Owner | Alex Boese |
---|---|
URL | hoaxes |
Launched | 1997 |
The Museum of Hoaxes is a website created by Alex Boese in 1997 in San Diego, California, as a resource for reporting and discussing hoaxes and urban legends, both past and present. [1] [2] [3] [4]
In 2004, PC Magazine included the site as one of the "Top 100 Sites You Didn't Know You Couldn't Live Without", [5] [6] and Sci Fi Weekly named it "site of the week" for the week beginning 7 February 2007. [7]
Boese has published two books on hoaxes: Museum of Hoaxes [8] and Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S. [9] A third book by Boese, Elephants on Acid, [10] focuses on unusual scientific experiments, with the follow-up Electrified Sheep published in 2011. [11] His latest book Psychedelic Apes is about the weirdest theories in science and history was published in 2019. [12]
Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. is an American writer notable for Tales of the City, a series of novels set in San Francisco.
Syfy is an American basic cable television channel, owned by the NBCUniversal Media Group division and business segment of Comcast's NBCUniversal. Launched on September 24, 1992, the channel broadcasts programming relating to the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres. As of November 2023, Syfy is available to approximately 69,000,000 pay television households in the United States-down from its 2011 peak of 99,000,000 households.
Richard Kingsley Morgan, is a British science fiction and fantasy author of books, short stories, and graphic novels. He is the winner of the Philip K. Dick Award for his 2003 book Altered Carbon, which was adapted into a Netflix series released in 2018. His third book, Market Forces, won the John W. Campbell Award in 2005, while his 2008 work Thirteen garnered him the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Kurt B. Andersen is an American writer, the author of novels and nonfiction as well as a writer for television and the theater.
British science fiction television series Doctor Who debuted on North American television in January 1965 on CBC. It appeared in syndication in the United States beginning in 1972. This article explores the connections of that series to distribution, broadcast and fandom in Canada and the United States.
Atlanta Nights is a collaborative novel created in 2004 by a group of science fiction and fantasy authors, with the express purpose of producing an unpublishably bad piece of work, so as to test whether publishing firm PublishAmerica would still accept it. It was accepted; after the hoax was revealed, the publisher withdrew its offer.
America Star Books, formerly PublishAmerica, is a Maryland-based print-on-demand book publisher founded in 1999 by Lawrence Alvin "Larry" Clopper III and Willem Meiners. Some writers and authors' advocates have accused the company of being a vanity press while representing itself as a "traditional publisher". It changed its name in 2014, and since 2017 it has stopped accepting new authors.
Jane Espenson is an American television writer and producer.
John Michael Scalzi II is an American science fiction author and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his Old Man's War series, three novels of which have been nominated for the Hugo Award, and for his blog Whatever, where he has written on a number of topics since 1998. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2008 based predominantly on that blog, which he has also used for several charity drives. His novel Redshirts won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel. He has written non-fiction books and columns on diverse topics such as finance, video games, films, astronomy, writing and politics, and served as a creative consultant for the TV series Stargate Universe.
Ryan North is a Canadian writer and computer programmer.
Joice Heth was an African-American woman who was exhibited by P.T. Barnum with the false claim that she was the 161-year-old nursing mammy of George Washington. Her exhibition under these claims, and her public autopsy, gained considerable notoriety.
The Taco Liberty Bell was an April Fool's Day joke played by fast food restaurant chain Taco Bell on April 1, 1996. Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in six leading U.S. newspapers announcing that the company had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell". The ad was created by Jon Parkinson and Harvey Hoffenberg who worked at Bozell, the Taco Bell advertising agency at the time, and went on to win several industry awards. Thousands of people had called Taco Bell headquarters and the National Park Service before it was revealed at noon the same day that the story was a joke. White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry responded that the federal government was also "selling the Lincoln Memorial to Ford Motor Co. and renaming it the Lincoln-Mercury Memorial".
Battlestar Galactica is an American military science fiction television series, and part of the Battlestar Galactica franchise. The show was developed by Ronald D. Moore and executive produced by Moore and David Eick as a re-imagining of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television series created by Glen A. Larson. The pilot for the series first aired as a three-hour miniseries in December 2003 on the Sci-Fi Channel, which was then followed by four regular seasons, ending its run on March 20, 2009. The cast includes Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Helfer, and Grace Park.
The iLoo was a cancelled Microsoft project to develop a Wi-Fi Internet-enabled portable toilet. The iLoo, which was to debut at British summer festivals, was described as being a portable toilet with wireless broadband Internet, an adjustable plasma screen, a membrane wireless keyboard, a six-channel speaker system, and toilet paper embossed with popular web site addresses. The iLoo was also to have an extra screen and keyboard on the outside, and was to be guarded. It was intended as the next in a series of successful initiatives by MSN UK which sought to introduce the internet in unusual locations, including MSN Street, MSN Park Bench and MSN Deckchair.
Jim Butcher is an American author. He has written the contemporary fantasy The Dresden Files, Codex Alera, and Cinder Spires book series.
Whedonesque.com was a collaborative weblog devoted to the works of Joss Whedon. Submissions of new content ended on August 21, 2017, following the publication of an open letter by Whedon's ex-wife Kai Cole. The site was taken offline in 2021. At its inception in 2002, Whedonesque covered Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, but expanded to follow Whedon's professional output, as well as the careers of cast and crew associated with Whedon projects. Since 2004, the site has been recognized in other media outlets by awards and citations of Whedon's writings originally posted to Whedonesque.
Lou Anders is a US-based author, known for the Thrones & Bones series of middle grade fantasy novels. Anders is a Hugo Award-winning editor, a Chesley Award-winning art director, a journalist, a children's author, and a tabletop roleplaying game designer. In 2021, Anders launched Lazy Wolf Studios to publish tabletop roleplaying game material set in the world of his novels.
Hippo Eats Dwarf is the title of a hoax news article which claims that a dwarf was accidentally eaten by a hippopotamus. The urban legend has been circulating via the internet since the mid-1990s. Many print newspapers have been fooled into publishing the story as fact.