Famous hoaxes

Hoax

• noun: a deliberate deception, for humor or mal (bad) intent
• verb: to deceive deliberately

This page is a list of famous hoaxes See also

• • http://hoaxes.org

Academic hoaxes

Sokal Affair

• a hoax by Professor of Physics Alan Sokal
• Sokal published a paper purporting to take seriously the idea that the laws of physics are social constructs
  • he objective was to satirize post-modernist theories in the social sciences
• link to his paper: Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity (nyu.edu)
• see:
  • https://www.school4schools.com/wiki/index.php?title=Literary_Analysis_and_Criticism#Sokal_affair
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

April Fools hoaxes and pranks

• for list of pranks, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_April_Fools%27_Day_jokes
• see Geographic hoaxes below for fake volcano April Fools pranks

Sid Finch Sports Illustrated hoax

• in its April 1, 1985 issue, Sports Illustrated rana story about a yoga-practicing baseball pitcher who could throw the ball 168 mph
• named Hayden Siddhartha "Sidd" Finch
  • he was supposedly raised in an English orphanage and had gone to Tibet to study under a Buddhist monk
  • the story claimed that Finch chose not to play baseball and instead decided to "play the French horn or golf or something"
• Finch was pictured throwing the ball in bare feet
  • the NY Mets participated in the hoax with players and coaches appearing with Finch
• see The Curious Case of Sidd Finch (bostonbaseball.com)

Spaghetti trees hoax

Photograph of a woman harvesting spaghetti (California)

• in 1957, a British BBV TV program ran a fake report on "spaghetti trees" in Switzerland
• the report showed Swiss workers harvesting spaghetti from trees
• others have copied the hoax, including in California

Taco Liberty Bell hoax

• on April 1, 1996, Taco Bell published ads in 7 newspapers claiming the company had purchased the Liberty Bell
  • the purpose was to "reduce the country's debt"
  • it would, however, be renamed the "Taco Liberty Bell".

Geographic hoaxes

April's Fool volcano prank

• on April 1, 1974, pranksters climbed atop the dormant 3002 ft high volcano, Mt. Edgecumbe, near Sitka, Alaska
• a helicopter had dropped off old tires, kerosene, smoke bombs and rags, which the pranksters lit and threw into the crater
• a Coast Guard helicopter was dispatched to observe the eruption and instead saw a man standing by spray-painted show reading, "APRIL FOOL."
• see
  • https://school4schools.com/wiki/index.php?title=Geography_fun_facts_%26_oddities#Volcanos
  • https://www.iflscience.com/environment/the-greatest-april-fools-day-prank-of-all-time-took-four-years-to-plan-and-involved-a-volcano/ Greatest April Fools Day Prank of All Time (iflscience.com)]
  • http://hoaxes.org/af_database/permalink/the_eruption_of_mount_edgecumbe/

Great Blue Hill eruption prank

• File:Great Blue Hill from Trillium.jpeg

  Great Blue Hill in Massachusetts. On April 1, 1980 a local news station reported it was erupting.

  at 6:00 pm on April 1, 1980, a Milton, MA news station aired a fake news bulletin that announced that a nearby, small mountain was erupting
  • the report was one week after the tremendous eruption of Mt. St. Helens
  • the report showed edited statements of concern by Massachusetts Governor and President Carter
  • panicked residents called the police and the state Civil Defense office
  • some were reported to have fled the area
• at 11:00 the state apologized for the hoax
• the producer of the 6:00 news segment was fired the next day
  • in addition "failure to exercise good news judgment," the producer had also violated FCC rules regarding use of "stock footage" (old news footage) without identifying it as such
    

Religious hoaxes

The Da Vinci Code (Christianity)

• while a work of fiction, Dan Brown's series, "The Da Vinci Code" is based on an unsupported claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married
• much of the plot line is derived from that claim, including a blood line of Jesus and the Holy Grail (which is supposed to provide eternal youth)

Letter of Benan (Christianity)

• in 1910, Ernst Edler von der Planitz claimed he had discovered a 5th century Coptic (ancient Egyptian derivative language) text
  • he claimed it was a translation from a Greek text in 83 AD
  • the text was about the encounters of an Egyptian physician with Jesus and the apostles

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Judaism)

• published in 1903 in Russia, which was strongly anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) at the time

• a literary forgery, the papers outlined Jewish plans for global domination

Scientology (cult)

• technically not a hoax, as its inventor did not deliberately aim to deceive or he never admitted it
• however, its practices have been questioned by governments, medical experts, and theologians
  • especially the claim of secret Scientology texts that were created 70 million years ago by an outer space alien ruler
• in 1950 author L. Ron Hubbard published, "Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science" in a science fiction magazine
  • the book mentioned the term, "Scientology"
  • Hubbard, who had undergone psychiatric treatment, hated psychology and offered a new counseling treatment, "Dianetics"
  • it was intended to be a form of psychotherapy, but he morphed into a "religious philosophy" in 1952
  • he said he created it as "scientific rather than religious" thought
  • however, after being banned from running a medical clinic, he established it as a religious organization, instead
• over 25,000 people follow Scientology today

The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ

• in 1894, a Russian journalist published a book that claimed historical evidence that Jesus had visited India and studied under Hindu & Buddhist priests