Did You Fall For Any of These Famous Hoaxes?

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There is some suggestive content in this link, so be forewarned.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/did-you-fall-for-these-famous-hoaxes/ss-AALHBEZ?ocid=msedgntp

Most I hadnt heard of. Some I knew about.

The one about the study that concluded that you cant make whoopie in outerspace - what do I know?- I had no reason to doubt it. Didnt know til now that it was a hoax.

But I am proud to say that I NEVER fell for the "Balloon Boy".

I had recently gotten over an aspie "special interest" in Zeppelins, and dirigibles in history when that drama burst into the media. Since I had become an instant expert in the ratio of the size of historic airships to the size of their payloads I knew that even a small 60 pound boy couldnt have been carried away by that party balloon in the picture you would see in all of the papers, and on TV. A helium balloon can lift about 60 pounds per 1000 cubic feet, hydrogen of that quantity can lift 80. But if you dont want a Hindenburg type fire from hydrogen you play it safe and use helium. Which means it would take a 1000 cubic feet to lift a grade school boy into the air. A thousand cubic feet is about three times the size of a typical car , or twice the size of your bathroom. Much bigger than even a big party balloon of the type that supposedly whisked the boy away.

^^
My family and I also knew that the "Balloon Boy" was a hoax
from when it burst into the media.

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We also find it very interesting that many people still believe that the events depicted in
The Blair Witch Project actually happened and that the 1968 Bigfoot movie
(that was filmed in Oregon) is of a real Bigfoot.

We both believe otherwise to this day.

"Paul is Dead" and the giant cat Photoshop were the only ones I knew about, and I didn't fall for either one.
Paul is Dead is kind of funny to talk about sometimes, though.

That website was practically unusable in my browser of choice, Chrome. I didn't get past item 1.

Surprisingly, the Mary Toff hoax did not make in into my copy of the Washington Post in 1726. Had it, I probably would have fallen for it because it is just so darn cute...

cut up body parts of animals, stuffed into Mary's hoohah, CUTE?

Yeah. Its as gross as it was inane and to my modern mind -implausible.

They didnt mention some other notorious hoaxes. Like the Cardiff Giant (1850s America), and the Piltdown Man (early 20the century).

Even in my 1960s childhood there were books in my parents' shelf, and in the public library, that still showed "the Piltdown Man" as a stage in human evolution. The circa 1920 fossil skull was "found" in England, and only decades later was shown to be a fabricated fake fossil made of a mix of human and of orangutan skull parts.

There was an eighties punk era rock band called "the Piltdown Men" who kept the fossil alive,in an purposely ironic way, in pop culture for awhile.

Never even heard of any of them. But maybe I’m too young, and I usually am so far “out of the loop” that I don’t even know a loop exists.

The biggest and most successful hoaxes of all time didn't even make the list.

Like many who read this, my family and I agree that people who create hoaxes will always need something better to do regardless of how popular such hoaxes will become over the course of time.

My mom remembers when "The Autobiography of Howard Hughes" (quotations intentional) was published.

She knew that it wasn't a real account and when Hughes told the media that he never met Clifford Irving, the man who "wrote" the book, she knew it because over the course of time, Hughes became more of a recluse.

Which is?

Probably political hoaxes he deems left wing

I figured the answer would be the 2020 election results.

None of them because I never heard of those hoaxes.

Hoax #1 I distinctively remember because of so many parodies they were