Getting something to go fake viral requires the right mix of luck, timing, and a dash of what tickles the public’s curiosity. In the first half of the 20th century, newspapers and journals churned out stories that spread like wildfire—only to be revealed later as clever fabrications.
Why These Fake Viral Tales Spread Like Wildfire
10 Nazi Crop Circles
Life on the American home front during World II was fraught with anxiety. With the threat of German attacks looming, mysterious symbols suddenly appeared across farms on the East Coast, sending neighbors into a panic.
Newspapers didn’t help; they printed photographs of strange crop circles, stacked hay bales that seemed to point toward major cities, and sacks of grain arranged in puzzling patterns. One especially eerie picture showed bags of fertilizer forming the numeral “9,” its tail allegedly pointing at a nearby aircraft factory.
The stories did more than frighten farmers—they sparked neighborly feuds. One farmer’s field, identifiable for generations, became the “9” field, and locals accused each other of harboring double agents.
The War Department eventually intervened, offering rational explanations: the fertilizer bags had simply been left to dry after a truck spill, and the arrows were the work of a fish‑and‑game warden creating feeding grounds for birds. Similar incidents occurred in England, where MI5 investigations concluded the markings were harmless coincidences.
9 Daisy Alexander’s Will
In 1949 a sensational story claimed that a San Francisco beachgoer named Jack Wurm found a bottle containing a handwritten will. The note promised the finder and his attorney, Barry Cohen, a share of a massive estate left by Daisy Alexander, supposedly the daughter of Isaac Singer.
According to the tale, Daisy had perished in the London bombings and left a $12 million fortune, but her will was missing. Wurm, thinking it a joke, later learned from a party guest that the name matched Singer’s real daughter, and the story went viral, spawning newspaper features and even sermons warning against dismissing improbable fortunes.
Investigations revealed the document was a forgery. While Singer did have a daughter nicknamed “Daisy,” she died peacefully in 1939, and her actual will was lost. Cohen even consulted a clairvoyant and Daisy’s parrot, to no avail. The estate eventually settled on a 1909 will that left everything to Daisy’s niece and nephew. Wurm passed away in 1987 without ever receiving the promised millions.
8 Fritz Kreisler’s Compositions
Fritz Kreisler, a celebrated violinist of the 1910s, once slipped a few of his own pieces into a Vienna concert program, provoking a chorus of criticism for daring to place his work beside the masters.
He later spun a tale that he had uncovered a hidden cache of forgotten compositions at a remote monastery, purchasing the collection and reviving the “lost” works of Vivaldi and others. Critics applauded his “discovery,” and Kreisler basked in the acclaim of having rescued musical treasures from oblivion.
It wasn’t until his 60th birthday in 1935 that Kreisler confessed: the monastery never existed, and the celebrated pieces were his own inventions. He admitted the ruse was meant to avoid being labeled a composer while still supplying fresh repertoire for his performances.
7 The Old Librarian’s Almanack
Edmund Lester Pearson penned a wildly popular weekly column as “The Librarian” from 1906 to 1920. In 1908 he casually mentioned a nonexistent book titled The Old Librarian’s Almanack. A friend who owned Elm Tree Press suggested turning the joke into reality.
They dug up a 1773 almanac, updated its astronomical data to “predict” events for 1774, and peppered it with witty snippets lifted straight from Pearson’s column. They also invented a fictitious author, Jared Bean, a bachelor who supposedly contributed humor‑laden anecdotes.
The printed version looked authentic enough to fool a few. New York’s The Sun ran the first story about the “discovery,” and other papers, including The Hartford Daily Courant, amplified the tale, even dubbing Bean “the father of almanac humorists.”
The almanac featured bizarre advice—June 30 warned librarians to bar politicians, necromancers, the light‑witted, the senile, anyone with an infectious disease, and even urged suspicion toward women who read frivolous romances. The hoax finally unraveled in 1910 when the journal America linked Pearson to the prank.
6 The Dissolving Bathing Suit
In the 1920s French press, a tale emerged about a British millionaire on the Riviera who had invented a fabric that vanished in salt water. He allegedly handed out the “dissolving” swimsuits to party guests, only to watch them melt away as they plunged into the Mediterranean.
When the newspaper editor demanded a sample, the reporter sent a tin box filled with ground cereal, claiming the real fabric could not survive the salty, humid journey. The hoax was eventually exposed, but variations of the story resurfaced in 1930 with a supposed inventor named Miss Cassie Moss, and later in the 1960s as a French designer’s modesty‑preserving invention.
The absurd claim even found a home in the sensational tabloid Weekly World News, which revived it in 1994 and again in 2004, proving that a fake viral story can enjoy a long, winding afterlife.
5 The Horn Papers
In 1932 W.F. Horn of Topeka mailed newspaper editors a tantalizing letter claiming he had unearthed a trove of family heirlooms: original court records from the first proceedings west of the Alleghenies, rare maps, and diaries dating back to early Pennsylvania settlements.
Horn insisted the fragile originals could not be displayed, offering only his handwritten copies. Newspapers ran the material in weekly installments, and Horn embarked on a speaking tour that dazzled scholars and the public alike.
The papers featured dramatic events—such as the nonexistent Battle of Flint Top in 1748 and a supposed massacre of 12,000 people—citing a mysterious book titled Andrea’s History of Northwest Virginia. The University of Pennsylvania declined to authenticate the collection, so the Greene County Historical Society stepped in, spending $20,000 to purchase it.
Later, Princeton historians and the American Historical Association exposed the fraud: the ink dated to the 1930s, the “COV” letters on the coins matched ordinary Dutch currency, and the lead plates contained high nickel, indicating a Missouri origin. Horn died in 1956, described as “no longer interested” in his papers.
4 The Chesterfield Lepers
In 1934 a rumor roared through the nation that Chesterfield’s cigarette plant in Richmond, Virginia, employed lepers on its production line. Even a personal inspection by the mayor could not quash the panic, and the company spent a decade emphasizing its state‑of‑the‑art equipment and spotless reputation.
The origin of the rumor remained a mystery despite a $25,000 reward. An earlier 1882 warning from Pennsylvania’s The Chester Times had warned that lepers were commonly hired by cigar and cigarette factories, planting the seed for later hysteria.
The scandal later attached itself to another brand, Spud, which supposedly collapsed under the same rumor before being absorbed by Philip Morris. Even soldiers in Vietnam were cautioned that “leper‑licked” cigarettes were a danger.
3 The Fake World War I Photos
Photographs of dramatic aerial dogfights from World I were long thought to be authentic, credited to American RAF serviceman Wesley David Archer and featured in the 1933 volume Death in the Air: The War Diary and Photographs of a Flying Corps Pilot. The images, depicting smoke‑filled skies and plummeting pilots, were sold for $20,000 and found their way into textbooks and museum collections.
Later research by the Society of World I Aero Historians uncovered the truth: Archer had left the RAF in 1920 and pursued a career as a set‑maker and model‑builder in the film industry. He staged the dramatic scenes, and his wife, Gladys Maud Cockburn‑Lange, handled the sale of the pictures.
Despite the hoax, the photographs continue to be requested for use, a testament to how convincingly they were crafted.
2 The Fake Baldness Epidemics
In 1926 headlines screamed that over 300 young men in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, were suddenly losing their hair. Doctors, baffled by the phenomenon, offered quirky advice: avoid tight hats and schedule haircuts only during the first quarter of the moon.
In reality, only about a dozen men experienced abrupt hair loss. The sensational coverage prompted a town proclamation denying a mass baldness crisis and attracted a swarm of hair‑tonic peddlers and quack cure sellers.
A similar alarmist report appeared in 1901 when The Spectator claimed a nationwide baldness epidemic in Japan, describing men losing half their beards. The U.S. Marine Hospital Service later debunked the story as pure sensationalism.
1 Ern Malley
Ern Malley, supposedly born in 1918, was painted as a tragic poet who drifted through odd jobs before dying in 1943. His work burst onto the literary scene when the Australian journal Angry Penguins published a dedicated issue, sparking a court case over alleged obscenity.
It later emerged that Malley never existed. Corporal Harold Stewart and Lieutenant James McAuley, both university students, concocted the entire persona and a portfolio of poems, even borrowing lines from a mosquito‑draining manual. Their aim was to mock what they saw as the decline of poetry.
Even after they confessed, the poems continued to earn praise, and scholars still dissect the hoax, illustrating how a fabricated genius can outlast its creators.