I thought it would be interesting to read about historical frauds.

Links, short write-ups, keywords...

Keep 'em coming.

:)

Piltdown Man. :)

This link is quite good: http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/hoax.html

Looks juicey luceafarul. :drool:

There you go being a porn star Luc, again :rolleyes:

A golden oldie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_constantine

And Cold Fusion of course. Hard to tell if that story belongs here, but it is history in any case.

Looks juicey luceafarul. :drool:
It is.:D

There you go being a porn star Luc, again :rolleyes:
Perhaps the time has soon arrived to reveal more of my colourful past...:lol:

The Hitler Diaries.

I saw a great skit on a comedy show about "The Rudolf Hess diaries. 1946- onwards". Every day went like this-

"Got up. Looked out of the window. Went for a walk around the yard."

I'm not sure even now whether we know whether McPherson was a forger. If he was, he was one of the best. The poems were very influential.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossian

Then there is this man, who not only forged Shakespearean documents, but actually got one, Vortigern and Rowena, produced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Ireland

What about that book/text that was order by some medieval king, that was supposedly written in the hardest code ever invented. The hoax lies in that it is just random letters... but some still believe. Link anyone?

Are you thinking of this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

Here's another famous forger, but a sadder case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatterton

A "blood libel" is when someone falsely accuses a group of sacrificing people--especially children--for their blood. These were done against the early Christians, the Jews, Druids, Wiccans and Satanists. The ones against the Jews were more prevalent during the middle ages and early modern period, but there were some against the Satanists and Wiccans in the 1990s. The one of Little Sir Hugh (or Little St. Hugh) is fairly well known since it inspired a tale in Chaucer. Here's a notorious case:


Hungary, 1529
At Bösing (Bazin, today Pezinok, Slovakia), it was charged that a nine-year-old boy had been bled to death, suffering cruel torture; thirty Jews confessed to the crime and were publicly burned. The true facts of the case were disclosed later, when the child was found alive in Vienna. He had been stolen by the accuser, Count Wolf of Bazin, as an easy but fiendish means of ridding himself of his Jewish creditors at Bazin.

Turin Shroud

The 2000 election was a massive fraud. :p

The Hitler Diaries.

I saw a great skit on a comedy show about "The Rudolf Hess diaries. 1946- onwards". Every day went like this-

"Got up. Looked out of the window. Went for a walk around the yard."

That reminds me of the Spandau diaries of Albert Speer. I saw them in a store once, pulled the book out, opened it at a random page and the first thing I read was:
"The cabbage grows."

Another golden oldie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichborne_Claimant

A great English example:

A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is (http://www.litrix.com/madraven/madne003.htm)

(long ! )

Cool jameson. Nice info.

-The Turtle forcing Lord Howe to lift his close blckade of New York.
-The fact that the English were counted as the invaders during the Hundred Years War.

Turin ShroudBasically any relic.

What about that time when they found Jesus' ... ... relic?

Ah, such cynicism!

My old Theology tutor, when a student, knew a fellow student who had a relic of St Augustine on his desk throughout the exams. I think it was his hand. Apparently the guy only got a Pass degree, so either the power of relics is much overrated or he would have done *really* badly without it!

Rudolf IV forged the Privilegium Maius 1358 which granted Austria the status of an Erzherzogtum (Archdukedom?) and put him as an equal to the German Kurfürsten (he was previously ignored in the Golden Bull). This title Erzherzog was non-existant before this forgery, he practically invented his own title. :D

Of course, perhaps the most famous of all is the Donation of Constantine, a document which "surfaced" some time between 750 and 850. It was an imperial edict from the year 342 which granted to Pope Sylvester I and his successors lordship of Rome, Italy, and the entire western Roman Empire. The Donation was used by medieval popes to add legitimacy to their claims of political power throughout the Middle Ages. It was not exposed as a fraud until 1440, when its Latin was shown to be anachronistic.