Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index A hoax is an attempt to trick one or more people to believe that something false is real. Unlike a fraud or con, which are made for illicit financial or material gain, or a pious fraud, which is perpetrated for religious reasons, a hoax is often perpetrated as a practical joke with a humorous intent, to cause embarrassment, for personal aggrandizement or to serve political purposes. Still, many confidence tricks and the like have also been labeled as hoaxes. Many hoaxes are also motivated by a desire to satirize or educate by exposing the credulity of the public or the absurdity of the target: literary and artistic hoaxes are often of this sort, although political hoaxes are sometimes motivated in part or whole by the desire to ridicule or expose politicians or political institutions. The status of a given factoid as reliable or hoax is often the subject of considerable controversy. Table of contents 1 Historically Important Hoaxes 1.1 Proven Hoaxes 1.2 Probable Hoaxes 1.3 Possible Hoaxes 1.4 Practical Joke Hoaxes 1.5 Known pranksters 1.6 Hoaxes of Exposure 1.7 Too creative journalists 1.8 Fictitious people 2 External links Historically Important Hoaxes Orson Welles' Mercury Theater radio broadcast on October 31, 1938, entitled "The War of the Worlds" has been called the "single greatest media hoax of all time." The broadcast was heard on CBS radio stations throughout the United States. Despite repeated announcements within the program that it was a work of fiction, many listeners believed that the world was being attacked by invaders from the planet Mars. Bathtub Hoax, perpetrated by American journalist and satirist Mencken in the 1920's, was credited even after it was exposed by the author. Proven Hoaxes The Patterson-Gimlin film of Bigfoot (admitted) Bill Stump's stone Johann Beringer's lying stones The Cardiff Giant The Cottingley Fairies Crop circles The Donation of Constantine Emulex hoax Feejee Mermaid Furry trout The Hitler Diaries Clifford Irving's biography of Howard Hughes Jackalope Palisade, Nevada "Piltdown Man" The Protocols of the Elders of Zion George Psalmanazar and his "Formosa" The Report From Iron Mountain Saving off of Manhattan Island Mary Toft, rabbit mother the Turk, a chess-playing automaton Probable Hoaxes Loch Ness Monster Roswell alien autopsy film Zinoviev Letter Possible Hoaxes The Vinland map Tasaday tribe in Philippines (controversial) Philippines historical figure Kanatiaw Practical Joke Hoaxes The Balloon-Hoax The Dreadnought Hoax Forgotten Silver Known pranksters Horace de Vere Cole, British aristocrat Benjamin Franklin Brian G. Hughes, US banker Harry Reichenbach, Hollywood publicist Joey Skaggs, US media prankster Edward Askew Sothern, British actor Hugh Troy, US painter Hoaxes of Exposure "Hoaxes of exposure" can be thought of as semi-comical, private sting operations. Their usual purpose is to expose people acting foolishly or credulously, to encourage them to fall for something that the hoaxer hopes to reveal as patent nonsense. See also culture jamming. Disumbrationism The Sokal Affair The Spectra hoax The Taxil hoax Media pranks of Joey Skaggs Too creative journalists Journalist may be over-eager to "get a story", both to increase his own prestige or write something that would increase the sales of the publication. Janet Cooke, who wrote about a eight-year-old addict Jimmy Stephen Glass Joseph Mulholland William Randolph Hearst, inventor of tabloid journalism The Sun hoax of 1835 The New York Zoo hoax of 1874 Fictitious people Sidd Finch, nonexistent baseball prodigy Allegra Coleman, nonexistent supermodel Lester Green, inventive farmer George P. Burdell Henry Root Udo of Aachen See also: famous April Fool's Day jokes, forgery, Impostors, Internet humour External links Museum of Hoaxes idiosyntactix's culture jamming page This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.