Hoaxes

Until recently, an elaborate secretary (i.e., a desk with drawers) built to honor a Union soldier, John Bingham, stood on display in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. A detail on the secretary’s front specified where Bingham had died—Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862—and a ...read more

In early 1826, one of Europe’s most celebrated chess masters arrived in New York for his American debut. The event was widely touted in news articles and advertisements, and some 200 people later turned out for the first exhibition matches at Broadway’s National Hotel. To their ...read more

The roots of the Piltdown Man hoax can be traced back to another international sensation: the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in 1859. According to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, fossils must exist that would clearly link apes with ...read more

1. Drake’s Plate of Brass Once considered a major archaeological discovery, Drake’s Plate was an inscribed brass marker found in 1936 in Northern California, where it was thought to have been left in 1579 by explorer Francis Drake and the crew of the Golden Hind when they landed ...read more

The New York Sun was a low-rent “penny paper” that typically dealt in sensationalist fare about murders and tenement fires, but beginning on August 25, 1835, it briefly became the world’s premier scientific authority. The transformation began with the publication of “Great ...read more

The seed for what would become one of the 19th century’s most elaborate hoaxes first planted itself in George Hull’s mind in 1867. A cigar maker by trade, Hull was also a staunch atheist and skeptic, and during a business trip to Iowa, he became locked in a theological debate ...read more