British hoaxes that fooled the public

British newspaper The Telegraph has just recently published a list of curious cases that caused confusion among the public. Lots of people were fooled to believe in impossible stories of fairies, false identities, giving birth to rabbits and so on. That only shows the naivete of some, but naivete based on actual news that appeared in newspapers. True magic of the press - and most of the cases were revealed even if there still was no TV, not to mention Internet! Hoaxes, that's what the Telegraph calls such incidents. And some of them are really curious. Some other include famous people. Here is my subjective selection of cases, and for the whole story go to the official page of The Telegraph, who knows, you might find something more to it.

Divine Marilyn's photos on auction in Warsaw

Just two days ago, on November 7th, 2012 a very unique event on a grand scale of things took place in Warsaw's one of the auction houses (Desa Unicum). A set of 250 photographs taken by Milton Greene went on auction, and on the majority of the photos, there was Marilyn Monroe. Such a treat! The auction was possible only due to a huge hoax from the 1990s, but nevertheless the interest was huge! The original prices ranged from 500 PLN (around 130 euro) to as much as a few thousand, but the most expensive photograph turned out to be the one in which Marilyn wears a too-tight ballerina dress (60.000 PLN, around  15.000 euro). On the photographs there was not only Marilyn, but also Marlene Dietrich, Gene Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, and many more. Most of them were taken in early 1950s, when Marilyn was at her very very best.