Doubleday didn’t give himself the credit for inventing baseball. The source of the Doubleday legend was A. G. Spalding, sporting goods manufacturer and owner of the Chicago White Stockings. He wanted to prove that baseball was an American creation, and tried to find a source for it. When provided with the Doubleday story, he decided it was good enough, and proclaimed it the actual origin of baseball. All this took place in the 1900s, about 70 years after the story in the legend would have taken place.
It’s not the most famous but the Donation of Constantine is probably the most influential hoax in history.
Paul Is Dead
My personal favorite was the “discovery” of the Hitler Diaries. That stirred up quite a hornets nest. Also a couple of years ago some guy claimed to have discovered unknown works of William Shakespeare. Those got disproven pretty quickly too.
Elkman your post jogged my memory. That whole Howard Hughes hoax perpetrated by Clifford Irving!
P.S. Paul would have been 28 IF he had lived.
Hoax? What do you mean? Joan Crawford was really a cake-baking sweet-heart? I don’t think so.
Christina didn’t really write the book? Well maybe had the usual ghost-writer help, but she’s never denied it as far as I know.
Eve, I think we’re fighting ignorance here. Can you supply some evidence?
I’ll be getting my wire hangers ready
["NO unsubstantiated claims! whack! No unsubstantiated claims!]
He is, of course, wrong.
Explain in detail why democracy cannot exist in a republic
But you are correct in saying that what most folks think of as “democracy” isn’t one.
Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.
OK, Redboss, sit yourself down: “I’m not mad at YOU. I’m mad at the dirt that Christina made up.”
Joannie was NOT the best of mothers, she herself admitted that. But most of the tales in “Mommie Dearest” were actually lifted from an unpublished movie-star-mother novel called “The Hype,” because Christina’s original book was too boring to publish (a friend of mine worked in the publishing house when and where all this happened).
Cindy and Cathy, Joan’s other two daughters, have said repeatedly on the record, “None of this happened, we were there!” but no one wants to hear that, they’d rather believe the worst. And Christina’s successful literary matricide encouraged other “I’m jealous of Mommy” books by Marlene Dietrich’s and Bette Davis’ evil, twisted daughters . . .
“Don’t fuck with me, Redboss—this ain’t my first time at the rodeo.”
I guess I screwed this up. I was just thinking about forgeries for profit or fun. Like crop circles, Abominal snowman parts, mermaids in jars, shroud of turin, plinyman skull,Alien autopsy, …
You know fun stuff, not the christianity,democracy,…arguments.
Well, there’s always the great Moon Hoax of 1835.
What?? No-one yet thinks the Loch Ness Monster isn’t a hoax? I can’t believe I’m the first one to mention in it in a thread this long! 
I think Stephen Wright even did a stand-up routine bit about the camera shop on the shores of Loch Ness, which specializes in selling cameras that only take blurry, out of focus pictures…
frolix8’s link mentions the Cardiff Giant, though not as one of the top ten. It’s one of my own favorites, though. When the Great Danbury State Fair used to run in Connecticut, they had a “Barnum Building,” devoted to all things P.T. Barnum. In the corner farthest from the main entrance was a life-sized copy of the Cardiff giant, I remember being very young and staring up at it, enjoying the fact that it scared me.
::wishing they hadn’t sold the fairgrounds to build that damn mall::
Cecil?
Reality? (as plausibly postulated by The Matrix).
FWIW, renowned science writer James Trefil considers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a possible perpetrator of this treachery. Where does he get factual support for this speculation I don’t know, but if any of you do I would be most interested in finding out.
The “twins” (which they were not) were not even alive during the earlier days of Christina’s childhood, or Christopher’s. Christina herself said they would have never seen any of these things take place, nor did Joan ever do anything to those two girls. In fact, in her book, they are hardly mentioned.
Christopher refuses to even discuss his childhood with Joan Crawford, but neither does he claim Christina is a liar. I admire his tact. I don’t consider the book “Mommie Dearest” a hoax…although I don’t think what she went through was all that bad, either. Hell, she should have had MY mother…she would have made Joan Crawford look like St. Theresa.
Anastasia wasn’t a hoax. Anna Anderson BELIEVED she was Anastasia, therefore it was more a disillusion, or mistaken identity.
Let’s see, the Loch Ness Surgeon’s Photo was a hoax.
Cottingley Fairies (actually, I always liked the story of this-they were some neat pictures!)
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
Santa Claus
The War of the Worlds
Hi Little Nemo. I’ve never heard of this and it sounds interesting to me. Can you elaborate a little, and signpost me towards more details?
Thanks.
For years and years, the lobby of the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art was dominated by two gigantic Assyrian statues. Such lamassu figures, the heads of humans on the bodies of horses or oxen, are found in many musuems, and are quite large, but the ones at the Met were truly monumental in size. You can often see them in old photographs of social shindigs and fundraisers in the lobby. They were later discovered to be forgeries, and were naturally removed. I always wondered what happened to them!