From time to time, the press reports on another scientific sensation, for example, about archaeological or paleontological finds, allegedly changing the course of history. However, in practice, many of them turn out to be a fiction, often invented by clever adventurers.
Ancient fly in amber
In the middle of the 19th century, a British collector bought a fly of the ancient species Fannia scalaris frozen in coniferous resin for fabulous money - at least he was assured that it was she. The exhibit has been repeatedly shown at various exhibitions. Only 150 years later, they conducted an examination and found out that this is an ordinary toilet fly.
Mermaid Fiji
In 1842, the famous showman and entrepreneur, the owner of the American Museum Phineas Barnum presented a “stuffed mermaid”, which he rented from his Boston colleague Moses Kimball. The description of the exhibit said that this creature was allegedly caught from the water off the Fiji Islands by "Dr. J. Griffin". Under this name was actually Barnum's assistant Levi Lyman.
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The "scarecrow" looked so scary that the visitors of the museum were afraid of it. After a fire broke out there in 1865, it disappeared - perhaps it burned down, or perhaps it was specially destroyed by someone. Meanwhile, it became known that the "scarecrow" was sewn from the tail of a fish and the body of a monkey, covered with papier-mâché. The authors tried to make it look as frightening as possible.
For decades, many believed in the authenticity of the exhibit. Moreover, the so-called “sea maidens” made from scrap materials were exhibited at exhibitions of “curiosities” around the world.
Cardiff Giant
On October 16, 1869, Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, digging a well at William Newell's farm in Cardiff, New York, discovered a three-meter-tall human figure, mistaken for a well-preserved ancient fossil remains. It has been suggested that such giants lived on the territory of the American continent in Old Testament times. William Newell even began to charge those wishing to admire the find.
Scientists immediately announced that these were hardly human remains, but newspapers have already raised the excitement. And some Christian preachers have come out in defense of the idea of a "biblical man."
Subsequently, it turned out that the three-meter plaster figure was made by the order of a certain George Hull. As an atheist, Hull decided to play a prank of a Methodist priest he knew who was convinced that giants inhabited the Earth during the Old Testament era.
Hull first contracted workers to dig a block of gypsum the right size from the ground in Fort Dodge, Iowa - he told them the gypsum was to be used to build a monument to Abraham Lincoln in New York. But instead, George delivered the block to Chicago, where he ordered the stonecutter Edward Burkhgart to carve a sculpture of a man from plaster. At the same time, he agreed that the master would keep the order secret. In November 1868, the finished statue was delivered to the farm of Newell, Hull's cousin. A year later, he specially hired workers, thus setting up a "find".
Hull subsequently sold the product for $ 23,000. The same Phineas Barnum tried to outbid it, but he failed. Then the entrepreneur hired a man who secretly made a copy of the figure, and began to claim that he was exhibiting the original, and the Cardiff giant is a fake. But on December 10, 1869, Hull officially admitted to the hoax, and on February 2, 1870, a trial was held, which found both sculptures to be fake.
The Cardiff giant has passed from hand to hand more than once, and is now kept in the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, New York.
Prehistoric mobile phone
In December 2015, images of a clay artifact, allegedly found during archaeological excavations in the vicinity of Salzburg (Austria), appeared on the Web. The find very much resembled a model of a modern Nokia mobile phone. The obverse of the artifact featured designs similar to the display and buttons. Beneath them were the symbols of Sumerian cuneiform. The artifact was discovered in a cultural layer dating back to the 13th century. BC, although experts assured that it could have been made earlier.
Many versions have been put forward. Some believed that the find was a clay Sumerian tablet, and the resemblance to a telephone was accidental. Others - that the ancient people spied the original from the aliens who visited the Earth and made a dummy of the apparatus from clay … A version about time travelers who visited the distant past also appeared.
And only relatively recently has the riddle been clarified. It turns out that the clay imitation of the Sumerian tablet was made in January 2012 by German sculptors Karina and Karl Weingartner at the Art Replik studio. The authors published a photo of the product on their Facebook page, explaining that this would have looked like a cell phone from the ancient Sumerians, if then there was a mobile connection. Subsequently, the photo was borrowed and published without any links. This is how the story of the "mobile phone of the ancient Sumerians" was born. True, the deception was unintentional.
In a word, not every "scientific sensation" can be trusted.