Hoaxes have been a part of history for centuries, fooling people and causing chaos and confusion. In a recent video by WatchMojo titled “20 Infamous Hoaxes That Shook the World”, the countdown of some of the most dastardly lies and deliberate distortions in history is explored.
From Napoleon’s fake death in 1814 to the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, the video covers a range of hoaxes that have fooled people throughout history. The infamous Cardiff Giant, the Roswell Autopsy Footage, Hitler’s Diaries, and many more are also featured in the video.
One particularly interesting hoax mentioned is the Amityville Horror, where a family claimed to be terrorized by supernatural forces in their new house. However, it was later revealed that the entire story was fabricated for financial gain.
The video also delves into the well-known case of Balloon Boy, where a couple claimed their son had floated away in a weather balloon, sparking a massive search operation. It was later discovered that the whole incident was a hoax staged for media attention.
With each story, the video highlights how easily people can be deceived and manipulated by false information. Hoaxes have the power to shape narratives, deceive the public, and even cause widespread panic.
So, have you ever fallen for a hoax that was later proven to be false? Let us know in the comments and be sure to watch the video to learn more about these infamous hoaxes that shook the world.
Watch the video by WatchMojo.com
The ordeal began when Richard Heeney the boy’s dad was reportedly testing his weather balloon in the backyard Falcon’s brother told officials he saw the boy get inside and float away welcome to watch Mojo and today we’re counting down our picks for the most dastardly lies and deliberate distortions that fooled
People throughout history this was a very elaborate very sophisticated hoax perpetrated for reasons we can’t fully understand number 20 Napoleon is dead on the morning of February 21st 1814 during the Great French War One Colonel duur arrived in do England to tell everyone that a victory for the Allies was
Inevitable because Napoleon had been killed news quickly spread to London leading the stock market to Boom three men in particular profited more than others Lord Thomas Cochran Cochran Johnstone and Richard G butt had purchased thousands of pounds in stocks just 2 days before however the news of Napoleon’s death was false and the
London Lon Stock Exchange crashed duul himself was also a fabrication he was actually a Prussian Aristocrat named Charles random dearinger who planned this fraud with Cochran jstone and butt overheard him yelling about a couple of stock tips made a little Co and still couldn’t afford a haircut number 19 Go
Ask Alice Go Ask Alice when she’s 10t tall at the end of the Psychedelic era when long-term effects of recreational drugs were coming to light this book claimed to be the real diary from an anonymous teenager’s descent into sex drugs and rock and roll don’t be Grey fun baby it immediately became a
Bestseller tapping into the public fears of rebellious youth culture Go Ask Alice seemed like the perfect cautionary tale for the time like they’re trying to poison me no no they aren’t enjoy it you’re going to have a beautiful for trip but it wasn’t a real account the book was actually written by beatric
Spars a Mormon youth counselor spars eventually admitted some parts were fabricated but she insisted the majority of the book was from the Diary of a teenager she met at a conference yet nowadays although it’s officially classified as fiction many Educators still assign the book as non-fiction number 18 live megalodons
The video was shot by a father and a son who had come across a whale that had suffered a brutal attack known for their documentaries the Discovery Channel seems like a reliable source but during Shark Week 2013 they ran a mockumentary called Megalodon the monster shark lives without explicitly disclosing the false
Nature of the program the whale looks to be almost bitten in half it’s absolutely insane instead of a pre-show disclaimer they opted to say that some events were dramatized and that the existence of giant sharks is Up For Debate while the Megalodon was a a real creature it’s
Been extinct for at least 3 million years viewers were understandably irritated that a previously serious Science Education Network stooped to pranks during its most popular week of programming number 17 railan clones according to realism a new religious movement founded in 1974 human immortality is possible through cloning so proving that human clones are
Possible would help their credibility right raans therefore claimed that the first human clone was born on December 27th 2002 the parents are happy and I hope that you remember them when you talk about this baby not like a monster the news was widely covered and sparked wide moral outrage the baby girl called
Eve was born yesterday in Hollywood Florida but so far the scientists at clone Aid have refused to identify the parents or provide a picture of the baby but when it came time for clone a the Scientific Company run by ra M to prove the achievement they refused clone Aid
And raan still insist their clone was real and that more have been born but without proof they’ve been written off as hoaxes we don’t know about their credentials we don’t know where they did it number 16 the tsad tribe Manuel elisalde the head of a Philippine government agency claimed he discovered
A tribe of indigenous people secluded in a forest the supposed Discovery garnered immense interest with National Geographic and the assoc iated press reporting on it the tribe lives high in the mountainous rainforest the tasai called the helicopter manuk doal the Big Bird Alisal was known to work closely with
The Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos who kept the area under marshal law that was pretty suspicious to start with the grandparents are katel and seul they are the oldest members of the tribe probably in their 50s evidence began to pile up that the tsade were were part of a hoax
When their tools population growth and food sources were examined and then journalist Oswald Eaton paid them an unexpected visit in 1986 discovering modern clothing and tools some people even admitted to pretending to be tsade they were never cavemen then or stone AGS culture practicing people then and
They never wear when the uh a Cave Story was being presented to the world and they never are today number 15 the Great Moon hoax a New York newspaper the sun published a series of six articles about the discovery of life and civilization on the moon and he said if you believe
That there are lunarians creatures on the moon I will give you lunar man bats starting on August 25th 1835 these articles claimed the well-known astronomer Sir John hersel spotted Fantastical creatures such as unicorns and by petal beavers hersel was amused by it all at first though it soon became
A bother for him to tell people the reports were false the paper didn’t skimp on details making this ruse all the more believable the people of New York and subsequently of America generally had been so schooled in the ideas of these religious astronomers that when these articles came out they
Simply believed them the writers specified the measurements of the telescope where it came from and how it was accidentally destroyed in a fire The hoax was believed for several weeks during which the sun gained a wide readership number 14 MTI Tao’s girlfriend the term catfishing first became popular after a film about the
Common internet scam was released in 2010 but it really blew up in 2012 when it was revealed that college footballer M Tao’s dead girlfriend lene kakua wasn’t actually dead or real she made me promise that she like babe if anything happens to me you promise that you’ll
Stay over there and that you’ll play as it turned out ta had been tricked into having a deeply emotional online relationship with a person named Rea Tuiasosopo even though he was the victim of the con Taos sadly became the butt of countless jokes after the truth of the
Scam came out and all of a sudden it’s silence that silence really eats at you 10 years after the hoax in August 2022 Netflix released a documentary on the subject and I want everybody to know that if Rah ever watched this then I forgive them number 13 William H mumler’s ghostly photographs
Spiritualism or the belief that the living can communicate with the dead was all the rage in the US after the Civil War photographer William H mumler took full advantage of this craze and shot pictures of clients with the ghosts of their deceased loved ones in the background in reality mumler
Superimposed old negatives of lookalikes onto photographs of clients leading them to believe their dearly dead were visiting mumler avoided being revealed by saying that the ghosts come and go without explanation however he got into hot water when some ghosts turned out to still be alive I thought it was supposed
To be dead the awkward aftermath led to a trial for fraud though mumler was acquitted we now know the photos were faked but they’re still Eerie number 12 poer after years in high-ranking military positions under Simone bivar Scotsman Gregor McGregor ended his stay in Venezuela and headed for Nicaragua in
1820 in an effort to start a colony he went to England to advertise the beautiful land of puer of which he was the prince over 200 eager settlers made the long journey from Europe to Central America to try their luck even National Banks invested in puer but the location
Was actually an uninhabitable mosquito ridden swamp and more than half the settlers died are you sure this is the right place a less deadly scam involved George salmanazar scandalizing much of Europe with lurid gripping and totally fictionalized Tales of his supposed homeland of Formosa in the early 18th
Century number 11 cotting Le fairies anybody who’s interested in you know the history of our times knows these images between 1917 and 1920 Elsie Wright and Francis Griffiths took a series of photographs in a garden in cottingley Yorkshire England which appeared to show themselves with fairies these pictures
Were just a Charming game to their families until wri’s mother paully exhibited them at a lecture on fairies at the theosophical society so when the first photographs were taken in 1917 they were really only shown to the family weren’t they they were’t intended for family consumption they caused an uproar especially because no
Photographers would confirm or deny the authenticity even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle creator of Sherlock Holmes believed the photographs to be evidence of fairies public interest generally faded for a few decades but in 1983 lsie Wright confessed to having cut and pasted draw ings into the photographs Griffiths
However never owned up to the LIE you grew up with your Mother Frances did you ever talk about it no she was very ashamed of it she was ashamed of the deception number 10 Millie vanil R&B Duo Millie vanil exploded on the dance pop scene in the late 80s only to crash soon Afterward in 10 months their debut album reached six times platinum in the US producer Frank faran catapulted them to fame and they had very little if any creative input under his watch in the studio then came the public lipsyncing on July 21st 1989 while performing in front of 80,000 people their hit song
Girl you know it’s true glitched and repeated the same line over and over Millie vanil won best new artist that year but it was later revoked we were famous and now we were in inous just like that but who was really to blame for the whole deception I’m doing a show
On 80s train wrecks maybe I slip in after that Millie vanilla guy all right number nine piltdown man after the publication of Charles Darwin’s seminal work scientists searched for more fossile Links of human ancestors in 1912 archaeologist Charles Dawson claimed to have found one in piltdown East Sussex
England he discovered a skull fragment which attracted the attention of the British Museum and spawned further searches after uncovering more pieces including bits of jaw and some teeth Dawson reconstructed the skull and declared it legitimate however other scientists were skeptical especially because they couldn’t find more bones in
The area eventually the piltown fines were found to be 50,000 years old not 500,000 and they were from both humans and apes in November 1953 Time Magazine published an expose on the fraud effectively ending the hoax decades after it began the piltown Man hoax wasn’t uncovered for 40 years until it
Failed a carbon dating test and that wasn’t even very good number eight Mary TOS Offspring way before ultrasounds were possible a woman was believed to have given birth to rabbits this happened in godling surri England in 1726 and it tricked medical professionals and lay people alike after
Local Doctor John Howard attested to the unusual births the news spread and Toof became something of a celebrity even the British royal family got involved tof herself was soon transported to London for more thorough examination after a couple of months of Fame and great confusion tof was pressured to admit
That her husband had purchased small animals in order to fake birthing scenes number seven balloon boy some events are so newsworthy so historic that you have to stop everything to watch balloon boy Michael Jackson’s funeral on October 15th 2009 Colorado couple Richard and mayumi heene released a large balloon
Only to quickly call the police in a panic saying their their son Falcon was trapped in it the boy had climbed into a box attached to the bottom of the balloon at his home in Fort Collins and somehow it took off local police worldwide news agencies and National Guard helicopters followed the balloon
For more than 50 miles until it landed however Falcon was not inside reports that something had fallen out sparked a longer search but the boy was eventually found in his parents Attic in an interview with Wolf Blitzer Falcon accidentally revealed that his parents told him it was a game to hide in the
Attic we did this for the show man no Richard and mayumi ended up facing jail time probation community service and fines I was telling it was all a mistake Hope was hiding in the addict the whole time just like that balloon boy guy yeah but that guy went
To jail really yeah number six the Cardiff giant while digging a well on William Newell’s Farm in Cardiff New York in 1869 Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols claimed to have found a massive petrified human body weighing 3,000 lb and measuring 10 ft this giant immediately caused a stir most
Scientists agreed it was a fraud but most theologians and preachers testified to its authenticity citing a verse in the Bible about Giants somewhere in there the conversation gets to Goliath and you you don’t really believe there’s a 12ft tall giant getting killed by this puny little guy with a sling and the
Minister says it’s in the Bible it’s true despite the divide the find was a sensation and nle began charging admission to see it after showman PT Barnum unsuccessfully tried to buy the attraction he made his own giant leading both cavers to be revealed as fakes you
Planted a phony skeleton for me to find this was all a big hoax not a hoax a publicity stunt number five The Amityville Horror the only thing that they got right is that our family moved in that house and we left on November 13th 1974 Ronald Deo Jr
Killed six family members in his house in Amityville New York in December 1975 George and Cathy Lutz moved into the same house only to flee 28 Days Later they said they were terrorized by Supernatural forces now why did you come by tonight to look at this house to see
What that book was all about and everything about the house the way it looked and all the things that people say about it this curious chain of events inspired author Jay Anson to write a book titled The Amityville Horror which led to a series of horror movies starting in 1979 k
Out however deo’s lawyer later admitted to making up all the horror with the Lutz family for financial gain but the Lutes have never acknowledged their lie that didn’t Happ again that’s Hollywood portraying the story number four Bower and Charley’s crop circles crop circles definitely aren’t new phenomena but
There has been a sharp uptick in cases since the 1970s becoming somewhat of a global Trend part of this increase is definitely due to Doug Bower and Dave Charley two men who deliberately created plenty of crop circles in England from around 1978 through the next decade or
So they later confessed to doing it all as a prank but the appearance of crop circles still makes the rounds as a popular conspiracy theory we wanted to make the eupo society think that a eupo had landed you see and um after a few years they they didn’t know whether to
Believe it or not there’s a name for people who believe to varying degrees that crop circles are signs wonders or prophecies they are referred to as crappies on reflection I think he he believed that it had got out of control he couldn’t control it anymore number three Hitler’s Diaries West German
Magazine stair thought they had gotten their hands on a miraculous Discovery in 1983 60 volumes of journals written by Adolf Hitler after paying a huge amount for the rights the magazine published excerpts of the Diaries and sold serialization rights of the material to the British newspaper the Sunday Times
And the American Paper Newsweek however the authenticity of the discovered documents was immediately questioned after testing showed that the ink glue and papers were too modern for wartime Germany the forger was revealed to be conman Conrad CUO two editors for staran and others eventually lost their jobs for spreading misinformation the
So-called confession is just as phony as the Howard Hughes will the Hitler Diaries or the Emancipation retraction number two Roswell autopsy footage July 8th 1947 put Roswell New Mexico on the map for conspiracy theorists alien enthusiasts have kept up with the sight of the purported UFO crash for decades
They were rewarded for their patients in 1995 when British entrepreneur Ray Santilli released footage supposedly showing an autopsy on aliens in 1947 the 17 minutes of film aired to mass audiences on TV networks across the world but many viewers and experts remained skeptical citing inconsistent injuries on the alien and inaccurate
Autopsy methods I think she described four fingers rather than six so there’s a a discrepancy or difference there in 2006 stilly admitted the footage was in fact faked though he also insisted that it’s a reconstruction and restoration of real film and still frames the person operating the camera continuously moves
To a place repeatedly that he’s not going to see anything the doctor’s back and and doesn’t make the effort to go around the other side to look at the saw coming towards you and perhaps get a better view before we continue be sure to subscribe to our Channel and ring the
Bell to get notified about our latest videos you have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them if you’re on your phone make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications number one the war of the world’s radio broadcast an Infamous Halloween radio broadcast aired in the
US on October 30th 1938 Orson Wells directed and narrated a radio drama of HG wells’s classic Sci-fi novel The War of the Worlds portraying the events of a Martian Invasion although the program started at 8:00 with an announcement declaring it fiction not everyone tuned in on time leading some people to
Believe that aliens had actually landed in New Jersey and were quickly Conquering the United States it really was the the 1938 version of clickbait local police departments were flooded with phone calls asking for verification and protection although the ensuing Panic has been EXA gerated over time the fact
Is that people were ready to believe in an alien apocalypse have you fallen for anything that was later proven to be a hoax let us know in the comments you exploited people’s deepest beliefs just to Hawk your cheesy Wares we are outraged aren’t we oh oh yeah yeah we’re
Outraged did you enjoy this video check out these other clips from watch Mojo and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos N
Video “20 Infamous Hoaxes That Shook the World” was uploaded on 04/01/2024 to Youtube Channel WatchMojo.com