August 2011
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The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
On Oct. 30, 1938, up-and-coming actor and director Orson Welles stages a radio adapation of H.G. Welles’ novel War of the Worlds set in modern-day New Jersey. Presented as a series of news bulletins and without commercial breaks, the intense broadcast convinces many that the Martian invasion may be real, sparking panic in communities throughout the country. Are there hoaxes we missed? Send...
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In 1912, amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson claims to find the skull of an early hominid who is the missing link between man and primate. The discovery has significant impact on early evolutionary theory until 1953, when it’s definitively proven that the skull is a combination of human, orangutan, and chimpanzee fossils, as this British Museum scientist demonstrates in December of that...
The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
Though it has drawn countless devotees, such as this couple in 1978, the Shroud of Turin, a piece of linen that bears the image of a man who appears to have been crucified and who many take to be Jesus, has been scientifically dated to about 1300 A.D. Various theories about the shroud thrive — including one that claims it’s a prank by Leonardo DaVinci — but its origins...
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In the late 1960s, the scuttlebutt is that Beatle Paul McCartney has died and been replaced by a look-and-sound-alike. Obsessed fans think they find hints in the band’s music, and the band, either as a joke or to boost record sales, embraces the rumor with “clues” like Paul’s lack of shoes on the cover of Abbey Road. One of the better clues is the backwards speaking at the...
The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
Incredibly detailed and often quite beautiful “crop circles” have been appearing in fields in England and elsewhere for at least several hundred years, and for much of that time true believers have convinced themselves and others that the only reasonable explanation for these things is, of course, extraterrestrials. But in 1991, two men from Southampton, England, Doug Bower and Dave...
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Steve Brodie was a Brooklyn bookie who in 1886 claimed to have jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge, and survived. Newspaper reporters loved the story (despite lots of evidence that it never happened), and Brodie later opened a tavern in New York that traded on the publicity generated by the hoax. Then there’s that excellent Bugs Bunny cartoon from 1949, “Bowery Bugs,” where Bugs...
The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
In 1970 and 1971, writer Clifford Irving fools LIFE Magazine (ouch!) and McGraw-Hill into paying for what he claims is the autobiography of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, but which he in reality writes himself without any input from Hughes. Irving counts on Hughes’ famous reclusiveness to protect him, but he is found out in January 1972, convicted of fraud, and sent to prison.
The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
On April 1, 1998, Burger King published a full page ad in USA Today announcing their new “Left-Handed Whopper” specially created for the 32 million southpaws in America. According to the ad, the lefty Whopper featured the same ingredients as the original, but all the condiments would be rotated 180 degrees to make the experience more lefty-friendly. Burger King revealed the next day...
The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
In 1934, what comes to be called the “Surgeon’s Photograph” (above) appears in the Daily Mail newspaper, allegedly showing proof that Nessie exists. In 1994, Christian Spurling reveals that “Nessie” is a two- or three-foot toy that his father-in-law used to get revenge on the newspaper, which he felt had slighted him. True Nessie believers, however, insist that...
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In 1917, the great (and today criminally neglected) journalist, translator, and essayist H.L. Mencken wrote what he described as a brief history of the bathtub in America%u2014a masterpiece of invention in which virtually none of the information was based in fact. Mencken, who never had a very high regard for the reading public’s acumen, wrote the piece to illustrate that most of his fellow...
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“Cryptozoologist” Tom Biscardi (center) and bigfoot hunters Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton announce that they have in their possession what may be the remains of a bigfoot or sasquatch, August 15, 2008, in Palo Alto, California. They said they had the remains were in a cooler. They said they’d show the world what was in the cooler. The world was curious about what was in the...
The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
German student Norbert Sudhaus enters the stadium during the marathon at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany, soaking in the cheers of the crowd. Just one thing: He hadn’t bothered running the other 25 miles of the race. Officials quickly realized what was up (maybe the lack of sweat tipped them off) and hustled Sudhaus off the track, but that didn’t help poor Frank Shorter,...
The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
During the 2008 presidential election, Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is convinced she’s taking a telephone call from the French president by two comedians from Quebec, who mock her avowed love of hunting and lack of foreign-policy experience.
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The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
In 1983, the German magazine Stern published extracts from what the magazine claimed were the diaries of Adolf Hitler. The magazine had paid more than $2 million for sixty small books purporting to cover the years from 1932 to 1945. The “diaries” were, of course, ultimately proved to be forgeries.
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In April, 1985, Sports Illustrated published a story about a rookie pitcher phenom signed to play for the Mets. His name was Sidd Finch, he had a 168 mph fastball, and he never walked a batter. What’s more, Finch had never played baseball, but had learned the art of pitching in a Tibetan monastery. Alas, as with so many stories related to the Mets that sound too good to be true, this one...
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The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
Another marvelous (and far more convoluted) hoax involving Microsoft began making the rounds around the same time as the Catholic Church brouhaha. Seems some pranksters thought it would be funny to get people to start forwarding a bogus email message by claiming that, by forwarding it, one would be taking part in a very valuable “email tracking” exercise for Microsoft. and that Bill...
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The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
The mainstream is introduced to the concept of the Internet hoax in 1994, when several people fall for a circulating e-mail that claims Microsoft has purchased the Catholic Church. “The combined resources of Microsoft and the Catholic Church will allow us to make religion easier and more fun for a broader range of people,” Bill Gates allegedly says. Microsoft is forced to issue a...
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Al Sharpton (left), Tawana Brawley, and attorney C. Vernon Mason hold hands outside the State Supreme Court in New York City, July 20, 1990. In the late 1980s, 15-year-old Brawley accused six white men — including some cops — in Wappinger, NY, of kidnapping and raping her. Sharpton, Mason (who was disbarred in 1995 for what the New York State Appellate Court cited as 66 instances of...
The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
The Protocols, as this publication is widely known, is not one book, but a variety of different tracts purporting to be the handbook, in a sense, for a Jewish takeover of the world. The copy here, published in Syria in 2005 by the intriguingly named “Islamic Propagation Organization,” is one of innumerable versions of this utterly fictional compilation of rules and strategies by which...
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The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
When live footage of a UFO-shaped Mylar balloon racing through the Colorado sky suddenly appeared on TV screens all over the country on Thursday, October 15, 2009, people understandably stopped whatever they were doing to see what was going on. But when word came that a 6-year-old boy named Falcon Heene (pictured) might be in the balloon, and in serious danger of plummeting to the earth or...
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Inspired by an argument with a fundamentalist minister, New York atheist George Hull buries a statue of a “petrified giant” in 1868 and arranges to have it discovered a year later in Cardiff, New York. It becomes such a crowd-pleaser that P.T. Barnum creates his own imitation giant, prompting one of the Cardiff Giant’s promoters to declare, “There’s a sucker born...
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The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time - Photo Gallery -... →
In 1995, London film producer Ray Santilli claims to have footage of an alien corpse taken from the 1947 Roswell incident. Though Santilli continues to insist to this day that portions are real, the film is widely considered a hoax, and the entire misadventure becomes the subject of a 2006 comedy by British TV personalities Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly (pictured).
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
What’s Probably in Your Hand Right Now
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
Telephone
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
Yellow Mongoose X-Ray
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
Mummy’s X-Ray
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
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Extraordinary X-Rays - Photo Gallery - LIFE →
When Wilhelm Roentgen took the very first X-ray photograph — a ghostly image of his wife’s hand — in 1895, the German physicist not only earned himself the very first Nobel Prize in Physics, he also gave the world the gift of creepy skeletal photographs and seeing bizarre things stuck inside living but unlucky people. Above: 1896 X-ray of Roentgen’s wife’s hand,...
capital-inicial asked: É um tumblr novo, dedicado EXCLUSIVAMENTE ao Capital Inicial. Se vc curte, entra dar uma olhada, se não desculpa o incomodo ai. flw
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The Berlin Wall: Rise and Fall - Photo Gallery -... →
“In the same way that children everywhere reflect their elders in playing house, ‘war’ or cops-and-robbers,” LIFE observed when this picture ran in an October 1961 issue, “these Berlin youngsters were making innocent mockery of a grim grownup preoccupation. When Paul Schutzer encountered them in a vacant lot just in the West Berlin side of the Zimmerstrasse border,...
The Berlin Wall: Rise and Fall - Photo Gallery -... →
Tracks lead to a dead-end at the Wall in Potsdamer Platz in 1961.
The Berlin Wall: Rise and Fall - Photo Gallery -... →
The Berlin Wall: Rise and Fall - Photo Gallery -... →
Conrad Schumann, 39, former member of the East German army, points at a photograph of himself, taken on August 15, 1961, when he escaped to West Berlin, two days after East Germany closed the border. Schumann was the first soldier to flee to the free part of Berlin.
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The Berlin Wall: Rise and Fall - Photo Gallery -... →
Tourists look at a preserved segment of the Berlin wall (including a famous parody of Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev and Honecker) in October 2009. The two Germanys were reunified on Oct. 3, 1990.
