Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1887
When the six-volume Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography was published between 1887 and 1889, it was one of the first and most definitive works of its kind in America. It contained biographical information about thousands of people (some famous, some obscure) in American history. It was hailed as a valuable source of information for both scholars and students alike.
But thirty years after the Cyclopedia's initial publication, questions began to be raised about its reliability. The botanist Dr. John Hendley Barnhart published a brief article in the Journal of the New York Botanical Gardensuggesting some of the Cyclopedia's biographical sketches might be fic ious. He had specific doubts about fourteen botanists. He had never heard of these people, nor could he find references to them anywhere else.
As other researchers began to fact check the Cyclopedia, more and more false entries were found. To date over 200 su ious entries have been flagged. But due to the enormity of the work it's doubtful that all of the false information it contains will ever be identified.
Almost all the false sketches found to date describe pre-nineteenth century European scientists who traveled to the New World to study its natural history. Some of these false biographies are more obvious than others. For instance, the biography of Charles Henry Huon de Penanster, identified as a French botanist, almost exactly parallels the real life of Nicolas Thiery de Menonville (whose biography also appears in the Cyclopedia). The biography of Nicolas Henrion, a French scientist, reports that he arrived in South America in 1783, just as the Asiatic cholera broke out there. However, epidemic Asiatic cholera first broke out in South America only in 1835. Miguel da Fonseca e Silva Herrera, a Brazilian historian, was said to have been presented with a gold medal by the historical ins ute of Rio de Janeiro in 1820, even though this society was not founded until 1838.
Most of the false entries are fairly dry, but a few are more colorful, such as that of Jean Pierre de Vogué, a Flemish adventurer who apparently ended his days wandering through the Brazilian rainforest in search of the fabled "Mountain of Wealth," and the Spanish geographer Andres Vicente y Bennazar who reportedly published a map of the world clearly displaying both North and South America sixteen years before Columbus sailed to the Americas.
The author (or authors) of the false entries is not known, but the motive for writing the pieces was probably financial since contributors to the Cyclopedia were paid by space, and the articles were generally checked only for form.
The Cyclopedia can still be found in many libraries throughout America. It was republished in 1968 by the Gale Research Company. However, Gale did not remove any of the bogus biographies, nor did it print a warning stating that hundreds of the sketches were known to be fic ious.
The Taughannock Giant
The Taughannock Giant was a stone giant unearthed on July 4, 1879 on the shores of Lake Cayuga in Ithaca. It was pronounced to be of ancient origin by scientists and physicians. However, it turned out to be the work of Ira Dean who had spent months carving it in his home, with the simple desire of fooling someone.
The Global Warming Hoax of 1874
A scientist discovers that mankind's technology is causing the world to warm. Although the effect is currently subtle, it will rapidly grow more pronounced. Research indicates that Europe will soon become a tropical zone. A few years later the entire world will be a sweltering inferno, unfit for life. The scientist tries to alert the world's governments, but the politicians ignore him. Desperate, he resorts to industrial sabotage, but his efforts prove futile. Finally, he suc bs to hopelessness, and he dies of fright, agonizing over the fate of the human race.
This tale of global warming and a scientist's unsuccessful effort to stop it might sound like something out of today's headlines, but it isn't. The story appeared in newspapers over one hundred years ago, in 1874. It was presented to readers as a factual account of events, but in reality it was almost entirely fiction. It was a nineteenth-century global-warming hoax.
The Transatlantic Telegraph Cable and the End of the World
The tale first surfaced in early February 1874, when the Kansas City Times printed the text of a letter it claimed to have received from one J.B. Legendre, who said that the letter had been sent to him, in turn, by an unnamed "American man of science" living in Florence, Italy. The correspondent detailed a discovery "of great and even agonizing importance to the human race" that he had learned of from other scientists in Italy.
The discovery was attributed to the Italian astronomer Giovanni Donati, who for many years, it was said, had been making daily measurements of the distance from the earth to the sun by means of an invention of his own design. In the course of making these measurements, Donati noticed that when the first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid, in 1858, the earth began to move closer to the sun. Initially the shift in orbit was quite gradual, but it quickly grew larger. And when another cable was subsequently laid connecting France to Massachusetts, the movement of the earth toward the sun accelerated rapidly.
Donati realized, to his terror, that the cables were acting like enormous electromagnets, pulling the earth into the sun. He calculated that if the earth's current trajectory continued unchecked, Europe would become tropical in 12 years, and the entire earth would be uninhabitable soon after. Finally the planet would plunge into the sun.
Donati warned the governments of the world, but the politicians were preoccupied with plans for war and paid him no heed. So he convinced several of his colleagues to join him in chartering a boat and breaking one of the cables. But the break was soon repaired, and the earth's descent into the sun continued.
Seeing there was no hope, and that the world was doomed, Donati's health gave way. He died of despair in December 1873.
What Was True
This fanciful tale of imminent global apocalypse contained a few fragments of truth. There really was an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Donati. He was a pioneer of the spectroscopic study of stars, comets, and the sun. He discovered a number of comets, one of which is named after him.
Giovanni Donati
It was also true that Donati had died in December 1873, but his death was a result of cholera, not despair.
Finally, the transatlantic telegraph cables were quite real and well-known.
The rest of the story, however, was pure fiction.
Reception
The gloomy prediction and warning about the unforeseen danger of mankind's technology immediately attracted attention. Within weeks, the entire text of the letter had been reprinted by papers throughout the United States, appearing under the headline, "A Scientific Sensation."
However, although many papers reprinted the letter, there's no evidence any of them took it seriously. In fact, given the magnitude of the threat detailed, the at ude of papers toward it was strangely casual. Instead of giving it top-of-the-page billing, they typically placed it further down the page, sandwiching it between items about congressional proceedings and the price of silver. When the New York Daily Tribune reported about the story on the 24th of February, it dismissed the idea as "absurd."
By April, interest in the end-of-the-world prediction had begun to fade. Some papers continued to report the rumor that the great astronomer Donati had died "from excitement consequent upon discovering that the earth is approaching the sun so rapidly that in ten years it will be drawn into the sun and shriveled up." But they accompanied this disclosure with the joking remark that, "This will be discouraging news to the insurance companies."
Columbia Daily Phoenix, April 19, 1874
By May, the report of mankind's immiment fiery demise had been entirely forgotten.
It's not surprising the letter didn't generate more excitement because hoaxes appeared in late-nineteenth-century American newspapers all the time. Newspaper editors and readers were used to them. And this particular hoax evidently didn't even seem very convincing to anyone, probably because it was so far-fetched.
Science-themed hoaxes were a particular favorite of bored reporters. They regularly tried to hoodwink readers with stories about man-eating plants, lunar penal colonies, and mastodons found alive in Siberia. The New York Tribune, in the same paragraph where it declared the global-warming tale to be absurd, complained about how many science hoaxes were appearing in papers:
So many elaborate hoaxes, originating in this country, have imposed upon men of science at home and abroad, that America has gained in some quarters an unenviable reputation. It would be tedious to enumerate these impositions — from Locke's Moon Hoax down to the Cardiff Giant — for scarcely a week passes that a new one is not started, getting more or less of a newspaper run according to its ingenuity... Prof. Agassiz, speaking about this class of hoaxes, while expressing indignation at their authors, made the remark that, 'after all, if a scientific student is humbugged by them, he must be himself to blame.'
All these science hoaxes were the predecessors of today's science fiction. In the early twentieth century, pulp magazines came into existence that provided a home for science fiction stories and helped to establish the genre on firm footing. But during the 1870s and 80s, there was no obvious place for writers to publish such stories except for in newspapers, and they often published them there as fact — that is, as hoaxes. Edgar Allan Poe, who's widely credited with being an early pioneer of science fiction, published many of his stories as hoaxes.
The 1874 global-warming tale was a minor media hoax. Nevertheless, the tale appears to be one of the earliest (if not the earliest) fictional depiction of global warming triggered by mankind's technology — although it identified undersea cables rather than carbon emissions as the cause of the warming. It was in 1896 that a scientist, Svante Arrhenius, first suggested that human-produced carbon emissions might cause the surface temperature of the earth to rise.
The Text of the 1874 Global Warming Hoax
A SCIENTIFIC SENSATION
To the Editor of the Kansas City Times:
A friend of mine residing in Florence, an American man of science traveling for the sake of his health, lately wrote to me as follows:
"I have attended the meetings of one of the numerous scientific coteries with which Italy is blessed. In one of them a subject was broached which if generally known would startle the whole civilized world. One of the members, a man whose name is known in both hemispheres, asserted that the celebrated Donati (who lately died, much regretted by scientific men) had been a victim, not to disease or to time, although he was in a "green old age," but to nervous excitement or fright, caused by a discovery which he had made of great and even agonizing importance to the human race.
Donati had for many years been employing his unbounded energy in exploring some of the "hidden things in astronomy." of these investigations he kept a strict record of solar phenomena especially. He constructed an instrument by which he could calculate the earth's exact place in the great ellipse that it travels around the sun, and also, in his own estimation, its distance from the sun, although in this latter point he was not universally credited by his scientific colleagues. He never failed to make minute daily records of the result of his observation, and to this custom he owed his fresh discovery. On the very day that the cable was laid, his instruments showed him that the earth, like some vast ship towed by invisible hands, was drawing nearer to the sun. Every month after that epoch its distance was perceptibly lessened, as shown by his instruments, much more delicate than telescopes or the human eye.
When the French cable was laid there was an acceleration very marked in this attraction to the sun. Donati thought that this movement was increasing in a geometrical ratio.
He explained this alarming fact by certain reasonings based on the connection between gravitation and magnetism, which I suspect my friend was hardly able to follow.
His conclusion was this: That in twelve years the climate of Europe would become tropical, if not unfit for human existence, and that in a few more years this globe, which, with all its faults we love so well, would be precipitated into the sun.
It seems that Donati had in vain tried to bring this matter before the Italian government — hoping through it to reach the nations most interested in oceanic telegraphs — but the war politics had prevented any notice being taken of his representations.
He thought that if America and England could be induced to examine his data and proofs they, seeing the tremendous consequences of man's tampering too far with the machinery of nature, would speedily cause these cable to be things of the past.
His failure induced him to think of private enterprise, and several wealthy Italians, amateurs of science, combined together, chartered a brig and expensive machinery, and by their patriotic (although patriotism is too petty a name) efforts produced the first break in Field's cable, laid by the Great Eastern. Donati's instruments quickly showed that the earth was nearing its normal ellipse. But the break was quickly repaired, and once more the earth commenced its infinite spiral journal to the flames.
Donati's health gave way. Age and disappointment hastened his dissolution. A few days before his death he carefully sealed up all his manuscripts, with directions that they should not be opened for five years."
So much for my correspondent, Mr. Editor. Make of him such use as seems best to you. I am yours respectfully,
J.B. Legendre
[Note: The Museum of Hoaxes periodically receives emails suggesting that we should add modern-day global warming to the site because it's apparently the "biggest hoax in human history." We don't believe this to be the case, but we're hopeful that this confirmed (nineteenth-century) global-warming hoax might satisfy these correspondents.]
The Calaveras Skull, 1866
On February 25, 1866, workers found a human skull buried deep inside a mine on Bald Mountain in Calaveras County, California. The skull was located 130 feet below the surface, beneath a layer of lava. The owner of the mine, James Mattison, gave the skull to a merchant who in turn passed it on to a local physician until it eventually found its way into the possession of J.D. Whitney, the State Geologist of California and Professor of Geology at Harvard University. Whitney determined that the skull belonged to a Pliocene age man. This made it the oldest known record of human existence in North America. It also suggested that humans had lived in the Americas far longer than previously thought, perhaps as long as they had lived in Europe.
Front view of the Calaveras Skull
However, the authenticity of the skull was challenged by other scholars. What ensued was a long controversy between those who insisted the skull had been planted at the mine, and those who insisted it was a genuine find.
It took many years before the skull was decisively determined to be a fake. The skull was simply too modern in character to be from the Pliocene age. In addition, the sediment attached to it was not from the mine deposit, indicating it had been planted. The skull was probably planted by miners playing a practical joke.
Doubts
As early as 1869, a San Francisco newspaper declared, "We believe the whole story worthy of no scientific credence... a minister... told us that the miners freely told him that they purposely got up the whole affair as a joke on Professor Whitney."
Smithsonian scientist W.H. Holmes pointed out that the sediment found with the skull was of a modern type. The skull itself also looked modern. In addition, many scientists were disturbed by the fact that a qualified researcher had not had a chance to examine the skull in situ.
The Hoax Exposed
Despite the doubts expressed about the skull, Whitney continued to believe it was genuine. He was eventually replaced at Harvard by F.W. Putnam, who also argued for the skull's authenticity.
By the 1890s the skull was still accepted as genuine by the academic community, but it was becoming obvious that it did not fit into the growing fossil record of man's evolution. So in 1901 Putnam decided to determine, once and for all, whether the skull was authentic.
While in California he did some research and learned that in 1865 a number of Indian skulls had been dug up from a nearby Indian burial site. One of these skulls had been planted in the Bald Mountain mine so that workers would later find it. Despite hearing this story, Putnam was still not ready to declare the skull a fake. Instead he simply conceded that "It may be impossible ever to determine to the satisfaction of the archaeologist the place where the skull was actually found."
To confuse the matter, a careful comparison of the skull with descriptions of the skull at the time it had originally been found, led investigators to conclude that the two were not the same. In other words, at some point between the time that it had been dug up and the time that it had come into the possession of Whitney, the skull had been switched.
It now seems clear that neither the skull found in the mine, nor the skull acquired by Whitney, were genuine ancient skulls. The skulls were simply too modern in character to be from the Pliocene age, and in addition, the sediment attached to them was not from the mine deposit, indicating that they had been planted.
Historian Ralph Dexter concludes, "The desire on the part of miners to play a practical joke, the anxiety of archaeologists to prove the existence of early humankind in North America, the firm convictions and good faith of those involved in an honest mistake, and the confusion resulting from a mix-up of skulls, led to this long drawn-out controversy, unique in the annals of American archaeology."
Those wacky scientist, always making up.
So after RG loses he runs away. Never admitting he was wrong.
tldr, Pharaoh responsible for death of his children/children of Egypt not God.
If you are pointing out "flaws" in others reasoning - yet - no one can define what "god" is -
Then you are probably lower on the stupidity level than anyone - because you cannot possibly know they are flaws - nor can anyone else - yet you condescendingly assume you are correct and they are not. Pretty flawed reasoning.
It has been fun pointing out how wrong and stupid your reasoning is.
How many ST GTGs have you attended, SBM?
10?
20?
Rob going ham with spam
You mean like RGs meltdown after he was proven wrong using only the Bible?
All that spam is in the bible?
According to RG the God he doesn't believe is an evil murderer.
Posted above only using the Bible. I only started spamming after RG started spamming articles and text that had nothing to do with the discussion. The beliefs/faults/false predictions by the JWs have nothing to do whether parents are responsible for their children or not. I only used the Bible to defend my stance.
Moron,
We're referencing Bible God where God is defined.
You claiming victory doesn't mean anything to me
The ol fight spam with spam using only the Bible spam method.
God responsible for directly killing his own children via flood
I still do not get how you can claim something you do not believe exists can be anything.
That seems rather ambiguous to me.
Also not true as has been explained to you many times. All who were old enough to choose for themselves were responsible for their own life. Those who were not, as in children, had their choice made by their parents. Their parents refused to listen so they were responsible for the death of their children.
Should someone counterspam with links to religious hoaxes?
God is supposed to be our father.
By your logic, that still makes him responsible for their deaths.
No logical way around it. The only thing left for you to do is make assumptions.
What for? RG started spamming for no reason once he realized he was loosing in the discussion/debate.
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