Hoaxes of the 1900s (1900-1910)

When Francis Douce, a wealthy English collector, died in 1834 he left an unusual stipulation in his will. He wanted all his personal papers donated to the British Museum, but they were first to be sealed in a box and only opened 66 years after his death. These instructions were dutifully carried out. When 1900 arrived, the trustees of the museum gathered to open the box. The box was unsealed. and everyone leaned over, eager to see its contents. After a moment of silence, someone snorted with disgust. Inside the box was only trash: scraps of paper and torn book covers. Douce had engineered a bizarre, posthumous prank, making the trustees wait 66 years for nothing. More…

On August 10, 1901 two English women visited the gardens of the Petit Trianon near Versailles. They later claimed that during the visit they had somehow telepathically entered into ghost-like memories left behind in that location by Queen Marie Antoinette — experiencing Versailles as it looked in 1798. Their account of what they had seen included accurate details of eighteenth-century Versailles which it would have been impossible for them to know without having conducted extensive historical research, which they insisted they had not done. However, subsequent analysis has suggested that they had, indeed, done this kind of research. More…

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in Russia in 1903, was said to be the text of a speech given by a Zionist leader outlining a secret Jewish plan to achieve world power by controlling international finance and subverting the power of the Christian church. The manuscript was used to justify hate campaigns against the Jewish people throughout the twentieth century. However, the Protocols are a complete hoax. The text was adapted from an 1864 work, Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, that didn't mention the Jewish people at all. More…

Between 1897 and 1904, Cassie Chadwick scammed millions of dollars from Ohio banks by claiming to be the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie. The banks, believing they could charge Carnegie high interest rates, happily loaned her the money without asking too many questions. Chadwick's con fell apart in 1904 when bankers finally thought to ask Carnegie if she really was his daughter. Carnegie's reply: "I have never heard of Mrs. Chadwick." She was sentenced to over ten years in prison, but died in jail after two and a half years. More…

On October 16, 1906, an out-of-work German shoemaker named Wilhelm Voigt donned a second-hand military captain's uniform he had bought in a store, walked out into the street, and assumed control of a company of soldiers marching past. He led them to the town hall of Köpenick, a small suburb of Berlin, arrested the mayor and the treasurer on charges of embezzlement, and took possession of 4,000 marks from the town treasury. He then disappeared with the money. The incident became famous as a symbol (whether deserved or not) of the blind obedience of German soldiers to authority — even fake authority. More…

The performer "Sober Sue" appeared on stage in New York, billed as the girl who never laughed. The theater offered a prize of $100 to anyone who could make her smile. People from the audience, as well as professional comedians, all accepted the challenge, but all failed. Sober Sue never so much as cracked a grin. The truth was only revealed after her run at the theater was over. It was impossible for her to laugh because her facial muscles were paralyzed. More…

The earliest reference to the Old Librarian's Almanack is found In 1907, when the novelist Edmund Lester Pearson mentioned it in his Boston Evening Transcript column. It was, he said, a small almanac from 1773 that contained the "opinion and counsel" of a curmudgeonly librarian whose ideas were strikingly non-modern. Two years later, Pearson arranged for the reprinting of the Almanack, and it was favorably reviewed by many newspapers which accepted it as an authentic 18th-Century curiosity. Very few people realized that there was no Old Librarian. Pearson himself had written the Almanack as a joke.

Six years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight in a heavier-than-air craft, aviation technology was still fairly primitive. Planes could only fly a few miles. But in 1909, Massachusetts inventor Wallace Tillinghast announced a breakthrough, claiming to have built a plane capable of flying 300 miles. His announcement generated enormous excitement. In the next few weeks thousands of people throughout New England reported seeing his plane flying in the sky at night. But as the months went by and Tillinghast failed to offer any tangible proof of his claims, the media came to realize he had no airplane. One man confessed that the lights people had seen in the sky were actually small lanterns he had tied to the legs of owls as a practical joke. More…