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A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. Generally there is some material object involved, which is actually a forgery. Unlike a fraud or con (which usually has an audience of one or a few), which are made for illicit financial or material gain, or a pious fraud , which is perpetrated to support the revelations of a religion , a hoax is often perpetrated as a practical joke with a humorous intent, to cause embarrassment, for personal aggrandizement or to serve political purposes. Still, many confidence tricks and the like have also been labeled as hoaxes.Many hoaxes are also motivated by a desire to satirize or educate by exposing the credulity of the public or the absurdity of the target: literary and artistic hoaxes are often of this sort, although political hoaxes are sometimes motivated in part or whole by the desire to ridicule or expose politicians or political institutions .
The status of a given factoid as reliable or hoax is often the subject of considerable controversy.
The word hoax came from the common pretended magic spell "hocus pocus". "Hocus pocus" is a distortion and misuse of the Latin words "hoc est corpus" = "this is the body" taken from the Latin Mass.
1 Historically Important Hoaxes
- Orson Welles' Mercury Theater radio broadcast on October 31October 31 is the 304th day of the year (305th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 61 days remaining. Events 475 Romulus Augustus was proclaimed Roman Emperor. 1517 Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther posts his 95 theses on the door of the Wi, 1938Events January -June January 3 The March of Dimes is established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. January 11 Frances Moulton is the first woman to become president of a US national bank. January 20 Wedding of king Farouk I of Egypt and Farida Zulficar in Cai, entitled " The War of the WorldsOn October 30, 1938, as a Halloween special, Orson Welles performed a live radio adaptation of H. Wells' classic novel The War of the Worlds which famously frightened many in the audience into believing that an actual Martian invasion was in progress." has been called the "single greatest mediaFor other uses, of the word Media see media (disambiguation). The media is the whole body of communications that reach large numbers of the public via radio, television, movies, magazines, newspapers and the World Wide Web. The term was coined in the 1920 hoax of all time," though it was not intentionally so, and thus does not rank among genuine hoaxes. The broadcast was heard on CBSCBS Columbia Broadcasting System is a major radio and television network in the United States. CBS was one of the three commercial television networks that dominated broadcasting in the United States before the rise of cable television. In the days of rad radio stationA radio station is a site configured for broadcasting sound. Traditionally, radio stations have broadcast through the air via radio waves (a form of electromagnetic radiation), sent through a transmitter and antenna. Today, many if not most stations broads throughout the United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in. Despite repeated announcements within the program that it was a work of fictionThree Graces, here in a painting by Sandro Botticelli, were the goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility in Greek mythology. Fiction is the term used to describe works of the imagination. This is in contrast to non-fiction, which, many listeners believed that the world was being attacked by invaders from the planet Mars.
- Bathtub Hoax, perpetrated by American journalist and satirist Mencken in the 1920s, was credited even after it was exposed by the author.
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