5 Hoaxes That Fooled Almost Everyone

Hoaxes have happened throughout human history as people have always tried to fool others into believing something that simply isn’t true. Sometimes the hoax is an attempt to gain publicity or fame and fortune, while in others it is done purely for the pleasure of having tricked people. The advent of social media has only made it even easier for pranksters to quickly spread false news to all corners of the world, allowing millions of people to be fooled.

5. The Alien Autopsy

The Alien Autopsy was a film that was released by the British entrepreneur Ray Santilli during the 1990’s. He announced that it contained actual footage of a dissection of an alien that came to Earth during a UFO crash at Roswell in 1947. He had apparently bought it from a retired military cameraman and it was eventually sold to news outlets around the world, though Santilli admitted in 2006 that the film was a fake.


4. World Trade Center Tourist

Not long after the tragic events on 9/11, a photograph emerged online that appeared to show a tourist standing on the building just before the tragic events unfolded. According to reports at the time, the photograph was taken only seconds before the terrorist attack took place. The truth though, was that it had actually been taken in 1997 and had simply been photoshopped to add in the plane at a later date.


3. Hurricane Sandy Images

The frightening 2012 storm Hurricane Sandy led to a whole host of fake images overwhelming people’s news feeds and profiles. While plenty of the photographs were genuine and showed off the dramatic nature of the deadly weather, others had been heavily photoshopped. The most famous of these was one that showed the clouds gathering vividly over the Statue of Liberty.


2. Blonde Extinction

There are often claims from studies that state that redheads are likely to go extinct in the coming years, though it is rarer for the same to be said of other hair colors. However, a 2006 hoax study made the bold announcement that blondes would be extinct by the year 2200, leading to much of the public believing it. Even established news outlets such as the BBC carried the story until the World Health Organization issued a statement denying the claims and pointed out that the study was not genuine.


1. Presidential Bath

Writer H. L. Mencken set out in 1917 to see how many people he could fool into believing that the American public had only adopted the bathtub after President Millard Filmore had installed one in the White House. His 1,800-word article about the origin of the bath and the anniversary of its introduction into the USA was published in the Evening Mail and was taken as the gospel truth by many people for decades, despite the fact that no word on the piece was true. It is still cited to this day, with websites and outlets referring to the event.