Greatest Hoaxes Of All Time

Comedian Alan Abel created a fake organization that ran for 3 years from 1959 to 1962 that supported all animals wearing clothing. They at their peak had thousands of members that believed SINA to be real. The fake group had a newsletter, anthem and made many public appearances, an actor appearing as president and Abel as vice president.

The organization used silly slogans such as, "A nude horse is a rude horse."

During the 1950s this story was run on the BBC by a well known media personality of the era. He was trusted so much by his viewership that many believed that you could in fact grow spaghetti on trees. The TV station was bombarded with callers asking about the trees and how they could get seeds to grow their own. Many were downhearted when they found out that it was only an April fools joke.

Several hoaxes have surrounded the Lochness monster throughout the years but the most famous is the "surgeon's photograph" In 1934 a doctor apparently had snapped 5 unclear pictures of what he said was the monster sticking it's head out of the water. The photograph has been thoroughly analyzed over the years and due to analysis has been slowly disproven.

There has even been a book by a notable person from the era saying he actually paid the surgeon to supply the pictures to the paper when in fact it was a toy submarine making use of sculpting with plastic wood.

Surfacing in the 1990s and promoted by Ray Santilli a video supposedly of an alien autopsy done at Roswell came to light. Throughout the 1990s Santilli sold the rights to broadcast the video many times making a fortune from gullible people. The video was even broadcast of Fox and other major networks. In 2006 Santilli admited that the video was a fake. He has said that he watched a true video of the events in the early 1990s but that the film was degraded and could not be used thus he created a reconstruction of events using a small fraction of the frames from the original.

The Cottingley fairies were a group of pictures taken of two young cousins in 1917 that apparently proved the existence of fairies. The pictures showed the girls with one or several fairies frolicking around the girls.

The girls admitted in the 1980s that the photos were actually fake as the fairies were made from cardboard cutouts.

Started when two friends travelling along the highway called the police after apparently hitting what they said to be an alien. The corpse did appear to be humanoid and was taken back to police headquarters and an autopsy ordered. Meanwhile the two friends gave statements saying that they saw a UFO buzzing their car a few moments before hitting the creature. Later after the news had reached the papers it was confirmed that the figure was actually an already peviously deceased monkey.

War Of The Worlds was a radio broadcast aired in 1938. Primarily portrayed as a list of new bulletins warning of a martian invasion of the earth. Many around the world took it for face value and thought that we were being invaded. In the ensuing chaos many moved into bomb shelters, left home for relatives, and some prepared for what they thought would be their demise. The broadcast became famous and launched the career of Orson Welles.