In 1869 most of the American public wanted to believe in the Cardiff Giant, and so they did–for a while.
https://leeduigon.com/2013/04/30/a-lesson-to-the-credulous-the-cardiff-giant/
The Cardiff Giant remains one of my all-time favorite hoaxes. It did no harm to anybody, and looking at it today, you’re amazed that if could have fooled anyone at all.
Unlike, say,the Climate Change hoax, which is intended to harm us in more ways than you can list.
Don’t you love it? They show you all these pictures of the jackalope, and then they say there’s no such thing!
Everybody knows there’s a conspiracy to cover up the existence of the jackalope.
Next thing you know, they’ll be telling us there are no centaurs, either.
When everybody knows that centaurism is caused by Global Warming.
When I was a little boy, I used to dream of woolly mammoths. I refused to believe they were extinct.
If I had ever seen this…
This film was supposedly shot in Siberia in 1943. Who knows? It sure looks like a mammoth. It could also be a hoax.
But it’ll give me something to dream about tonight.
Behold a miniature model of “The Turk,” the world’s first and most famous chess-playing automaton. The full-size original was destroyed in a museum fire later in the 19th century. It once played a game against Napoleon Bonaparte and wiped up the board with him
The cool thing about The Turk is that it was a hoax. There was a guy inside! On the left you can see a small cabinet full of gears and such: that was only for show. The larger compartment held a human chess player who was better than Napoleon.
And everybody believed it, of course!
Just like they believe in Global Warming and the campus rape culture nowadays.