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Monumental Hoaxes
Seeing PurpleAttending school in the nation's capital, the boys of Gonzaga College High School had a unique platform for their 1969 prank. They tricked the Department of the Interior into allowing them to turn the Washington Monument purple and white, the school's colors, just before the annual football game against their rivals, St. John's College High School.
"We convinced [the government] that we were doing a science project to test the effects of casting light through a semipermeable membrane on a white oblique object," recalls Mark Smith, who led the caper. A forged letter on the headmaster's stationery apparently sealed the deal.
On the night of November 11, the boys brought yards of purple celluloid in wooden frames to many of the monument's gigantic spotlights. Park police kept visitors to the area at bay, and at 7:05 p.m., when the celluloid stations were ready, the boys placed them over the spotlights. Two sides of the monument suddenly turned purple -- and stayed that way for 35 minutes. As city residents gaped at the transformation, Smith and his friends celebrated. "We thought, This is the greatest moment of our lives," he remembers. Press coverage included dramatic photos.
Vice President Spiro Agnew condemned the defacement of a national monument, as did U.S. National Park Service superintendent William Failor. He wrote the headmaster, warning, "In the future, any requests from your institution will be closely screened and documented."
Home Delivery
English author Theodore Hook took a feud with his society-lady neighbor, Mrs. Tottenham, to new heights in 1810 by rigging what's become known as the Berners Street Hoax. He arranged for a multitude of London merchants to deliver their wares straight to Mrs. Tottenham's door -- all on the same day. Complete chaos ensued as all manner of tradesmen came calling with pianos, paintings, coal, groceries and a variety of other goods.
Mrs. Tottenham must have been horrified to find, among the other deliveries, a coffin, built to her exact measurements -- accompanied by an undertaker. Hook was never caught, though 20 years later he admitted his audacious caper in a semiautobiographical novel, Gilbert Gurney.
Yours Truly
A Frenchman named Vrain-Denis Lucas passed off a series of absurd forgeries -- more than 27,000 -- to his client, mathematician Michel Chasles, from 1861 to 1869. There were letters from Alexander the Great to Aristotle, and from Cleopatra to her "dearly beloved" Julius Caesar, all written in French. One letter was even said to be written by Lazarus after he was resurrected. Chasles was thrilled and paid for a steady supply.
It was only when the forger ceased delivery, it seems, that the relationship between the men deteriorated. Chasles alerted officials; Lucas was arrested. At his trial, the forger's amazing fraud was exposed. And so was Chasles's credulity.
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