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
On September 17, 1859, a most unusual decree appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin newspaper. In grandiloquent fashion, the message stated, “At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens…I, Joshua Norton…declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these ...read more
As the clock struck 8 p.m. in New York City on the night of October 30, 1938, Orson Welles stood on a podium inside a Madison Avenue radio studio. The baby-faced, 23-year-old theatrical star, who had graced the cover of Time magazine months earlier, prepared to direct 10 actors ...read more
1. The Hitler “diaries” that embarrassed a German newspaper. On May 6, 1983, West Germany’s Federal Archives released the results of a forensic investigation into what turned out to be one of the greatest hoaxes of the 20th century–the Hitler diaries. Just weeks earlier, the ...read more
1856: The Tower of London hosts a lion washing extravaganza In the days leading up to April 1, 1856, London residents received an official-looking invitation printed on Tower of London stationery and bearing a crimson wax seal. Signed “Herbert de Grassen,” supposedly a “senior ...read more
By the time of Dawson and Woodward’s historic announcement, the search for a missing link to prove Darwin’s still-controversial theory had grown intense. Significant evidence of early humans in the British Isles had not yet been found, and the success of the Sussex dig was a ...read more
After three years of digging in the Piltdown gravel pit in Sussex, England, amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson announces the discovery of two skulls that appear to belong to a primitive hominid and ancestor of man, along with a canine tooth, a tool carved from an elephant’s ...read more
On August 25, 1835, the first in a series of six articles announcing the supposed discovery of life on the moon appears in the New York Sun newspaper. Known collectively as “The Great Moon Hoax,” the articles were supposedly reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The ...read more
On April 1, 1700, English pranksters begin popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools’ Day by playing practical jokes on each other. Although the day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a ...read more
