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