Shortly after the three astronauts’ triumphant return to Earth ... Buzz Aldrin the second man to walk on the moon sank into a depression for no apparent reason. ibid.
It’s an incredible story. Newly elected Nixon was up to his neck in the Vietnam War. He needed a big stunt to reverse his negative image with the American public. ibid.
Donald Rumsfeld was the first to propose Stanley Kubrick ... In the end Kubrick agreed. The fake footage would be shot in England in the MGM studios near Borehamwood with a skeleton crew. ibid.
London 2004: ‘Yo, our names Silibil n Brains from Huntington Beach, California. We’re going to rock this show.’ Storyville: The Great Hip Hop Hoax, on stage, BBC 2013
‘The moment we said we’re from California that was it: we had the crowd.’ ibid.
We are ten years into the biggest hoax in human history – the threat of terrorism. Alex Jones, New World Order: Blueprint of Madmen, paranoia sketch, 2012
The system itself is actually engaging in terrorism. ibid.
In 1995 a short black and white film was shown to a specially selected audience in a private cinema in London. It claimed to show an authentic autopsy on the body of an extraterrestrial being that had been recovered from a flying disc which had crashed near Roswell New Mexico on June 2nd 1947. The audience were astonished. History’s Greatest Hoaxes s1e1: Alien Autopsy, History 2016
The man who owned the autopsy footage hosted the screening in London and then sold the clips to Fox and other broadcasters around the world is Ray Santilli, a music and record promoter based in London. ibid.
Since the first photographed sighting at the beginning of the 20th century folklore has it that a large possibly prehistoric sea-monster lurks beneath the waters of Loch Ness in Scotland. Over the years grainy photos and even some tantalising but inconclusive footage has emerged to keep the legend of Nessie alive. History’s Greatest Hoaxes s1e2: The Loch Ness Monster
It was one of the great discoveries of the last century. Sixty-two volumes of the hand-written personal diaries of one the most infamous and reviled men in modern history: Adolf Hitler. History’s Greatest Hoaxes s1e3: Hitler’s Diaries
Rupert Murdoch paid a cool $500,000 for the rights to publish them in The Sunday Times. ibid.
Having already put in place a deal to buy the Hitler diaries [Magnus] Linklater was tasked with trying to authenticate their contents and validate Murdoch’s proposed purchase. ibid.
The Sunday Times was still not completely sure that the diaries weren’t fakes so they asked revered Cambridge historian Hugh Trevor-Roper … [who] started to have serious doubts. ibid.
The War of the Worlds CBS Radio Broadcast 30th October 1938: The War of the Worlds was a one-hour radio drama … It was an adaptation of H G Wells’ novel of the same name. History’s Greatest Hoaxes s1e4: War of the Worlds
Papillon was one of the most popular books and films of the 1970s … It tells the dramatic true story of …a murderer with a large butterfly tattoo on his chest: but how much of his best-selling memoir was true? History’s Greatest Hoaxes s1e5: Papillon: Fact or Fiction
In 1912 the skull and bone fragments of what was thought to be a prehistoric man were discovered in a gravel pit in Sussex in England. What became known as the Piltdown Man was claimed to be one of the most important archaeological finds of all time: but was it genuine or was it a carefully engineered hoax? History’s Greatest Hoaxes s1e6: Piltdown Man
In 1915 Charles Dawson claimed to have found three fragments of a second skull called Piltdown 2 at a new site, Sheffield Park, about 2 miles away from the original find. ibid.
‘Why would you have Michael Jackson as your best man?’ Reputations s9e3: Uri Geller, critic, BBC 2002
It’s 30 years since Uri Geller captured the attention of the media by bending a fork on British television … He claimed to do it using the power of his mind. ibid.
He walked out of the studio during his first ever television appearance when his supernatural powers failed him. ibid.
By 1971 Geller’s showbiz career in Israel had collapsed. ibid.
James Randi: duplicated everything that Geller had done. ibid.
‘He was so bad that I was embarrassed for him … Everything that he tried failed.’ ibid. witness of Geller’s appearance on Carson’s TV show
‘A simple bent key changed the world.’ ibid. Geller
In 1912 unearthed in an English gravel bed was the fossil discovery of a lifetime: it was certified as the missing link, a skull that made the evolutionary connection between ape and man. The Piltdown Man held up for nearly forty years until it was found to be a fraud. In Search of History s2e12: Hoax of the Ages: Piltdown Man, H2 2018
‘Charles Dawson was the perpetrator.’ ibid. anthropologist
The hoax was confirmed by researchers at a meeting of the Geological Society in 1953. ibid.
I feel like something he loaded by mistake, something to be jettisoned if necessary, something disposable. I feel like I could disappear. Gone Girl 2014 starring Ben Affleck & Rosamund Pike & Neil Patrick Harris & Tyler Perry & Carrie Coon & Kim Dickens & Patrick Fugit & Missi Pyle & Emily Ratajkowski & Casey Wilson & Lola Kirke et al, director David Fincher, Amy
I am frightened of my own husband. ibid.
You’re a liar and a cheat. You’re just like dad. ibid. Margo
To fake a convincing murder you have to have discipline. ibid. Amy
I was willing to try. I wax-stripped my pussy raw. I drank canned beer while watching Adam Sandler videos. ibid.
You married a complete psychopath. ibid. Margo
It was a murder that sent shockwaves around the world. Just weeks after the Novichok poisonings in Salisbury another apparent attack on foreign soil. But a day later Arkady Babchenko was back from the dead … the Fake Murder. Panorama: The Fake Murder that Fooled the World, BBC 2018
Babchenko is a Russian journalist. He fled Moscow last year after receiving death threats. And got a job with a Ukrainian TV station. ibid.
SBU agents had arranged a make-up artist to help stage the murder scene. ibid.
Why had a self-styled truth-teller agreed to play the starring role in a fake news story? ibid.
Lies have always been used to sell war to a public that would otherwise be leery about sending their sons off to fight and die on foreign soil … A pretence for war is required to rally the nation around the flag and motivate the public to fight. The Corbett Report, Debinking a Century of War Lies, James Corbett online 2018
World War I: RMS Lusitania: Every facet of the story of the Lusitania as it has been presented to the public was a deliberate lie or a lie by omission. The boat was not a purely civilian vessel … ibid.
World War II: Pearl Harbor is best understood as a conspiracy to motivate the American public for war. ibid.
1931: Japan was looking for a pretext to invade Manchuria. ibid.
Korea was arbitrarily divided along the 38th parallel … Neither was the war itself the organic result of decisions taken by the Korean people. ibid.
Vietnam: In August 1964 President Johnson was preoccupied in finding an excuse to justify a formal escalation of American military involvement in in Vietnam. That excuse came on August 2nd when the USS Maddox – a destroyer supposedly on a peaceful mission in international waters – reported a surprise attack … The story of the Maddox too had been a tissue of lies. ibid.
The 6 Day War in 1967 between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan is yet another example of a war which was justified for reasons that were later exposed as lies. ibid.
Gulf War I: They hired a literal PR firm to sell an even more brazen set of lies to Joe-6-Pack and Jane-Soccer-Mum. ibid.
Gulf War II: Also built on lies ... The rest of the media quickly fell into line. ibid.
Libya Intervention: Human rights and protecting the innocent is a more effective lie … ibid.
5th August 2014 Qatar Airways 23 from Doha to Manchester: Just 100 metres from the plane’s wingtip was an RAF fighter jet … A passenger in a green T-shirt … ‘They just dragged him out of the seat and pinned him to the ground … It was a hoax.’ World’s Worst Flights s1e2: Bomb on Board, Channel 5 2018
No-one earned more fame however than Jesse James, the Robin Hood of western outlaws. Most historians maintain that Jesse was killed six years after his doomed Northfield Minnesota raid. Yet in 1948 J Frank Dalton claimed he was Jesse James. Is it possible that Jesse James could have perpetrated a hoax on the entire country for over sixty years? In Search of s6e1 … Jesse James, History 1981
Texas 1983: I killed them in every way there is except poison. The Confession Killer I: Everything Except Poison, Lucas, Netflix 2019
Either they found the world’s worst serial killer or it was the biggest hoax in American criminal justice history. ibid. dude