The Museum of Hoaxes is a
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...
created by
Alex Boese in 1997 in
San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
as a resource for reporting and discussing
hoax
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...
es and
urban legends
An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
, both past and present.
In 2004, PC Magazine included the site as one of the "Top 100 Sites You Didn't Know You Couldn't Live Without", and Sci Fi Weekly named it "site of the week" for the week beginning 7 February 2007.
Boese has published two books on hoaxes: ''Museum of Hoaxes'' and ''
Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.'' A third book by Boese, ''Elephants on Acid'', focuses on unusual scientific experiments, with the follow-up ''Electrified Sheep'' published in 2011. His latest book ''Psychedelic Apes'' is about the weirdest theories in science and history was published in 2019.
Notable hoaxes covered
*
90 Day Jane
References
External links
*
*
Fact-checking websites
Publications established in 1997
Hoaxes
Urban legends
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