Introduction: Moment of Truth
1. Kessler, Glenn, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “President Trump Has Made 10,796 False or Misleading Claims over 869 Days,” Washington Post, June 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/10/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/.
2. Kessler, Glenn, “A Year of Unprecedented Deception: Trump Averaged 15 False Claims a Day in 2018,” Washington Post, December 30, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/30/year-unprecedented-deception-trump-averaged-false-claims-day/.
3. Kessler, Glenn, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “President Trump Has Made More Than 5,000 False or Misleading Claims,” Washington Post, September 13, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/13/president-trump-has-made-more-than-false-or-misleading-claims/.
The Origin of the Specious
4. Dekker, Thomas, The Seven Deadly Sins of London (Edward Arber, 1879), 21.
5. de Montaigne, Michel, The Essays of Montaigne, Complete, Translated by Charles Cotton, Project Gutenberg, 2006, available at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0009.
6. Machiavelli, Niccolò, “Letter #179, to Franceso Guicciardini, 17 May 1521,” quoted in Dallas G. Denery II, The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment (Princeton University Press, 2015), 258.
7. Quoted in Paul V. Trovillo, “History of Lie Detection,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 29, no. 6 (1938–1939): 849.
8. See Trovillo; also Henry Charles Lea, Superstition and Force, 3rd ed., rev. (Henry C. Lea, 1878), 295; and Ali Ibrahim Khan, “On the Trial by Ordeal, among the Hindus,” in Sir William Jones, Supplemental Volumes Containing the Whole of the Asiatick Researches (G.G. and J. Robinson, 1801), 172.
9. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, Adventures in Error (R. M. McBride & Company, 1936), 7, available at https://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89094310885.
10. Sebeok, Thomas A., “Can Animals Lie?” in I Think I Am a Verb (Springer, 1986), 128.
11. Angier, Natalie, “A Highly Evolved Propensity for Deceit,” New York Times, December 22, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/science/23angi.html.
12. De Waal, F. B., “Intentional Deception in Primates,” Evolutionary Anthropology Issues News and Reviews 1, no. 3 (1992): 90.
13. Byrne, Richard W., and Nadia Corp, “Neocortex Size Predicts Deception Rate in Primates,” Proceedings: Biological Sciences 271, no. 1549 (2004).
14. Talwar, Victoria, “Development of Lying and Cognitive Abilities,” in The Oxford Handbook of Lying, ed. Jörg Meibauer (Oxford University Press, 2018), 401.
15. Feldman, Robert, Liar: The Truth About Lying (Ebury Publishing, 2009), chapter 1, Kindle.
Old Fake News
16. Franklin, Benjamin, Poor Richard’s Almanack and Other Writings (Dover Publications, 2012), 55.
17. Unlike quite a lot of quotes attributed to Twain, he did at least say something very similar: “I can understand perfectly how the report of my illness got about, I have even heard on good authority that I was dead. James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration. The report of my poverty is harder to deal with.” Frank Marshall White, “Mark Twain Amused,” New York Journal, June 2, 1897, reproduced in Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews, ed. Gary Scharnhorst (University of Alabama Press, 2006).
18. “Alan Abel, Satirist Created Campaign to Clothe Animals,” New York Times, January 2, 1980, 39.
19. “Obituary Disclosed as Hoax,” New York Times, January 4, 1980, 15.
20. Fox, Margalit, “Alan Abel, Hoaxer Extraordinaire, Is (on Good Authority) Dead at 94,” New York Times, September 17, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/obituaries/alan-abel-dies.html.
21. See, for example, Suzette Smith, “The Day We Thought Jeff Goldblum Died,” Portland Mercury, June 22, 2016, https://www.portlandmercury.com/The-Jeff-Goldblum-Issue/2016/06/22/18265356/the-day-we-thought-jeff-goldblum-died.
22. Regal, Brian, and Frank J. Esposito, The Secret History of the Jersey Devil (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), chapter 2, Kindle.
23. “Benjamin Franklin,” Wikipedia, s.v. “Benjamin Franklin,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin, accessed February 24, 2019.
24. Stowell, Marion Barber, “American Almanacs and Feuds,” Early American Literature 9, no. 3 (1975): 276–85, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25070683.
25. Quoted in Stowell, “American Almanacs and Feuds.”
26. Franklin, Benjamin, Poor Richard’s Almanack and Other Writings (Dover Publications, 2013), 28–9.
27. Swift, Jonathan, Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers (Amazon Digital Services, 2012), 6, Kindle.
28. Stowell, “American Almanacs and Feuds.”
29. Leeds, Titan, quoted in Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 30–31.
30. Pettegree, Andrew, The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know about Itself (Yale University Press, 2014), 2.
31. Pettegree, The Invention of News, 107.
32. Dittmar, Jeremiah, and Skipper Seabold, “Gutenberg’s Moving Type Propelled Europe Towards the Scientific Revolution,” LSE Business Review, March 19, 2019, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2019/03/19/gutenbergs-moving-type-propelled-europe-towards-the-scientific-revolution/.
33. Schröder, Thomas, “The Origins of the German Press,” in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A. Baron (Routledge, 2001), 123.
34. Van Groesen, Michiel, “Reading Newspapers in the Dutch Golden Age,” Media History 22, nos. 3–4 (2016): 336.
35. Schröder, “The Origins of the German Press,” 123.
36. Schröder, “The Origins of the German Press,” 137.
37. Baillet, Adrien, Jugemens des sçavans sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs (1685), quoted in Ann Blair, “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550–1700,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 1 (2003): 11.
38. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (EGO Books, 2008), loc. 1337–1347, Kindle.
39. Burton, Robert, The Anatomy of Melancholy, loc. 1491–1492, Kindle. The first phrase is in Latin (“Quis tam avidus librorum helluo”); translation per George Hugo Tucker, “Justus Lipsius and the Cento Form,” in Erik De Bom et al., (Un)masking the Realities of Power: Justus Lipsius and the Dynamics of Political Writing in Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2010), 166.
40. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, loc. 1376–1379, Kindle.
41. Dooley, Brendan, “News and Doubt in Early Modern Culture,” in Dooley and Baron, The Politics of Information, 275.
42. O’Neill, Lindsay, “Dealing with Newsmongers: News, Trust, and Letters in the British World, ca. 1670–1730,” Huntington Library Quarterly 76, no. 2 (2013): 215–233.
43. Hadfield, Andrew, “News of the Sussex Dragon,” in Simon F. Davies and Puck Fletcher, News in Early Modern Europe—Currents and Connections (Brill, 2014), 85–86.
44. Quoted in Hadfield, “News of the Sussex Dragon,” 88.
45. Quoted in Markman Ellis, Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, vol. 4 (Routledge, 2006), chapter 6.
46. James II, “By the King, a Proclamation. To Restrain the Spreading of False News,” October 26, 1688, University of Oxford Text Archive, http://tei.it.ox.ac.uk/tcp/Texts-HTML/free/A87/A87488.
47. From the Craftsman, July 17, 1734, quoted in Daniel Woolf, “News, History and the Construction of the Present in Early Modern England,” in Dooley and Baron, The Politics of Information, 100.
48. Steiner, Prudence L., “Benjamin Franklin Biblical Hoaxes,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 131, no. 2 (1987): 183–196.
The Misinformation Age
49. “Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel, L.L.D. F.R.S. &c. At the Cape of Good Hope [From Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science],” New York Sun, August 25, 1835; text from the Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/text/display/the_great_moon_hoax_of_1835_text.
50. Goodman, Matthew, The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (Basic Books, 2008), Kindle.
51. “The Great Moon Hoax,” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax.
52. Griggs, William N., The Celebrated “Moon Story,” Its Origin and Incidents; with a Memoir of the Author, and an Appendix (Bunnell and Price, 1852), 23–25.
53. Poe, Edgar Allan, “Richard Adams Locke,” in Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Delphi Classics, 2015), 1950.
54. The Herald’s name changes go as follows: it was the Morning Herald from May to August 1835, became just the Herald in late August, and went back to the Morning Herald in May 1837, before finally settling on the New York Herald in September 1840. See Louis H. Fox, “New York City Newspapers, 1820–1850: A Bibliography,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 21, no. 1/2 (1927): 52, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24292637.
55. Goodman, Matthew, The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (Basic Books, 2008), Kindle.
56. “The Great Moon Hoax,” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax.
57. Phillips, Tom, “25 Things That Will Definitely Happen in the General Election Campaign,” BuzzFeed, January 27, 2015, https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/topless-barry-for-prime-minister.
58. Tucher, Andie, “Those Slippery Snake Stories,” Humanities 36, no. 3 (May/June 2015), https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/mayjune/feature/those-slippery-snake-stories.
59. Tucher, Andie, “The True, the False, and the ‘Not Exactly Lying,’” in Literature and Journalism: Inspirations, Intersections and Inventions from Ben Franklin to Stephen Colbert, ed. Mark Canada (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 91–118.
60. Hills, William H., “Advice to Newspaper Correspondents III: Some Hints on Style,” The Writer, June 1887, quoted in Tucher, “The True, the False,” 93.
61. Hills, William H., “Advice to Newspaper Correspondents IV: Faking,” The Writer, November 1887, quoted in Tucher, “The True, the False,” 93.
62. Shuman, Edwin L., Steps into Journalism: Helps and Hints for Young Writers (1894), quoted in Tucher, “The True, the False,” 95.
63. MacDougall, Curtis D., Hoaxes (Dover Publications, 1958), 4.
64. MacDougall, Hoaxes, 4.
65. Khomami, Nadia, “Disco’s Saturday Night Fiction,” Observer, June 26, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jun/26/lie-heart-disco-nik-cohn-tribal-rites-saturday-night-fever.
66. “Railways and Revolvers in Georgia,” The Times, October 15, 1856, 9.
67. Untitled article, column 4, “It is assumed by the myriads who sit in judgement...” The Times, October 16, 1856, 6.
68. Quoted in E. Merton Coulter, “The Great Georgia Railway Disaster Hoax on the London Times,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 56, no. 1, 1972.
69. Crawford, Martin, “The Great Georgia Railway Disaster Hoax Revisited,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 58, no. 3, 1974.
70. “The Southern States of America,” The Times, August 27, 1857, 8.
71. “Comet’s Poisonous Tail,” New York Times, February 8, 1910, 1.
72. “Some Driven to Suicide,” New York Times, May 19, 1910, 2.
73. Alexander, Stian, “Croydon Cat Killer Has Widened Brutal Spree around the M25, Say Police,” Daily Mirror, July 13, 2016, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/croydon-cat-killer-widened-brutal-8414154.
74. Smith, Patrick, “The Met Police Spent More Than 2,000 Hours Investigating The ‘Croydon Cat Killer,’” BuzzFeed, December 18, 2018, https://www.buzzfeed.com/patricksmith/operation-takahe-costs-police-hours.
75. “Mattoon Gets Jitters from Gas Attacks,” Chicago Herald-American, September 10, 1944, quoted in Robert Bartholomew and Hilary Evans, Panic Attacks: Media Manipulation and Mass Delusion (The History Press, 2004).
76. “On the Contrary,” New Yorker, December 9, 2002, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/12/09/on-the-contrary.
77. https://twitter.com/baltimoresun/status/1028118771192528897—the wall gave a date of 1953; it was actually from 1946.
78. Mencken, H. L., “Melancholy Reflections,” Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1926, 74.
79. Mencken, “Melancholy Reflections,” 74.
80. Mencken, H. L., “A Neglected Anniversary,” New York Evening Mail, December 28, 1917.
81. Stefansson, Adventures in Error, 288–90.
82. Hersey, John, “Mr. President IV: Ghosts in the White House,” New Yorker, April 28, 1951, 44–45, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1951/04/28/mr-president-ghosts-in-the-white-house.
83. Truman, Harry S., “Address in Philadelphia at the American Hospital Association Convention,” September 16, 1952, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers.
84. Fleischman, Sandra, “Builders’ Winning Play: A Royal Flush,” Washington Post, November 24, 2001; and Andrea Sachs, “Presidents’ Day 101,” Washington Post, February 15, 2004.
85. Mencken, H. L., “Hymn to the Truth,” Chicago Tribune, July 25, 1926, 61.
The Lie of the Land
86. Burton, R. F., “The Kong Mountains,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography 4, no. 8 (1882): 484–86, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1800716.
87. There are only two maps known to have the Latin phrase Hic sunt dracones on them, both from the early 1500s. The phrase is never known to have appeared in English. See Meeri Kim, “Oldest Globe to Depict the New World May Have Been Discovered,” Washington Post, August 19, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/oldest-globe-to-depict-the-new-world-may-have-been-discovered/2013/08/19/503b2b4a-06b4-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html.
88. Rennell, James, “A Map, Shewing the Progress of Discovery & Improvement, in the Geography of North Africa,” 1798, Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, DC, https://www.loc.gov/item/2009583841/.
89. Bassett, Thomas J., and Philip W. Porter, “‘From the Best Authorities’: The Mountains of Kong in the Cartography of West Africa,” Journal of African History 32, no. 3 (1991): 367–413, www.jstor.org/stable/182661.
90. Park, Mungo, Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa (Amazon Digital Services, 2012), 181, Kindle.
91. Rennell, James, Proceedings of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa (W. Bulmer & Co, 1798), 63.
92. Brooke-Hitching, Edward, The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps (Simon & Schuster UK, 2016).
93. Burton, “The Kong Mountains,” 484–86.
94. Clapperton, Hugh, Richard Lander, and Abraham V. Salamé, Journal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa, from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo (John Murray, 1829), 21.
95. Bassett, Thomas J., and Philip W. Porter, “‘From the Best Authorities’: The Mountains of Kong in the Cartography of West Africa,” in The Journal of African History 32, no. 3 (1991): 373.
96. Binger, Louis-Gustave, “Du Niger au Golfe de Guinee par Kong,” in Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), 1889, quoted in Bassett and Porter, ‘“From the Best Authorities’: The Mountains of Kong in the Cartography of West Africa,” in The Journal of African History 32, no. 3 (1991): 395.
97. Adams, Percy G., Travelers and Travel Liars 1660–1800 (Dover Publications, 1980), 158–161.
98. Brooke-Hitching, Edward, The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps (Simon & Schuster UK, 2016), 166.
99. Campbell, Matthew, “Oil Boom Fuels Mystery of the Missing Island in the Mexican Gulf,” The Times, September 6, 2009, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/oil-boom-fuels-mystery-of-the-missing-island-in-the-mexican-gulf-xg7tcsdbcwz.
100. “How, Modestly, Cook Hoaxed the World,” New York Times, December 22, 1909, 4, https://www.nytimes.com/1909/12/22/archives/how-modestly-cook-hoaxed-the-world-turned-a-smiling-face-to-critics.html.
The Scam Manifesto
101. “The King of Con-Men,” Economist, December 22, 2012, https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2012/12/22/the-king-of-con-men.
102. “On the first day March, 1822, the price will be advanced One Shilling and Sixpence per Acre, and in the same proportion every three months hereafter.” From “North America,” Perthshire Courier, December 20, 1821, 1.
103. The Times, July 12, 1822, 1.
104. Strangeways, Thomas, Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, Including the Territory of Poyais (1822).
105. Conzemius, Eduard, “Ethnographical Survey of the Miskito and Sumu Indians of Honduras and Nicaragua,” Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 106 (1932): 1; quoted in V. Wolfgang von Hagen, “The Mosquito Coast of Honduras and Its Inhabitants,” Geographical Review 30, no. 2 (1940): 252.
106. Compare the map in Sketch of the Mosquito Coast with both modern maps and the map in Hagen, “The Mosquito Coast,” 240.
107. Raista Eco Lodge is apparently “community based tourism at its best”: “Laguna de Ibans,” Lonely Planet, https://www.lonelyplanet.com/honduras/hotels/raista-eco-lodge/a/lod/9c119bd1-1ee4-4e60-8a53-e9ba4279a71e/1328476.
108. Manchester Guardian, October 25, 1823. Republished as “Settlers Duped into Believing in ‘Land Flowing with Milk and Honey,’” Guardian, October 25, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/oct/25/gregor-macgregor-poyais-settlers-scam.
109. Rafter, Michael, Memoirs of Gregor M’Gregor: Comprising a Sketch of the Revolution in New Grenada and Venezuela [...] (J. J. Stockdale, 1820), 19.
110. Brown, Matthew, “Inca, Sailor, Soldier, King: Gregor MacGregor and the Early Nineteenth-Century Caribbean,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 24, no. 1 (2005): 55.
111. Rafter, Memoirs of Gregor M’Gregor, 20.
112. Rafter, Memoirs of Gregor M’Gregor, 19.
113. Weatherhead, W. D., An Account of the Late Expedition against the Isthmus of Darien under the Command of Sir Gregor M’Gregor (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821), 26.
114. Jamaica Gazette, July 17, 1819, quoted in Brown, “Inca, Sailor, Soldier, King,” 59.
115. Rafter, Memoirs of Gregor M’Gregor, 338.
116. For more of this, see Brown, “Inca, Sailor, Soldier, King.”
117. London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, Etc. 315, February 1 (1823): 70.
118. Possibly worth quoting this at length: “The savage criticism on his Endymion, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.” Percy B. Shelley, preface to Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, Etc. (1821).
119. “Art. VIII,” in Quarterly Review 28 (October 1822–January 1823): 157–61.
120. Frankel, Tamar, The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle (Oxford University Press, 2012), 111.
121. Frankel, The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle, 89.
122. Frankel, The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle, 85.
123. Konnikova, Maria, The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time (Canongate Books, 2016), 8.
124. Kerenyi, Norbert, Stories of a Survivor (Xlibris, 2011), 280.
125. McCarthy, Joe, “The Master Impostor: An Incredible Tale,” Life, January 28, 1952, 81.
126. “‘Master Impostor’ Now May Try to Be Just Himself,” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, January 8, 1956, 10A.
127. Associated Press, “Ferdinand Waldo Demara, 60, an Impostor in Varied Fields,” New York Times, June 9, 1982, B16.
128. Crichton, Robert, The Great Impostor (Random House, 1959), 103.
129. Alexopoulos, Golfo, “Portrait of a Con Artist as a Soviet Man,” Slavic Review 57, no. 4 (Winter, 1998): 775.
130. Zaleski, Eugène, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, 1933–1952 (University of North Carolina Press, 1980), quoted in Alexopoulos, “Portrait of a Con Artist,” 777.
131. Alexopoulos, “Portrait of a Con Artist,” 781.
132. Quoted in Alexopoulos, “Portrait of a Con Artist,” 788.
133. Spurling, Hilary, La Grande Thérèse: The Greatest Swindle of the Century (Profile Books, 2000), 24.
134. Quoted in Spurling, La Grande Thérèse, 44.
135. Martin, Benjamin F., The Hypocrisy of Justice in the Belle Epoque (Louisiana State University Press, 1984), 80.
136. Quoted in Spurling, La Grande Thérèse, 48.
Lying in State
137. Almond, Cuthbert, “Oates’s Plot,” Catholic Encyclopedia, https:// www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/oatess-plot.
138. Marshall, Alan, “Titus Oates,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, January 3, 2008, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-20437.
139. Pollock, Sir John, The Popish Plot: A Study in the History of the Reign of Charles II (Duckworth & Co., 1903), 3.
140. Kopel, David, “The Missing 18 1/2 Minutes: Presidential Destruction of Incriminating Evidence,” Washington Post, June 16, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/06/16/the-missing-18-12-minutes-presidential-destruction-of-incriminating-evidence/.
141. McDonald, Iverach, The History of the Times: Volume V, Struggles in Life and Peace, 1939–1966 (Times Books, 1984), 268–269.
142. “Crucifixion of Canadians (Alleged),” Hansard, May 19, 1915, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1915/may/19/crucifixion-of-canadians-alleged#S5CV0071P0-08398.
143. “Through German Eyes,” The Times, April 16, 1917, 7.
144. “Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle” [before April 22, 1782], Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-37-02-0132. Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin Volume 37: March 16 through August 15, 1782, ed. Ellen R. Cohn (Yale University Press, 2003), 184–196.
145. Mulford, Carla, “Benjamin Franklin’s Savage Eloquence: Hoaxes from the Press at Passy, 1782,” Proceedings of the Amercian Philosophical Society 152, no. 4 (2008): 497.
146. “I send enclosed a Paper, of the Veracity of which I have some doubt, as to the Form, but none as to the Substance, for I believe the Number of People actually scalp’d in this murdering War by the Indians to exceed what is mention’d in the Invoice.” See “From Benjamin Franklin to John Adams, 22 April 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-37-02-0133. Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin Volume 37, 196–97.
147. Dowd, Gregory Evans, Groundless: Rumors, Legends and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 170–172.
Funny Business
148. Manes, Stephen, Gates: How Microsoft’s Mogul Reinvented an Industry—and Made Himself the Richest Man in America (Cadwallader & Stern, 1993), chapter 5, Kindle.
149. Merchant, Brian, The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone (Bantam Press, 2017), 367. It’s rather noticeable, when you watch the video of the launch, that, when Jobs makes staged phone calls to Jony Ive and Phil Schiller, neither of them is actually using an iPhone—they both have old-school flip phones. See YouTube video, 25:34, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hUIxyE2Ns8.
150. MacRory, Henry, Ultimate Folly: The Rises and Falls of Whitaker Wright (Biteback Publishing, 2018), chapter 7, Kindle.
151. Quoted in MacRory, Ultimate Folly, chapter 3, Kindle.
152. Quoted in MacRory, Ultimate Folly, chapter 2, Kindle.
153. Mackay, Charles, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1852, Kindle.
154. Oppenheim, A. Leo, Letters from Mesopotamia (University of Chicago Press, 1967), 82–83.
155. All quotes in this passage are from Michael Rice, The Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf (Routledge, 2002), 276–78.
156. Levi, Steven C., “P. T. Barnum and the Feejee Mermaid,” in Western Folklore 36, no. 2 (1977): 149–54.
157. Reiss, Benjamin, “P. T. Barnum, Joice Heth and Antebellum Spectacles of Race,” in American Quarterly 51, no. 1 (1999): 78–107.
158. Lee, R. Alton, The Bizarre Careers of John R. Brinkley (University Press of Kentucky, 2002), Kindle.
Ordinary Popular Delusions
159. Rowlatt, Justin, “Gatwick Drone Attack Possible Inside Job, Say Police,” BBC News, April 14, 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47919680.
160. “Gatwick Drones Pair ‘No Longer Suspects,’” BBC News, December 23, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20181223172230/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46665615. The BBC subsequently edited the article to remove the police quote.
161. Rowlatt, “Gatwick Drone Attack.”
162. See the interactive map at Brett Holman, “Mapping the 1913 Phantom Airship Scare,” Airminded (blog), https://airminded.org/2013/05/03/mapping-the-1913-phantom-airship-scare/.
163. Hirst, Francis Wrigley, The Six Panics and Other Essays (Methuen, 1913), 104.
164. Bartholomew, Robert E., Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking (Prometheus Books, 2003), chapter 9, Kindle.
165. Mattalaer, Johan J. and Wolfgang Jilek “Koro—The Psychological Disappearance of the Penis,” Journal of Sexual Medicine 4, no. 5 (2007).
166. Bartholomew, Robert E., A Colorful History of Popular Delusions (Prometheus Books, 2015), 37.
167. Barzilay, Tzafrir, “Well-Poisoning Accusations in Medieval Europe: 1250–1500” (doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 2016), 95, https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8VH5P6T.
168. Gui, Bernard, Vita Joannis XXII, 163, quoted in Barzilay, “Well-Poisoning,” 110.
169. Leeson, P. T., and J. W. Russ, “Witch Trials,” Economic Journal 128, no. 613 (2018).
170. “Posse Sets Out as ‘Jersey Devil’ Reappears,” New York Times, December 19, 1929, 14.
171. “Posse Sets Out as ‘Jersey Devil’ Reappears,” New York Times, December 19, 1929, 14.
172. Regal, Brian, and Frank J. Esposito, The Secret History of the Jersey Devil (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), Kindle.
Conclusion: Toward a Truthier Future
173. Breves, Dylan, “Coati,” Wikipedia, revision as of 02.36 UTC, 12 July 2008, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coati&diff=next&oldid=224679361, accessed June 29, 2019. (Previous absence of the term as per results of date-limited searches on Google, Google Scholar and Google Books.)
174. Randall, Eric, “How a Racoon Became an Aardvark,” New Yorker, May 19, 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-a-raccoon-became-an-aardvark; Sightings in the press include: Williams, Amanda, “Hunt for the runaway aardvark: Lady McAlpine calls on public to help find her lost ring-tailed coati,” Daily Mail, April 8, 2013, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305602/Hunt-runaway-aardvark-LadyMcAlpine-calls-public-help-lost-ring-tailed-coati.html; Leach, Ben, “Scorpions, Brazilian aardvarks and wallabies all found living wild in UK, study finds,” Daily Telegraph, June 21, 2010, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/7841796/Scorpions-Brazilianaardvarks-and-wallabies-all-found-living-wild-in-UK-study-finds.html; Brown, Jonathan, “From wallabies to chipmunks, the exotic creatures thriving in the UK,” Independent, June 21, 2010, https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/from-wallabies-tochipmunks-the-exotic-creatures-thriving-in-the-uk-2006096.html (although this reference is only to “aardvarks”).
175. “Scorpions and Parakeets ‘Found Living Wild in UK,’” BBC News, June 21, 2010, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10365422. You’ll notice that several of these are versions of the same story, about non-native species living wild in the UK. These were all based on a “report” by a University of Hull academic, commissioned for PR purposes by Eden, a television channel; it seems likely that the mistake was included in the original press release and copied from there, although I haven’t been able to track down the original press release.
176. Nadal, James, “Brazilian Aardvark on the Loose in Marlow,” Bucks Free Press, February 20, 2013, https://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/10240842.brazilian-aardvark-on-the-loose-in-marlow/; Drury, Flora, “So That’s What an Aardvark Looks Like,” Worcester News, June 9, 2011, https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/9072841.so-thats-what-an-aardvark-looks-like/.
177. “Photo of the Day: Wild Fire,” Time, September 20, 2013, https://time.com/3802583/wild-fire/; “An Unexpected Visitor in the Volcano,” National Geographic, March 7, 2013, https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/03/07/an-unexpected-visitor-in-the-volcano/; Platt, John R., “Brazil Plans to Clone Its Endangered Species,” Extinction Countdown, Scientific American, November 14, 2012, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/brazil-plans-to-clone-its-endangered-species/.
178. Cançado, Paulo Henrique Duarte, et al., “Current Status of Ticks and Tick-Host Relationship in Domestic and Wild Animals from Pantanal Wetlands in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil,” Iheringia. Série Zoologia 107, supplement (May 2, 2017) https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1678-4766e2017110.
179. Henderson, Caspar, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary (University of Chicago Press, 2013), 10.
180. Safier, Neil, “Beyond Brazilian Nature: The Editorial Itineraries of Marcgraf and Piso’s Historia Naturalis Brasiliae,” in The Legacy of Dutch Brazil, ed. Michiel van Groesen (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 179, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107447776.011.
181. “David Attenborough and BBC Take Us to Hotel Armadillo—in Pictures,” Guardian, April 5, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2017/apr/05/david-attenborough-and-bbc-take-us-to-hotel-armadillo-in-pictures.
182. Kolbe, Andreas, “Happy birthday: Jimbo Wales’ sweet 16 Wikipedia fails”, The Register, January 16, 2017, https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday_fails/.
183. Allen, Nick, “Wikipedia, the 25-Year-Old Student and the Prank that Fooled Leveson,” Daily Telegraph, December 5, 2012, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/9723296/Wikipedia-the-25-year-old-student-and-the-prank-that-fooled-Leveson.html.
184. Wikipedia, s.v. “Wikipedia: List of citogenesis incidents,” accessed June 30, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents.
185. Phillips, Tom, Truth: A Brief History of Total Bullshit (Wildfire, 2019), 19.
186. Dash, Mike, “The Origin of the Tale that Gavrilo Princip Was Eating a Sandwich When He Assassinated Franz Ferdinand,” Smithsonian Magazine, September 15, 2011, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gavrilo-princips-sandwich-79480741/.
187. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, Adventures in Error (R. M. McBride & Company, 1936), 16, available at https://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89094310885.
188. Franklin, Benjamin, “Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and other commissioners, charged by the King of France, with the examination of the animal magnetism, as now practised at Paris,” p. xvii, Wellcome Library, available at https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/b20595244.