Word: hoax
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Heuvelmans believes that many parts of the earth have been explored so superficially that they may contain all sorts of creatures unknown to science. Explorers glimpse them, perhaps bring back a few strips of skin or a blurry photograph, and are greeted with skepticism or accused of attempting a hoax. The pygmy hippopotamus of West Africa has been seen repeatedly since the 1840s. Skulls were brought out for study, and a young one actually lived several weeks in the Dublin zoo. But for 50 years authorities refused to accept it as a real and new genus...
...recording by the arrangements of Peter Knight, although Mr. Knight has obviously done his best to keep a straight face. The chorus croons Kyrie Eleison over a lulling beguine rhythm, as bongos patter softly and violins execute Viennese glissandos. The whole idea has strong overtones of a collegiate hoax, but Fr. Beaumont has apparently convinced many people that the matter must be approached with deadly seriousness...
...just as loud as the A.P.men, editors all over the U.S. (New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Post-Intelligencer) slapped a feature head on the story and ran it. But other editors with better memories remembered the baby sitter's tale for what it was: a gnarled hoax that has been knocking around city rooms for 25 years* When the more knowing editors began to protest to A.P., Twin Cities reporters, backtracking truth to its lair, found that the trail ended with a 35-year-old suburban Minneapolis insurance agent named Fred R. Keller, who said only that...
...very door of a CBS washroom, but got no information, was reduced to reporting about his red suspenders ("They're cute"). The Journal also came close to daring CBS to sue for libel by suggesting (so far without any supporting evidence) that the show had been a hoax, that actors and actresses had been used...
...filed away a story-later proved false-that a transatlantic balloon had landed safely in Venezuela. It would have been easy to replace that story with another before the delayed two-page issue was printed, but the Times resolutely immortalized the false report, published a second story explaining the hoax in the next day's two pages...