Hoax!

Two bored poets decide to prank their least favorite snobby magazine editor by submitting intentionally bad poetry to his literary journal and watching with mirth as he and his fellows delight in publishing it.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m3bytB5ULw
https://theconversation.com/the-greatest-poet-who-never-lived-ern-malley-at-80-234905
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4533011085
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-29/ern-malley-literary-hoax-angry-penguins-1944/100412208
https://www.ernmalley.net/
https://www.literaturelust.com/post/the-great-poet-ern-malley-who-never-existed
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/harris-maxwell-henley-max-29615
https://quirosonline.com/jindyworobaks-part-one/
https://time.com/archive/6821805/books-angry-penguins/
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/33/wertheim.php
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcauley-james-phillip-10896
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stewart-harold-frederick-29423
http://jacketmagazine.com/17/fact2.html

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Samuel Ireland was an avid collector, the type of man who boasted and tried to make himself look important. His son, William Henry, just wanted to make his dad proud of him.  

Sources: 
The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare, by Doug Stewart
Shakespeare and Others by S. Schoenbaum
'The Poet's Hand,' Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Henry-Ireland
https://www.npr.org/2010/06/19/127931669/william-henry-irelands-great-shakespearean-hoax

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For a few tense hours in October 2009, the entire world watched as a homemade aircraft purportedly carrying a 6-year-old boy drifted in mid-air on live television. When the balloon landed, there was no boy inside.

Sources: Wife Swap Season 5, Episode 1: “Heene/Martell”
Wife Swap Season 5, Episode 18: “Heene/Silver”

The video that I showed Dana of the YourShakeDown invention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xAX2Y8-g4g

Compilation of news coverage from the time of the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAlwBcvb9RA

Internet Historian video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWhUvm8SunY&t=1s

Richard Heene’s response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axgyj7g5XZY

The gawker essay: https://www.gawkerarchives.com/5383858/exclusive-i-helped-richard-heene-plan-a-balloon-hoax

Transcripts from 911 and CNN: https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/ng/date/2009-10-21/segment/01

The Denver magazine that cracked the case: https://www.5280.com/the-balloon-boy-hoax-solved/

More reporting:

https://people.com/human-interest/10-years-later-balloon-boy-dad-insists-saga-no-hoax/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345497/Four-years-Balloon-Boy-aged-10-finally-set-worlds-youngest-heavy-metal-band-brothers.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/us/19balloon.html

https://nypost.com/2025/02/22/us-news/infamous-balloon-boy-starts-tiny-home-building-business-in-florida/

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In 1917, two young cousins returned from the creek behind their house with thrilling news: they had photographed fairies! Their parents were skeptical, but soon the photos of the "Cottingley Fairies" were circulated, eventually finding a champion in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.   

Sources:
 ‘Fairies Photographed: An Epoch-Making Event.’ Strand Magazine, 1920
'The Coming of the Fairies' by Arthur Conan Doyle (London: Hodder & Stoughton)
‘That Astonishing Affair of the Cottingley Fairies,' by G. Crawley. British Journal of Photography
https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/power-at-play-in-paranormal-history/ 
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/father-and-son-who-believed-faeries

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Hoax! is a new show from Dana Schwartz (Noble Blood) and Lizzie Logan (Vulture, Reductress). Listen to the first episode on August 4th.

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