To put the claims of 'moon flight hoax' in historical perspective, I'm collecting other cases where nations or societies made false claims of discoveries or achievements.

The USSR gave many examples, from their claims to having invented radio and airplanes to other false assertions. I'm sure the Nazis did too but don't have any specifics in mind.

Can anyone offer other examples? In particular, are there any United States cultural or political claims of achievement that started as deliberate falsifications that fooled the public?

I'm not sure if this qualifies exactly as there's no real conspiracy involved, but there are several places in the Carribean that claim to have been the place of Columbus' first landing. In fact, one island even had it's name changed to reflect this. But as the jury is still out on the matter, none of them have a clear-cut claim.

I discovered this from a link Grapes gave us during our big Columbus discussion of a couple of months ago. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Here's the site:

http://www1.minn.net/~keithp/cclandfl.htm

On a larger note, communities do this kind of thing all the time. Everyone wants to claim the oldest, the first, the biggest, or whatever. I guess it's just human nature to want to distinguish yourself.

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...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

You mean hoaxes like the Cardiff Giant?

There are still open debates on the invention of such things as telephones, tv, radio, the cigarette lighter, etc.

snopes.com has a story about a small town in Pennsylvania that wanted to hold a Revolutionary War battle re-enactment...even though no battle had ever been fought there. So they made one up...

Silas

What is the link to that story, I am most interested in reading it.

Graham

<a name="2-12-01.ts"> page 2-12-01.ts aka 4:40 A.M.
On 2002-12-01 03:07, Graham2001 wrote: to? 4:40 A.M.
anyway1 I discovered upon rereading my 1 prior post
about going to the BACK of the Moon
that BA time stamp {TS} and my time stamp
looked the same? I concluded i was just
D_ceving myself Cause i think the BA Time
Stamp strts at the moment of conception
and My to {TS} is way down on linne three or so
and i've taken time to enter Name Pasword
PLUS th page name which takes quite a bit
of keystoking as its not a one shot take
so there are minutes 4me 2accout4 ?
hmm ? maybe i will solve this {& maybe not} 4:47 A.M. soon to be a math moment

There is evidence that Gustav Whitehead (Weisskopf) flew a powered airplane in Bridgeport, Conn. over two years before the Wright bros. at Kittyhawk (Aug, 14th, 1901). If so, we are still honoring usurpers to the crown to this day!

http://www.flightjournal.com/articles/wff/wff1.asp

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kaptain K on 2002-12-01 09:59 ]</font>

Kaptain K

That article ends with "In the end, the Wrights can lay clear claim to having developed the first "practical" airplane. But the first "powered flight?" That is debatable!"

The debate centers on what is powered flight. Even that article shows that Whitehead didn't try to lay any claim. Perhaps he just wasn't vainglorious enough? Or did he know more than we?

Here yer go!

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/3883434.htm

(My great-great-grandfather participated in a Civil War massacre, some years after the war was over, out in Arizona: does that count?)

Silas

GrapesOfWrath

Also note that the Wright's "first flight" required a 25 mph head wind and later flights required a catapult to get into the air. At least Whitehead's plane could take-off from level ground under its own power (assuming the reports are true). Whitehead refused to claim "practical" flight. The Wright's first flight was not "practical" either. The difference is that the Wrights followed through and eventually acheived practical flight, Whitehead did not. The question is not first practical powered flying machine, but first powered flight.

PS If Murphy had not stepped in and sabotaged the catapult, Langley would have beat everybody and the whole question would be moot.

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Yes, I read that in the article. But it also has more than one conflicting statement--and tries to discredit those by using them. Why would you trust one statement, and not the other? I guess they're saying that the published statements have more credibility than the later statements? I'm not sure why that would be.

Does piltdown man count?


Chimp jaw grafted onto a human skill to become "the missing link", then found to be fraud?

See Here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html

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GIYUL :-)
"It takes Thousands to fight a battle for a mile, Millions to hold an election for a nation, but it only takes One to change the world." - Dan Sandler 2002

That reminds me, I've also heard that the brontosaurus is a fraud. The "brontosaurus consists of the body of one type of dinosaur and a head of a different dinosaur. This is a simple explanation of it:
http://www.nwcreation.net/evolutionf...l#anchor104780

I tried a search on the talkorigins.com sight about this, but couldn't see anything.

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One of the first Apatosaurus discovered was reconstructed with an incorrect skull.

http://www.dinodata.net/Dd/Namelist/Tabb/B063.htm

I doubt there was any real intent to defraud.

Archaeoraptor on the other hand was a definite fraud. The site Neb provides has many links.

Dog


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Dog on 2002-12-01 22:24 ]</font>

how about the fact that many of the dino's backs were broken (specifically T-Rex) to give them a "proper" upright posture?

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GIYUL :-)
"It takes Thousands to fight a battle for a mile, Millions to hold an election for a nation, but it only takes One to change the world." - Dan Sandler 2002

What about the N-rays discovered by Monsieur Blondlot? Apparently he was a little peeved that Herr Roentgen had discovered X-rays, so he went out and discovered some rays that France could claim. (Named N-rays for the city of Nancy.)

Oh, you're kidding! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img]
What is with these guys messin' up the dinosaurs so much?!

There's a subtle difference: Part of the HBr's mythology is that landing human beings on the moon is physically impossible.

Radios and airplanes have been invented and are real devices. The Apollo landings, though certainly applied to the service of US political prestige, actually took place. Simply because competition with the USSR was a factor doesn't make the landings untrue. A more direct analogy would have to be along the lines of a debate about who actually landed on the moon first, and this debate didn't take place because the USSR knew that the US landings were real.

If the moon landings were not real, and the Soviet Union chose not to expose them, than the USSR could have also "faked" a seemingly once-secret-but-now-revealed, previous moon landing that succeeded but then died heroically, and then lay claim to being the very first. Or, an automated probe could land on the moon and discover a tattered old Union Jack, proving that the Brits got there first in 1898! (In other words, if faking a moon landing is easier than going there, other governments would have known this and, if they chose to remain silent, also faked their own landings for political reasons.)

I think the idea of cataloging the historic propaganda of false claims by governments is OK, but the Apollo program is not one of them because it is overwhelmingly supportable whereas the hoax belief requires ignorance of every aspect of engineering, scientific, monitoring, and even geopolitical situations.

The actual hoax with regard to the Apollo program is only found with the hucksters who have written books or produced videos to sell for cash claiming the landings weren't real. You could include them on your list, though they aren't affiliated with the space program.

Nope, in the early days they did this because they thought that it was the way they should walk. Think Godzilla and the old dino movies. Then palientologists got it right and put them more horizontal.


Than again you could of known that and were sarcastic and i probobly missed the whole sarcasm. Emotion is hard to tell in writing. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

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GIYUL :-)
"It takes Thousands to fight a battle for a mile, Millions to hold an election for a nation, but it only takes One to change the world." - Dan Sandler 2002

That reminds me of a true story my history of science teacher told us: sometime in the early history of medical school, in dissecting a cadaver, the teacher opened up the body, and realizing the organs were not placed where Aristotle (or one of those ancient Greek guys - none of them had actually had the chance to open a cadaver) said they should be asked for another body that was more correct!

Yeah, I meant that in the sarcastic (like "No way!"). That's why the [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img] face. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

At least they didn't rearrange the organs to make them more corret!! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

DOH!! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

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GIYUL :-)
"It takes Thousands to fight a battle for a mile, Millions to hold an election for a nation, but it only takes One to change the world." - Dan Sandler 2002

[quote]
On 2002-12-02 16:31, nebularain wrote:

That reminds me of a true story my history of science teacher told us: sometime in the early history of medical school, in dissecting a cadaver, the teacher opened up the body, and realizing the organs were not placed where Aristotle (or one of those ancient Greek guys - none of them had actually had the chance to open a cadaver) said they should be asked for another body that was more correct!

[quote]

Sounds like a recent double-blind test on applied kinesology, when it didn't work the Naturopothist being tested, said that was why they didn't do double blind tests anymore, the link to the full story is:

http://skepdic.com/news/newsletter17.html

You'll have to scroll down a bit, but the story is an interesting look into the mind of kooks.

Speaking of misplaced organs, I believe that this is a true story.
When X-rays were first used te look into the body, some enterprising surgeon noticed that the intestines were lower in the body than as shown in his anatomy textbooks. Grasping his scalpel he then went about operating on dozens of people in order to put the organs back in their correct place. A more clever surgeon then noted that radiographs were taken while patients were standing and the anatomy drawings were made from prone cadavers. Nothing more than gravity at work.

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