-rabbits
https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/exhibns/month/aug2009.html
https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/80/1/33/665070?login=false
https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/238/1/43/4822513?redirectedFrom=fulltext
https://www.godalmingmuseum.co.uk/articles/mary-tofts

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A painting purportedly by Leonardo Da Vinci himself is discovered at a little-known auction house in New Orleans in 2005; a decade later, it fetches the highest price for a work of art ever sold at auction.

Sources:
The Lost Leonardo
Savior For Sale
https://therenaissanceworkshop.com/leonardo-da-vinci/
https://www.mos.org/leonardo/biography.html
https://www.rct.uk/collection/912525/the-drapery-of-a-chest-and-sleeve
https://www.rct.uk/collection/912524/the-drapery-of-a-sleeve
https://web.archive.org/web/20200524085434/https://www.history.com/news/how-a-priceless-da-vinci-masterwork-disappeared-from-view-for-centuries
https://salvatormundirevisited.com/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/sep/09/lost-leonardo-da-vinci-film-solved-mystery-worlds-most-expensive-painting-salvator-mundi
https://apnews.com/general-news-91be03753b7d4dbbacfc4bb0d1dcca3d
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/mideast/how-saudi-royal-crushed-his-rivals-shakedown-ritz-carlton-n930396
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/arts/design/salvator-mundi-louvre-abu-dhabi.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/world/middleeast/saudi-crown-prince-salvator-mundi.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGsUFvwgvCo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P64rDJkX4HY
https://artwatch.org.uk/two-developments-in-the-no-show-louvre-abu-dhabi-leonardo-salvator-mundi-saga/
https://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/menteleonardo/emdl.asp

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People traveling through the west by train in the 1800s expected shootouts and danger and cowboys. The citizens of Palisade gave it to them. 

Sources:
"Westward Hoax: The Secret History of Palisade, Nevada," Very Special Episodes.
Fakes, Frauds & Other Malarkey by Kathryn Lindskoog.
"Mark Twain's Nevada Newspaper Hoaxes" Andrew R. Giarrelli.
Mark Twain's writing for the Territorial Enterprise (1851-1865)

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