Believable hoaxes

[Guv]

Over 100 years ago, P. T. Barnum buried a huge stone statue in a pasture in Wales. After a year or two, a farmer (paid by Barnum claimed to have discovered it while plowing. It was called the Cardiff Giant and was accepted by most people as a petrified Stone Age creature for a year or two. Some scientists finally got a chance to analyse it and exposed the hoax. As for as I know, the affair was passed off as a good joke, and nobody complained about Barnum.

Many years ago an article about polar bear hair was published in (I think) Discover Magazine, which is generally quite reputable, but perhaps not as reliable as Scientific American and various scientific journals. The article claimed that polar bear hair was actually some crystalline substance rather than hair and that it was 98% efficient in turning sunlight into energy, which was more efficient than any man made device of the era.

My excellent hindsight now tells me that I should have been suspicious, but I believed that hoax for at least 5 years. Then I read somewhere that it was a recurring scientific hoax predating the Discover article by many years.

Another cute hoax concerned an organization called something like the League for Animal Decency. About 40 years ago some practical joker with some money to spare rented a billboard. The billboard ranted about naked animals. It advocated legislation requiring that all animals, particularly male animals, be fitted with pants or diapers.

It was claimed that naked horses, dogs, cats, zoo animals, et cetera were disturbing to the more sensitive people, likely to encourage depravity in some people, and improper for children to see. After renting the billboard, this delightful character phoned a few newspapers with a story about somebody having bequeathed several million dollars to the League for Animal Decency. Due to the billboard, this crank call was accepted as valid news and published in several newspapers.

Aside from the sort of nonsense that appears in tabloids, have any of you heard of other hoaxes or myths passed off as valid news items?

[Gary.Lowe]

yeah

Some guy from hastings Endgland called Ian Baker being a programmer.

Ha Haa..

Had us all believing him from months

[parksie]

Was it the same guy that suggested Ian was straight?