Page 35 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - March 2012

World’s Greatest Hoaxes, Plus One World’s Greatest Hoaxes, not before the world had, once again, been taken Plus One for a ride. Edited by Newspaper Staff THE GIRL WHO BORE RABBITS The Set-Up: In 1726, an English maid, THE COTTINGLEY FAIRIES Mary Toft, claimed to have been assaulted by an The Set-Up: In 1917, two young girls, exceptionally amorous (and very tall) six-foot Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths, rabbit. People actually believed her and the local townspeople went to great lengths to keep claimed that they’d played with fairies in the their wives and daughters from sufferering garden of their home in Cottingley, England. likewise. Five months later Mary collapsed in a They even produced photographs of the fairies field. A local doctor declared that Mary was to prove it. The Impact: The pictures made pregnant. Four weeks later she gave birth to a headlines around the world and the story was dead rabbit, then another. Over the next few days, Howard helped deliver seven more dead believed by many, including Sherlock Holmes rabbits. creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who became an The Impact: The news spread quickly. ardent supporter of the girl’s story. King George I sent two of England’s finest It Was All A Hoax: But 55 years later, the girls now old women admitted that it all had mermaid for one week before taking it to physicians to investigate. Mary was still producing rabbits - all dead. The doctors been a hoax and they had cut pictures of fairies London. The exhibit was a sensation: the story out of a book and attached them with paper clips was picked up by newspapers around the world. performed tests on the animals. In one, a portion of the lung of one of the rabbits was placed in to branches and shrubs before taking the The mermaid was exhibited for one month water. The fact that it floated should have told photographs. Frances Griffiths expressed before it was taken on a nationwide tour. The the doctors that the rabbit had breathed before amazement that anyone believed the story, little creature was a tremendous boost in its “birth.” They foud digested food in the saying, “How on earth anyone could be so establishing Barnum’s reputation as the master gullible as to believe that they were real has purveyor fo freak shows. rabbits’ intestines well as dung in their rectums. They pronounced the births as genuine. always been a mystery to me.” It Was All A Hoax: The public soon realized that the mermaid was, in fact, the brain It Was All A Hoax: Another third expert THE CARDIFF GIANT child of promoter extraordinaire P.T. Barnum, arranged for Mary to be moved to a London hospital where she was put under constant The Set-Up: In 1869, at an upstate New and that Dr. Griffin was actually one of surveillance. The rabbits stopped coming. Then York Farm just outside the town of Cardiff, well Barnum’s employees. Griffin’s Feejee mermaid a gardener stepped forward, claiming that he’d diggers found what seemed to be the petrified was nothing more than a handicraft made by been supplying Mary with baby rabbits. Mary body of a man, but more than a man, a 10-foot- Southeast Asian fishermen who mass produced broke down and confessed. She’d made the tall giant. The diggers had been hired by New the items and sold them as “mermaids.” whole thing up, inserting the rabbits in her York cigar maker George Hull, a relative of the Although the original Feejee mermaid was womb, then pretending to give birth to them. probably lost when Barnum’s exhibition hall farm’s owner. The motive? Her husband had lost his job and The Impact: News of the amazing burned down in the 1860s, similar specimens they thought that the publicity might get them a discovery spread quickly around the world. Hull show that is was probably made of papier- pension from the King. All that Mary got out of charged people 50 cents to take a peek at the mache molded to represent the creature’s limbs it, however, was a prison sentence for fraud. giant. Experts cried fraud, but the and combined with the jaw, teeth, spine, and fins of a carp. fundamentalists ate it up. So did the civic SIR WALTER RALEIGH LAYS boosters in whatever town it was exhibited. The sign that accompanied the giant claimed that WILLARD, THE “TALKING” DOWN HIS COAT - NOT! P.T. Barnum had offered $150,000 to buy it. The DONKEY Queen Elizabeth I is leading a figure may have been lower, but an offer was The Set Up: An ad in the Cleveland procession through the streets of London.She made. He refused to sell, so Barnum made his Plain Dealer invited the curious to a local stops in front of a puddle of mud and looks own replica of the giant and sued Hull, auditorium on September 15th 1873, where they expectantly at her entourage. Suddenly a gallant declaring the original to be a fake. could see what Ohio farmer George Hampton seaman emerges from the crowd, whips off his It Was All A Hoax: Under cross- called “an ass that had the uncanny ability to cloak and, with a flourish, lays it on top of the examination during the ensuing trial, Hull communicate with human beings.” Farmer offending puddle. The day is saved and two of admitted that the giant was nothing more than Hampton billed the animal as “proof positive the great figures of 16th century history come an elaborate hoax, carved from gypsum and that we came from the lower orders.” face to face. It’s a cute story but it never washed with sulphuric acid to make it look old. The Impact: On the date in question, a happened. This tale is the invention of 17th He had thought up the idea after an argument crowd of 2,000 people - at 50 cents per head - century historian named Thomas Fuller, who’s with a fundamentalist preacher. He wondered if packed into a Cleveland auditorium. Of course, histories are filled with such anecdotal he could convince the preacher that the “giants Willard didn’t actually speak. Instead, he tapped flavorings to enliven otherwise boring stories. in the earth” mentioned in the Bible were real. his right hoof on the floor in response to Sir Walter Scott picked up on the story in his Of course, there was the money making angle, questions. In addition to simple math problems, 1821 novel Kenilworth adding a short exchange too. Hull came out of the deal some $30,000 Willard could answer yes-or-no questions and between the two famous figures. Raleigh beams ahead. get them tight every time. Willard’s fame and that he will never clean the coat, whereupon the Hampton’s bank account ballooned. Months Queen instructs him to her wardrobe keeper P.T. BARNUM’S “FEEJEE” later, as Willard was leaving to perform in with orders for a new suit. It’s a cute story, but MERMAID London for England’s Queen Victoria at the it never happened. The Set Up: In August 1842, an Palladium, Willard collapsed of a massive heart WHICH IS OUR HOAX? Englishman named Dr. J. Griffin arrived in New attack. He was dead. Willard the Talking Donkey was our York bearing a most unusual artifact - what he It Was All A Hoax: The ensuing said was a real mermaid. Or at least the remains autopsy revealed that Willard’s heart attack was hoax. All the others are real. By the way, the word “hoax” is a shortening of “hocus-pocus,” of one. Griffin claimed that the mermaid (not a caused by continual exposure to electic shock a synonym for trickery that in turn comes from beautiful blonde like the ones on TV, but an treatment. Hampton’s assistant, an off-stage the Latin “hoc corpus est” - “This is my body” - operator, triggered the wire to give the donkey a ugly creature with the withered body of a the phrase spoken during the Catholic mass monkey and the dried tail of a fish) had been jolt each time he was required to pound his caught in the Fiji Islands. hoof. This continued shock treatment eventually when brad is supposedly transformed into the body of Christ. [] proved too much for the “talking donkey,” but The Impact: Griffin exhibited the