Volume 037Hoaxes & Forgeries
Mystery of the Enjuin Mermaid
A Japanese temple’s mermaid, said to have been caught in the eighteenth century, finally gave up its secrets to science.
Open the volumeThe Library / Subject
Hoaxes & Forgeries
Fakes, frauds and forgeries, and the people who believed in them.
Volume 031Hoaxes & Forgeries
Alternative 3 - Hoax or Reality?
A television drama about Britain’s scientists escaping to Mars was always fiction, but the hoax outlived every attempt to explain it.
Open the volume
Volume 027Hoaxes & Forgeries
Forged Gospels of the Holy Hill
Engraved lead books dug from caves above Granada told of Arab saints and apostles, winning an archbishop's devotion before Rome condemned them as heretical forgeries.
Open the volume
Volume 025Hoaxes & Forgeries
Paper Fairies, Glass Plates
Two Yorkshire cousins photographed fairies they had cut from paper, won over the creator of Sherlock Holmes and kept their secret for more than sixty years.
Open the volume
Volume 021Hoaxes & Forgeries
A Wonder from Godalming
Mary Toft’s supposed rabbit births fooled the king’s surgeons and made her a national joke, but the doctors wrote down far more than she ever got to say.
Open the volume
Volume 010Hoaxes & Forgeries
The Play That Fooled London
Shakespeare’s supposed lost papers made a young law clerk the talk of literary London, until his newly discovered play faced an audience.
Open the volume