Your parents always told you that money doesn’t grow on trees—but what about spaghetti?
Hi, I’m Erin McCarthy, and this is the List Show. Today we’re going to talk about some
of the most unbelievable hoaxes in history, starting with the twisted
tale of a pasta perennial that grows in Switzerland. Let’s get started.
On April 1, 1957, a BBC current events show called Panorama aired a segment that showed women picking
spaghetti strands from trees in Switzerland. The pasta was collected in wicker baskets,
then laid out to dry in “the warm Alpine sun,” in the words of the broadcast. The anchor,
a solemn, trusted public figure named Richard Dimbleby, discussed how it had
been a banner year for the crop thanks to the disappearance of the dreaded spaghetti weevil.
Of course, most people knew the idea was absurd and noted the April first air date. But enough
viewers were fooled that the BBC received a number of calls about the spaghetti tree,
including inquiries about how to grow one. They were prepared—staff answering
the phones supposedly instructed callers to plant a spaghetti sprig in a can of
tomato sauce and “hope for the best.” When the hoax was eventually revealed,
the BBC caught a lot of flak for duping trusting people. But they clearly didn’t regret it—the
BBC now has a long history of airing rather convincing April Fools’ Day stories. In 2004, the
spaghetti-tree segment’s original script writer David Wheeler reported that he wasn’t sorry,
saying, “It was a good idea for people to be aware they couldn't believe everything they
saw on the television and that they ought to adopt a slightly critical attitude to it.”
We can’t write a show about hoaxes without mentioning Mary Toft (or Tofts, as her name was
originally seen in the records). In April 1726, Toft was working in a field in Surrey, England,
when she was startled by a rabbit. Thinking it would make a great meal for her family,
she tried to catch it, but failed. The incident caused her to have rabbit on the brain,
and for the next three months, she supposedly thought of nothing but eating rabbit.
Sadly, in August, she miscarried a baby. Then, in September, she miscarried a cat. Yes, you heard
that right—a cat. And then a rabbit’s head. And then the legs of another cat. And then nine dead
baby bunnies. As Mary’s improbable “births” continued over a number of days, word began
to spread all the way to London that something strange was going on in Surrey. The King even
sent doctors to investigate this odd phenomenon. After studying the rabbits’ internal organs, one
of the doctors noted that there was no way their lungs had developed while inside of Mary. He also
discovered that another rabbit had hay and corn in its excrement. Suffice it to say, not many mothers
are capable of growing crops in their wombs. But other doctors were completely hoodwinked,
believing that Mary suffered from a case of “maternal impression.” At the time,
maternal impression was a not uncommon theory that mothers could influence the development of the
baby with their thoughts and fears—so when Mary was startled by the rabbit, the doctor reasoned,
her thoughts caused the freak bunny babies. Let’s hop to the end of the tale. Eventually
it came to light that Mary and a few accomplices were manually inserting the rabbits into her body,
where they stayed for weeks on end before the miraculous “births.” I…no.
She even bribed visitors to smuggle her animal parts when she was being closely
watched by doctors. Mary eventually confessed after being told she would have to undergo
a painful surgery to get to the bottom of the problem. It was probably best that her
hoax came to an end when it did—birthing dead rabbit after dead rabbit had caused quite the
infection, which was making Mary very ill. She spent a few months in jail for fraud,
but after that, it seems she lived a pretty quiet existence for another 40 years.
Mister Ed had nothing on Clever Hans. In 1904, people worldwide were captivated by a horse who
could seemingly perform math equations, tell time, recognize colors, identify composers by
listening to music, and perform a number of other mind-boggling tricks. It already sounds like a
hoax, doesn’t it? Scientists, veterinarians and psychologists of the day all thought so,
too. Clever Hans was exhibited by his trainer, a math teacher named Wilhelm von Osten. So,
of course, people suspected him of somehow providing Hans with the correct answers.
Hans was tested thoroughly by a number of researchers—and none of them could figure out
the trick. Hans was successful again and again, even when von Osten wasn’t anywhere near him,
and even with people the horse had never met before. Eventually, folks were forced to conclude
that some animals are able to think like humans. It wasn’t until 1907 that biologist and
psychologist Oskar Pfungst cracked the code. After observing and testing Hans, Pfungst noted that the
horse was rarely correct if his questioner didn’t also know the answer. Further examination showed
that Hans also couldn’t answer if his questioner wasn’t visible to him. The conclusion? Hans
*didn’t* know the answers—but he was so in tune with the microscopic facial reactions and cues
of his questioners that he was able to react the way they were expecting him to, stamping his hoof
on the ground the correct number of times. Today, the term Clever Hans is still used by behavioral
researchers to refer to the risk of accidentally providing cues to a research subject.
It might not be entirely fair to call the poor horse a hoax. Clever Hans really *was* clever—it
takes quite an intelligent animal to be able to intuit such minute details in the faces of so many
different humans. But Hans wasn’t communicating on the level people had been led to believe he was,
and so they became disenchanted with the schtick rather quickly after it was exposed.
The next time you find yourself in the Olympic National Forest in Washington,
avert your eyes from the deer and elk and look up instead. You just might catch a glimpse of
the elusive Pacific Northwest tree octopus. At least, that’s what a website created by
Lyle Zapato has been telling people since 1998. The website—which is still live,
by the way—is dedicated to saving the endangered PNT octopus from extinction. The site reports that
although the tree octopus prefers to live in the water, the damp conditions of the Olympic
National Forest are perfect for octopuses to roam among the branches using “tentaculation.”
Sadly, the tree octopus has many natural predators that lead to their dwindling numbers,
including housecats, bald eagles, and Sasquatch. Also contributing to its endangered status is the
fact that loggers regard a tree octopus sighting as bad luck, so they often kill them on sight.
What can you do to help the species survive? Write your representatives,
place a tentacle ribbon on social media, and boycott companies that use wood harvesting
practices that are unsafe for the tree octopus. Of course, there IS no tree octopus. But the
website is so convincing, with sections for sightings, links to other real octopus research,
and more, that plenty of people fall for it. The site is often used today to help
students understand how to discern credible internet sources from bunk. But why did Zapato
perpetrate such an elaborate internet hoax? Well, he maintains that the Pacific Northwest
Tree Octopus is real, writing in his FAQs, “Would someone with a website lie to you?”
It turns out even the military turns to Hollywood for inspiration sometimes. British Army officer
Dudley Clarke was inspired by the film Five Graves to Cairo to execute Operation Copperhead, one of
the most infamous military hoaxes of all time. First, you have to know a little about
then-General Bernard Montgomery. During World War Two, Montgomery was a high-ranking British
commander, so the German military was closely monitoring his movements to try to predict
where an invasion would happen. Dudley Clarke scouted M.E. Clifton James, an actor who looked
similar to Montgomery, and hired him to make random appearances from Gibraltar to Algiers,
keeping the real General’s whereabouts top secret. James hung out with future Oscar winner David
Niven and even spent time with Montgomery to learn his mannerisms. While James was making his rounds,
Allied Intelligence was planting false information amongst the enemies. Rumor
has it that Operation Copperhead ended when James was seen carousing around Algiers—something the
teetotaling Montgomery would never have done. So did the hoax work? Well ... we’re not really
sure. Some think the outlandish trick was crucial to winning the war because it successfully
confused Hitler. Although he was apparently aware that Allied forces had some diversionary tricks
up their sleeves, this line of thinking goes, he got the particular strategy wrong. Hitler believed
General Montgomery had been sighted in Algiers, a whole continent away. When he got word about
the upcoming Normandy invasion, he believed it was just a diversion to pull his attention away from
the “real” attacks since Montgomery was abroad. Of course, we know that Montgomery most certainly
was at Normandy—and the rest is history. Then again, most World War Two historians
think the elaborate ruse amounted to a whole lot of nothing. Maybe the real
hoax was the friends we made along the way. Have you heard the one about the Major League
Baseball player-slash-Buddhist Monk who can throw a 168-mile-per-hour fastball and play the French
horn as well as he pitches? If so, you’ve probably read the tale of Sidd Finch, the mysterious New
York Mets recruit who had the sports world buzzing in 1985. Finch was the subject of a
13-page feature in Sports Illustrated written by acclaimed journalist George Plimpton, the
co-founder of The Paris Review. It was partially Plimpton’s credibility that led readers to accept
the outlandish tale he wrote about the baseball phenom. The article claimed that Finch wore a
single hiking boot when he pitched, leaving the other foot bare. The pitcher had, in Plimpton’s
telling, mostly lived abroad except for a brief stint at Harvard. He was orphaned at a young age
when his archaeologist father died in a plane crash in Nepal. The piece was accompanied by
photos of Sidd and quotes from people like Mel Stottlemyre, the Mets actual pitching coach.
Sports Illustrated received more than 2000 inquiries from readers who had not noticed
the date on the front of the magazine: April 1. With the Mets’ cooperation on quotes and photos,
they let the elaborate hoax play out for two weeks, even reporting that Finch had suddenly gone
missing after the intense media spotlight. Eagle-eyed readers would have known it was
a hoax from the start, because Plimpton left them a clue: the subtitle read, “He’s a pitcher,
part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding
about yoga —and his future in baseball.” Did we leave out any good hoaxes? Let us
know in the comments below. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time!