Showing posts with label hoax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hoax. Show all posts

November 27 - Why-oh-why-oh-why???

Posted on November 27, 2020


Today is the anniversary of a hoax!

On this date in 1809, at 5:00 a.m., a chimney sweep arrived at 54 Berners Street, Westminster, London, England.

A maid answered the door and told him that they hadn't ordered a sweep! His services were not required. The maid probably thought that the sweep had got the wrong address - but a few minutes later another sweep arrived - and then another and another. Twelve chimney sweeps who hadn't been ordered arrived early that morning and had to be sent away.

But then a huge delivery of coal (that hadn't been ordered) arrived, and wedding cakes... Then doctors, lawyers, vicars, priests - these had been told that someone in the house was dying and needed medicine, wills, or last rites! Then fishmongers, shoemakers, and other tradesmen... A dozen pianos and an organ were delivered and sent away! Most startling of all, in my mind: The Governor of the Bank of England, the Duke of York, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Lord Mayor of London - all these important folks arrived, claiming to have an appointment that had never been made.



What was going on?

The street was super congested with carts and carriages - and soon onlookers. Two onlookers were Theodore Hook and Samuel Beazley, who were watching from the house directly across from 54 Berners Street. 

Soon police officers had to be stationed at each end of the street to stop deliveries and visits before they could dive into the narrow street and cause more confusion. A suprisingly large chunk of London basically came to a standstill!

Why was all of this happening?

I will explain how it happened, but you may still be wondering why-oh-why-oh-why! 

Theodore Hooke

You see, Hook made a bet with his friend Beazley: he said he
could transform any house in London into the most talked-about address in a week.

Then he wrote THOUSANDS of letters in the name of the owner of 54 Berners, a woman named Mrs. Tottenham. Of course the letters were order things like coal and pianos and wedding cakes, or they were ordering services like will making and chimney sweeping. Each letter stated recommendations from "people of quality." 

Of course, this sort of hoax has real consequences. People lost time and money over this "joke." Hook would have faced criminal charges - except for the fact that his guilt was never discovered.



Also on this date:







































Birthday of artist Frederic Crowninshield


Maaveerar Naal in Sri Lanka






You're Welcoming Day
(Friday After Thanksgiving)








Black Friday
(Friday After Thanksgiving)





Buy Nothing Day
(Friday After Thanksgiving)






Sinkie Day
(Friday After Thanksgiving)







(Friday After Thanksgiving)
(Friday After Thanksgiving)
(Friday After Thanksgiving)
(Friday After Thanksgiving)

(Friday After Thanksgiving)





Plan ahead:


Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

August 27 - Go outside and check - Mars is NOT the size of the Moon tonight!

Posted on August 27, 2018


A few nights ago, my husband spotted a bright reddish star near the Moon in the South-Southeastern sky. This was shortly after sunset, and there were pretty much no other stars in still-light sky. My husband thought the reddish "star" was actually the planet Venus and wondered why it looked so red.

I followed his pointing finger and knew the star wasn't Venus. I wondered if it could be an airplane that happened to be heading our exact direction, and so we couldn't see movement across the sky. "Or Mars...?" I said.

The question mark was because I didn't think it could be Mars, because it was too bright.

Venus in its Evening Star role.
The reason I knew that it could not be Venus was that Venus is closer to the Sun than we Earthlings are, so it can never appear on the opposite side of the sky from the Sun. When we see Venus in the evening (Evening "Star"), it's a very bright starlike object in the West; when Venus is the Morning "Star," it comes up in the East a few hours before sunrise.

My husband seemed skeptical about all of that, but we soon reached a spot when a break in the trees allowed us to see the still-glowing Western horizon, and in those Western skies we could clearly see the planet Venus, even brighter and distinctly whiter than the red something my husband had spotted.

I looked back. The red something couldn't be a plane - it still hadn't moved or grown in size. It must be Mars - but why was it so bright?

When I checked out our observations using Google, I discovered that Mars is brighter in Earth's skies right now because it is closer to the Earth. The closest approach of the two planets - closest in 15 or so years - occurred on July 27. It was and would remain the second brightest planet in our skies until September 7, when the farther-away but MUCH larger Jupiter would become the second brightest planet again.
Star charts like this one help us to figure out what we are
seeing in our night skies. Notice the directions indicated at
the bottom - West, SouthWest, South, SouthEast.

All those Moons are dated; this tells us what phase of the
Moon we can expect on what day, and also the relation of the
Moon to the various planets and constellations on each date.

 Double Moon???


When I checked out why Mars seemed so bright, I discovered that there is a "Mars Spectacular" post / meme / whatever that circulates through social media every year around this time. Before Facebook was Facebook, this same story was circulated around through email. The story was that, on August 27, something could be seen that no human had ever seen before -

 - Mars would be SO big and so bright, it would appear as large as the Moon - 

 - and of course the Moon would still be the Moon, so we would see two Moons!!

 Of course this post or meme would generally have a photo showing Earthly skies with two Moons.

 Of course, this is impossible. I wondered if it could be just a giant misunderstanding, and it turns out that the Mars Spectacular is based on some half-truths, and now we're getting down to why this post is happening today of all days:

 Back on this date in 2003, Mars was closest to Earth as it had been in almost 60,000 years! So that was a much, much rarer sighting!!! But...

 (There's always a "but"...)

 The brightness of Mars on that particular night was only a little bit brighter than what we are now seeing, and Mars still appeared as just a bright, reddish starlike object.

 It was not the size of the Moon - as a matter of fact, it's only 1/140th of the size of the Moon! Of course, it was not nearly the brightness of the Moon, either!!

 This enormous exaggeration of a cool astronomical sighting is a hoax, and it's a hoax that keeps coming back each and every August. Every August people call up astronomers and observatories and astronomy magazines - and they ask about the upcoming Mars Spectacular.

 Sigh.

 As one blogger wrote recently, in answer to a question about whether or not Mars was really going to look like the Moon's twin:

 "[It's] just not true. It’s not true in 2018. It’s never been true. It never will be true."




Also on this date:


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

August 13 – Acrobat Crowned King of Albania - Except It Didn't Happen!

Posted on August 13, 2017

On this date in 1913, Albanian troops crowned a German acrobat as their king!

Or at least, that's what the acrobat, Otto Witte, claimed. 

Here's his story:

Albania had broken away from the Ottoman Empire, and some Albanian Muslims invited a nephew of the Sultan to come to Albania to be crowned the king.

Somehow a circus acrobat named Otto Witte heard about this invitation, and realizing that he looked a lot like that nephew, Witte decided to try to fool the Albanians into crowning HIM king.

Witte said that he traveled to Albania with a circus friend, a sword swallower. And he introduced himself as the nephew and was actually crowned king!

For five days, according to Witte, he lived like a king, enjoyed the harem, and even declared war on Montenegro. When he was found out as an impostor, Witte not only managed to escape, he even claimed that he stole a big chunk of the King's treasury!

Does that whole story sound like fishy to you?

Actually, not only is there no evidence of most of these things happening, the evidence that exists proves that most of these events were impossible!

Why would Otto Witte make up such a crazy story?

First, you should know that he did benefit from the story. In Germany he became famous and was able to make many public appearances billed as the "former King of Albania." (Even his tombstone claims that title!) Some newspapers and magazines believed the story and neglected to fact check - and so they reported his story as truth and as news.


Second, there was may have been something wrong with Witte psychologically - something that made him lie even when the lie was going to hurt him or was going to be discovered to be untrue. A compulsive liar may or may not know he is lying and may or may not benefit from his lies. Maybe the compulsion comes from being unhappy with his ordinary life, a desire to live a more thrilling, dramatic, dangerous life...

Get this, Witte also made another untrue claim: he claimed to have founded a political party in Germany, further claiming that he ran for the presidency in 1925. His various accounts of the first round of the election (what would be the primary election in the U.S.) state that he gained 25,000 to 230,000 votes.

The Germans had election records, of course! None of that was true!

I'd like to assume that good old Otto was not able to help himself; when he opened his mouth, elaborate and detailed lies came out. We can learn a lesson from Otto: there are people in history who have made crazy claims that turned out to be "fake news," so we should be skeptical of unlikely stories until there is corroborating evidence.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)