List of hoaxes#Journalistic hoaxes

{{Short description|List of hoaxes throughout history}}

{{for|a list of hoax articles on Wikipedia|Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia|selfref=yes}}

The following is a list of hoaxes:

Exposure hoaxes

{{See also|Culture jamming}}

These types of hoaxes are semi-comical or private "sting operations" intended to expose people. They usually encourage people to act foolishly or credulously by falling for patent nonsense that the hoaxer deliberately presents as reality.

Journalistic hoaxes

Deliberate hoaxes or journalistic scandals that have drawn widespread attention include:

Other 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–C=

= D–F =

=G–I=

= J–M =

  • The jackalope, a legendary animal described as a jackrabbit with antlers.
  • The Jacko hoax, a supposed gorilla or sasquatch caught near Yale, British Columbia, in 1884.
  • The Trevor Jacob plane crash, which Jacob deliberately staged in 2021 for YouTube views, claiming it was an accident caused by engine failure.
  • Kryakutnoy, the purported Russian inventor of the hot air balloon.
  • The Lady Hope Story, a claim of Charles Darwin's deathbed conversion to evangelical Christianity.
  • 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.
  • The Ligma-Johnson hoax, hatched by two amateur actors pretending to be recently fired Twitter employees.
  • Lucy Lightfoot, a supposed legend from the Isle of Wight about a girl who disappeared in 1831; she was later admitted to have been made up in the 1960s by the vicar of St Olave's Church, Gatcombe.
  • Llandegley International Airport, a non-existent airport indicated by a real roadside sign in Wales since 2002.
  • Ern Malley, a fictitious poet.
  • The Mars hoax (also called the Two Moons hoax), a yearly hoax started in 2003 that falsely claims that at a certain date, Mars will appear as large as a full moon.{{cite web |last=Mehta |first=Ankita |date=2014-08-28 |title='Two Moons' Hoax: Absence of Twin Moon on 27 August Disappoints Many |url=http://www.ibtimes.co.in/two-moons-hoax-absence-twin-moon-27-august-disappoints-many-607879 |access-date=2014-08-31 |website=International Business Times}}
  • The Masked Marauders, a non-existent album "reviewed" as a prank by Rolling Stone magazine. The album was alleged to feature a jam session between Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney. Shortly thereafter, Rolling Stone hired several celebrity impersonators and session musicians to record the album.
  • Eva and Franco Mattes have perpetrated a number of hoaxes, including the fake Vatican web site "vaticano.org" and the fictitious artist Darko Maver.
  • The Michael Guglielmucci cancer scandal, in which a pastor claimed to have terminal cancer.
  • 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.{{cite book |last=Heyd |first=Theresa |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jUTkPqhvd-wC |title=Email Hoaxes: Form, Function, Genre Ecology |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company |year=2008 |isbn=978-90-272-5418-4 |location=Amsterdam |page=4 |access-date=October 30, 2010}} 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.
  • The missing day hoax, a piece of fundamentalist evangelical propaganda claiming that the planets in the Solar System were found to be halted from orbiting the Sun for 24 hours in the ancient past, supposedly reflecting the time when God extended a day for Joshua.{{Cite book |last=Stein |first=Gordon |url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofho0000stei |title=Encyclopedia of hoaxes |date=1993 |publisher=Detroit : Gale Research |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-8103-8414-9 |pages=279}}
  • The Momo Challenge, a fake social media challenge supposedly encouraging children to injure and kill themselves.
  • The Monster of Lake Fagua, an 18th-century hoax about a dragon-like monster supposedly found in Spanish Peru.
  • The Robert Mueller sexual assault hoax, perpetrated by far-right conspiracy theorists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl.
  • The Maggie Murphy hoax, a hoax that claimed that a farmer grew an oversized potato.

=N–P=

= Q–S =

  • Q33 NY, an Internet hoax based on the 9/11 attacks.
  • The quiz show scandals of the 1950s, wherein game shows were presented as legitimate contests despite being fixed or completely scripted.
  • A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century, an antisemitic fake document.
  • Tamara Rand's prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, which was actually made after the fact {{harvcol|Randi|1982|p=329}}.
  • Redcore, a Chinese browser purported to be developed in-house, but was revealed to be based on Chromium.{{cite web |author=Sarah Dai |date=2018-08-17 |title=Redcore CEO admits '100pc China-developed browser' is built on Google's Chrome, says writing code from scratch would 'take many years' |url=https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2160072/redcore-ceo-admits-100pc-china-developed-browser-built-googles-chrome-says |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180817065421/https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2160072/redcore-ceo-admits-100pc-china-developed-browser-built-googles-chrome-says |archive-date=2018-08-17 |access-date=2018-08-17 |website=South China Morning Post |language=en}}
  • "Rejecting Jane", an article that chronicles publishing houses' rejection 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 United States government had concluded that peace was not in the economy's best interest.
  • The Rosenhan experiment, involving the admission of healthy "pseudopatients" to twelve psychiatric hospitals.
  • Rosie Ruiz, who cheated in the 1980 Boston Marathon.
  • Sally the Dunstable Witch, a fictional spirit devised by a local headmaster to shame the vicar into tidying up the churchyard.
  • 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 a racist policy introduced by McDonald's.{{cite news |date=14 June 2011 |title=Maccas in damage control over Seriously McDonald's picture hoax |publisher=News.com.au |url=http://www.news.com.au/technology/maccas-in-damage-control-over-seriously-mcdonalds-picture-hoax/story-e6frfro0-1226074651664 |access-date=18 June 2011}}
  • Michael Shrimpton, who perpetrated a hoax that German intelligence 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, a method of data compression claimed by inventor Jan Sloot to be capable of compressing digital video into far less memory than is mathematically possible using known technology.
  • The Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax, a supposed anti-gay, anti-black attack on the Empire actor in Chicago.
  • The Songs of Bilitis, supposed ancient Greek poems "discovered" by Pierre Louÿs.
  • The Southern Television broadcast interruption, a hoax message inserted into an IBA broadcast in the United Kingdom on 26 November 1977.
  • Space Cadets, a 2005 TV programme by Channel 4 in which participants were deceived into believing they were on a five-day trip in low Earth orbit.{{Cite web |date=2021-03-17 |title=Ipswich, we have a problem: Space Cadets, the reality show that never left the ground |url=http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/17/ipswich-we-have-a-problem-space-cadets-the-reality-show-that-never-left-the-ground |access-date=2023-01-03 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}
  • Spectra, a 1916 publication heralding a hoax poetry movement.
  • The Springfield pet-eating hoax, an online, far-right anti-immigration hoax from Springfield, Ohio that claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating pets, specifically cats and dogs.
  • Stardrive 2000, a 1986 radio advertising hoax in Portland, Oregon to promote the effectiveness of radio advertising by advertising a fictional automobile.
  • The "R. E. Straith" letter sent to George Adamski by Gray Barker and James W. Moseley {{harvcol|Moseley|Pflock|2002|pp=124–27,331–32}}.
  • James Vicary's "subliminal" advertising {{harvcol|Boese|2002|pp=127–8}}.
  • The "surgeon's photograph" of the Loch Ness Monster.
  • The Sweden sex competition hoax, which stated that Sweden had officially declared sex a sport and was hosting Europe's first-ever sex competition.

=T–Z=

  • 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.{{cite news |last1=Rogers |first1=A. Glenn |date=1953 |title=The Taughannock Giant |publisher=Life in the Finger Lakes |issue=Fall 2003 |url=https://www.lifeinthefingerlakes.com/the-taughannock-giant/ |access-date=28 June 2019}}{{cite news |last1=Githler |first1=Charley |date=26 December 2017 |title=A Look Back At: Home-Grown Hoax: The Taughannock Giant |publisher=Tompkins Weekly |url=http://tompkinsweekly.com/stories/a-look-back-at-home-grown-hoax-the-taughannock-giant,487 |access-date=28 June 2019}}
  • The Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax, in which the football player was catfished.
  • Thatchergate, a fake conversation with which the punk band Crass fooled the governments of the US and UK.
  • The slowing of satellites above Tirunallar Saniswaran Temple due to mysterious UV rays from Saturn, claimed to be "a miracle" by NASA.{{cite web |title=Saturn and Lord Shaneeshwara – Part One | Mysteries Explored |url=https://mysteriesexplored.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/saturn-and-lord-shaneeshwara-part-one/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151223165416/https://mysteriesexplored.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/saturn-and-lord-shaneeshwara-part-one/ |archive-date=2015-12-23 |access-date=2015-12-23}}
  • Mary Toft, an English woman who convinced doctors that she gave birth to rabbits.
  • Toothing, an invented fad about people using Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices to arrange sexual encounters.
  • The tourist guy, a 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 fake beheading video.
  • The Villejuif leaflet, a pamphlet distributed in Europe with claims of various food additives having carcinogenic effects.
  • David Weiss, a fictitious person that was used by the Jerusalem Post as a source and was later revealed to be a Norwegian man.
  • Laurel Rose Willson's claims to be a survivor of Satanic ritual abuse (as Lauren Stratford), and of the Holocaust (as Laura Grabowski).
  • The Wolpertinger, a Bavarian cousin of the jackalope.
  • The White House debate competition hoax, in which a virtual debate competition was supposedly dominated by a Bangladeshi student.
  • Zepotha, a non-existent movie created to promote the new album of a TikToker named Emily Jeffri
  • Zzxjoanw, a fictitious word that fooled logologists for 70 years.

=0–9=

See also

References

{{Reflist|2}}

Further reading

  • {{citation

| last=Boese|first=Alex

| title = The Museum of Hoaxes: A Collection of Pranks, Stunts, Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle Ages to the New Millennium

| publisher = Dutton/Penguin Books

| year = 2002

| isbn = 0-525-94678-0

| oclc = 50115701

}}

  • Boese, Alex, Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and other B.S., Harvest Books 2006, {{ISBN|0-15-603083-7}}.
  • {{Citation

| last = Hamel |first = Denis

|date=November 2007

| title = The End of the Einstein-Astrology-Supporter Hoax

| journal = Skeptical Inquirer

| volume = 31

| issue = 6

| pages = 39–43

}}

  • {{citation

| last = Hines

| first = Terence

| author-link = Terence Hines

| title = Pseudoscience and the Paranormal: A Critical Examination of the Evidence

| publisher = Prometheus Books

| year = 1988

| isbn = 0-87975-419-2

| oclc = 17462273

| url = https://archive.org/details/pseudosciencepar00hine

}}

  • {{citation

|last1=Moseley |first1=James W. |author-link = James W. Moseley

|last2=Pflock|first2 = Karl T.

|year= 2002

|title=Shockingly Close to the Truth: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist

|publisher= Prometheus Books

|isbn= 1-57392-991-3}}

| last = Randi | first = James| author-link = James Randi

| year = 1982

| title = Flim-Flam!

| publisher = Prometheus Books

| isbn=0-87975-198-3

| oclc = 9066769

}}