Top 10 Greatest Hoaxes..

1. Denial of the Holocaust

2. Ethnic Entitlements

3. Affirmative Action

4. Global Warming (it's called Climate Change and happens quite a bit)

5. Online Dating

6. Liberal University Professors

7. Concerned Doctors and Lawyers

8. Immigration & Border Control

9. Realistic Research Scientists

10. Altruism

And I'm not even cynical or jaded. Just thought you'd like to know...

Walter

Hoaxes That Fooled The World: Part 2

History, be it good, bad or in different and being just like hoaxes, repeat themselves. While there is always a sucker born every minute, it is because there really is nothing new under the sun, as you will soon read in 360 Degrees' second in a series. Hoaxes are not new to our generation; obviously history is replete with them.

Piltdown Man

The "Piltdown Man" is a famous hoax consisting of fragments of a skull and jawbone collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, a village near Uckfield, East Sussex, in England. The fragments were thought by many experts of the day to be the fossilized remains of a hitherto unknown form of early human. The Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man", after the collector Charles Darson) was given to the specimen.

The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man.

The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous archaeological hoax in history. It has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its full exposure as a forgery.

Georgia Bigfoot

The Georgia Bigfoot has been confirmed as a (gasp) hoax. The two Georgia men, one of them a cop, who claimed to have found the dead animal allegedly pulled one over on Tom Biscardi, a self-described Bigfoot researcher who has a reputation as a hoaxer himself. From Fox News: SearchingforBigfoot.com owner Tom Biscardi paid an "undisclosed sum" to Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the two Georgia men who say they found the body, for their frozen corpse and the privilege of trotting them out in front of TV cameras.

At the same time, Biscardi sent self-described "Sasquatch detective" Steve Kulls back to Georgia to check out the body. Lots of people make ludicrous claims like Whitton and Dyer did, and like Biscardi has done in the past more than once. The element that made this hoax attractive for Biscardi was that Whitton was a sheriff deputy. Biscardi knew the law enforcement aspect would help the story appear more believable to the media, for a little while at least. That was all Biscardi needed.

Consider a historical parallel - the "Alien Autopsy Video" Hoax.

In the 1990's an unscrupulous television producer perpetrated a television hoax with a video of a phony autopsy of a phony alien body. The video was touted by a particular television network as a potentially authentic piece of video footage. The same video producer and television network later revealed their own hoax in a subsequent program. This televised hoax got high ratings, and they all cashed in, but it wasn't illegal.

9/11

While there are still many unanswered questions about September 11th, I don't see enough credible evidence to support that the U.S. Government (or hidden entities thereof) would do such a thing. If so, this borders more on a conspiracy than an actual hoax, and if the people knew such a thing happened, chances are good that the government would be overthrown much like Franklin, Jefferson and Washington envisioned. Pearl Harbor, in fact was no different. There were many unanswered questions about December 7th, but, like 9/11, I do not believe it was an elaborate hoax to get us into war, despite the continuous efforts of the 'hawks' in the Pentagon and the military industrial complex.

Death by Suicide of Adolph Hitler

Hitler led the German nation into unbridled prosperity, but at a price: the slaughter of innocent men, women and children and bringing the world into war on a most unprecedented scale. Hitler was insecure, prone to depression and was a documented manic-depressant with paranoid episodes. He was the perfect candidate for burning out, tucking tail and committing suicide. This has been documented over and over. While it is true that those who were not convicted, died in prison or were hung by The Hague, did go to Brazil (Martin Bormann, for instance) http://spitfirelist.com/?page_id=275, it is believe that most high ranking Nazi's, including Hitler, committed suicide, and no credible evidence exists to the contrary.

Walter

Hoaxes That Fooled The World: Part 1

The world is full of hoaxes (and hucksters) and with the advent of the Internet, there have been a plethora of deceptive tales. Long before Bonsai Kittens and the tourist guy, hoaxsters have been wreaking havoc on the gullible to amuse themselves and maybe gain a little notoriety. Here are a few hoaxes that pre-date the Internet, in some cases by centuries. There are plenty more, so a follow-up via Part 2 is in order – if you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments, since you guys are filling up my (e)mail box, LOL.

The Turk

This might not seem so impressive in the day and age of computers, but at the time, a mechanical man who could beat anyone at chess was quite the novelty.

Wolfgang von Kempelen constructed just that. It baffled people from 1770 until 1854. It was a life-sized man from the waist up, dressed in robes and a turban (to emphasize the mystic quality, I suppose). It sat with a cabinet which opened to reveal all kinds of cogs and gears and complicated-looking machinery, which were designed to hide a person sitting on a sliding seat. The person could maneuver around in the cabinet to conceal himself as the presenter opened various cabinet doors to prove that nothing was inside but machinery. The person inside would then use various levers to make the Turk move, pick up chess pieces and even shake his head disapprovingly at opponents trying to cheat. The Turk defeated the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. Edgar Allan Poe wrote an essay on it, guessing how the tricks were done, but was largely incorrect.

The Turk was lost in a fire on July 5, 1854. In 1857, the son of the Turk’s final owner decided that since the Turk was “deceased”, it was time for his secrets to be revealed. He wrote a series of articles for The Chess Monthly and exposed nearly everything.

For Sale, Cheap: The Brooklyn Bridge

George Parker would sell anything that wasn’t nailed down – no, wait, he sold stuff that was nailed down, too. Cemented and bolted down, in fact. He set up an office in New York to handle real estate deals – huge deals. Among his offerings were the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, Grant’s Tomb, Madison Square Garden and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He would convince buyers that they could own a piece of history and even made some very convincing documents giving them ownership. He is the reason the phrase “If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you,” came about. Despite all of these sales – he supposedly “sold” the Brooklyn Bridge twice a week – he was only convicted of fraud three times.

The Cottingley Fairies

Tinkerbell would be pleased that these young girls believed in fairies, but perhaps would have disapproved of their methods of “proving” it. Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths were cousins. Elsie, 16, was a wonderful artist who worked in a photo lab and a greeting card factory. She borrowed her dad’s camera to take some pictures, and when they were developed, pictures of fairies happened to be in some of them. He declared them fake, but Elsie’s mother disagreed.

The pictures soon became public and were up for interpretation. One of the people fooled by the prints was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series. But not everyone was easily convinced. In order to show that the fairy sightings were real, a clairvoyant was brought to Cottingley. The idea was that if anyone else would be able to see fairies, surely a clairvoyant could. Perhaps eager to prove just how spiritual he was, the clairvoyant said that yes, he absolutely saw the fairies, although he was not able to get any more pictures.

The whole thing remained unsolved until 1981, when the cousins were interviewed for a magazine called The Unexplained. They admitted they had made cut-out fairies and held them up with hatpins, and said they realized the joke had gone too far when Arthur Conan Doyle was duped. They were embarrassed to come forth after that and decided to keep up the ruse. However, Frances said that although the first four pictures were fakes, the fifth one (the one on the left, above) was real and that she and her cousin actually did see fairies.

The Lying Stones

A Professor at the University of Wurzburg in Germany was fooled by his colleagues in the 18th century. They carved limestone into animal shapes and carved the name of God on them in various characters and hid them on a nearby mountain where Professor Beringer liked to hunt for fossils. Beringer became convinced that the carvings were actually created by God himself. Even when people pointed out that the limestone showed chisel marks, he held to his theory and even published a book on the stones.

His colleagues eventually came clean, but he refused to believe them and called them agnostic. He was finally convinced when the two men testified in court that they had just wanted to discredit Beringer because he was so conceited. Beringer pretty much ruined himself financially trying to buy up all of the copies of his ridiculous book. The stones became known as Lügensteine, the lying stones.

Princess Caraboo

In 1817, Princess Caraboo popped up in Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, England. She was speaking a strange language and was wearing clothes that weren’t common to the area, so people were quite intrigued by her. No one could understand what she was saying, but when she was offered a room at the local inn, she ate a pineapple for dinner and slept on the floor instead of in the bed.

Finally, a man who spoke Portugeuse claimed to understand her and translated for her. She was a Princess from the island of Javasu who was kidnapped by pirates. She escaped by jumping overboard and swimming to shore, which was how she had ended up in Almondsbury.

A woman in Bristol read about her in a newspaper and recognized her as a girl who had stayed at her lodging house not too long before. She entertained the woman’s daughters by speaking in her own made up language, just for fun. Another man said that he met “Princess Caraboo” a couple of days before she turned up in Almondsbury, but at that time she spoke English and drank rum and ate steak (as “Princess Caraboo”, she was strictly vegetarian).

When confronted with these stories, the Princess admitted that she was Mary Baker and came from Witheridge, Devon.

Betcha can't wait for Part 2....

Walter