Hoax! – Details, episodes & analysis

For a few tense hours in October 2009, the entire world watched as a homemade aircraft purportedly carrying a 6-year-old boy drifted in mid-air on live television. When the balloon landed, there was no boy inside.

Sources: Wife Swap Season 5, Episode 1: “Heene/Martell”
Wife Swap Season 5, Episode 18: “Heene/Silver”

The video that I showed Dana of the YourShakeDown invention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xAX2Y8-g4g

Compilation of news coverage from the time of the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAlwBcvb9RA

Internet Historian video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWhUvm8SunY&t=1s

Richard Heene’s response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axgyj7g5XZY

The gawker essay: https://www.gawkerarchives.com/5383858/exclusive-i-helped-richard-heene-plan-a-balloon-hoax

Transcripts from 911 and CNN: https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/ng/date/2009-10-21/segment/01

The Denver magazine that cracked the case: https://www.5280.com/the-balloon-boy-hoax-solved/

More reporting:

https://people.com/human-interest/10-years-later-balloon-boy-dad-insists-saga-no-hoax/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345497/Four-years-Balloon-Boy-aged-10-finally-set-worlds-youngest-heavy-metal-band-brothers.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/us/19balloon.html

https://nypost.com/2025/02/22/us-news/infamous-balloon-boy-starts-tiny-home-building-business-in-florida/

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In 1917, two young cousins returned from the creek behind their house with thrilling news: they had photographed fairies! Their parents were skeptical, but soon the photos of the "Cottingley Fairies" were circulated, eventually finding a champion in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.   

Sources:
 ‘Fairies Photographed: An Epoch-Making Event.’ Strand Magazine, 1920
'The Coming of the Fairies' by Arthur Conan Doyle (London: Hodder & Stoughton)
‘That Astonishing Affair of the Cottingley Fairies,' by G. Crawley. British Journal of Photography
https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/power-at-play-in-paranormal-history/ 
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/father-and-son-who-believed-faeries

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Hoax! is a new show from Dana Schwartz (Noble Blood) and Lizzie Logan (Vulture, Reductress). Listen to the first episode on August 4th.

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Samuel Ireland was an avid collector, the type of man who boasted and tried to make himself look important. His son, William Henry, just wanted to make his dad proud of him.  

Sources: 
The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare, by Doug Stewart
Shakespeare and Others by S. Schoenbaum
'The Poet's Hand,' Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Henry-Ireland
https://www.npr.org/2010/06/19/127931669/william-henry-irelands-great-shakespearean-hoax

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Two bored poets decide to prank their least favorite snobby magazine editor by submitting intentionally bad poetry to his literary journal and watching with mirth as he and his fellows delight in publishing it.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m3bytB5ULw
https://theconversation.com/the-greatest-poet-who-never-lived-ern-malley-at-80-234905
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4533011085
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-29/ern-malley-literary-hoax-angry-penguins-1944/100412208
https://www.ernmalley.net/
https://www.literaturelust.com/post/the-great-poet-ern-malley-who-never-existed
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/harris-maxwell-henley-max-29615
https://quirosonline.com/jindyworobaks-part-one/
https://time.com/archive/6821805/books-angry-penguins/
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/33/wertheim.php
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcauley-james-phillip-10896
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stewart-harold-frederick-29423
http://jacketmagazine.com/17/fact2.html

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People traveling through the west by train in the 1800s expected shootouts and danger and cowboys. The citizens of Palisade gave it to them. 

Sources:
"Westward Hoax: The Secret History of Palisade, Nevada," Very Special Episodes.
Fakes, Frauds & Other Malarkey by Kathryn Lindskoog.
"Mark Twain's Nevada Newspaper Hoaxes" Andrew R. Giarrelli.
Mark Twain's writing for the Territorial Enterprise (1851-1865)

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A painting purportedly by Leonardo Da Vinci himself is discovered at a little-known auction house in New Orleans in 2005; a decade later, it fetches the highest price for a work of art ever sold at auction.

Sources:
The Lost Leonardo
Savior For Sale
https://therenaissanceworkshop.com/leonardo-da-vinci/
https://www.mos.org/leonardo/biography.html
https://www.rct.uk/collection/912525/the-drapery-of-a-chest-and-sleeve
https://www.rct.uk/collection/912524/the-drapery-of-a-sleeve
https://web.archive.org/web/20200524085434/https://www.history.com/news/how-a-priceless-da-vinci-masterwork-disappeared-from-view-for-centuries
https://salvatormundirevisited.com/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/sep/09/lost-leonardo-da-vinci-film-solved-mystery-worlds-most-expensive-painting-salvator-mundi
https://apnews.com/general-news-91be03753b7d4dbbacfc4bb0d1dcca3d
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/mideast/how-saudi-royal-crushed-his-rivals-shakedown-ritz-carlton-n930396
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/arts/design/salvator-mundi-louvre-abu-dhabi.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/world/middleeast/saudi-crown-prince-salvator-mundi.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGsUFvwgvCo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P64rDJkX4HY
https://artwatch.org.uk/two-developments-in-the-no-show-louvre-abu-dhabi-leonardo-salvator-mundi-saga/
https://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/menteleonardo/emdl.asp

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At the height of the Cold War, a "leaked Top Secret Memo" from inside the government proposed a controversial and radical idea: the worst thing that could happen to humanity was worldwide ... peace.

Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/30/us/l-c-lewin-writer-of-satire-of-government-plot-dies-at-82.html
Ghost of Iron Mountain by Phil Tinline
JFK (1991, O. Stone)
https://hvmag.com/life-style/a-history-of-iron-mountain-an-information-storage-facility-in-germantown-ny/
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-many-lives-of-iron-mountain
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/16/iron-mountain-hoax-anti-vietnam-war-satire-conspiracy-theories

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The court anatomist returned the King George I with astonishing news: a woman named Mary Toft has been giving birth.... to rabbits. 

Sources: 
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/07/05/an-extraordinary-delivery-of-rabbits/
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mary-toft-gave-birth-to-rabbits
https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/exhibns/month/aug2009.html
https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/80/1/33/665070?login=false
https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/238/1/43/4822513?redirectedFrom=fulltext
https://www.godalmingmuseum.co.uk/articles/mary-tofts

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It's the Civil War, and the nation is in deep mourning. William Mumler of Boston has something to help: "spirit photographs" of you and a deceased loved one. Is it a scam, or is technology now capable of traversing the thin line between life and death? Eventually, it will be up to the court to decide. 

Sources:
Special thanks to u/Naturalog on Reddit and Stephen Berkman
'The Apparitionists' by Peter Manseau
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/meet-mr-mumler-man-who-captured-lincolns-ghost-camera-180965090/ 
https://www.vox.com/22918581/mumler-victorian-spirit-ghost-photography
https://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=sat2698811#page/33/mode/1up 
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/when-cameras-took-pictures-of-ghosts/281010/ 

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