I recall two both pertaining to the University of California at Berkeley.

1)  There is a historical legend that Francis Drake left a brass plate at the place along the California coast …to mark his northernmost journey.  Some thought the place might be what is now known as Drake’s Bay or Bodega Bay (famous for the movie The Birds) or even San Francisco Bay.  In 1936 the plate was supposedly found.  It bore an engraved inscription beginning   Be it knowne vuao all men by their presence IVNE 17. 1579 …  For 40 years the hoax was believed until 2003 when it was discovered that some members of a local historical society manufactured the plate as joke.  The Plate was on display at UC Berkeley.

2)  About 16 or 17 years ago the Homecoming Football game between Berkeley and Stanford ended rather comically during the final play while CAL had the ball and was marching down the field.  They were trailing Standford and had one more play before time ran out.  The Stanford Band, anxious to get on the field and celebrate, started marching out from their goalposts when they thought a Cal player dropped the ball.  He didn’t drop the ball, he lateraled it to another a play who lateraled it to another and soon the player with the ball was running between the Standford band players and made it to the end zone.  Touchdown!  Cal won the day.

About four months later some Standford students pulled a great hoax.  On April’s Fool day, they sabotaged the publication of the Daily Cal newspaper and substituted an edition they had specially printed.  Headline read that the NCAA, after a lengthy review of the previous year’s Homecoming Game, decided that the last-play-touchdown was illegal and, therefore, the score was erased.  Stanford was made the winner by proclamation!

The hoax lasted most of the day because not only had Standford switched the newspapers at most of all the newsstands on campus  but also throughout downtown Berkeley!  Everyone on the street was up in arms!  Not an unusual reaction in Berkeley when the students and alumni are upset.

Most of you know I have spent great amounts of time in Antarctica studying the flightless penguin behavior at close range, so how could I not think the widely-spread UTube short - so well done - on penguins flying from The Ice to Brazil — an amazing visual HOAX that one could easily fall for.  Frankly, I had to give it 4 stars for looking believable!!! 

Orson Well’s "War of the Worlds" –––read all about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio) 

I think the greatest hoax is organized religion, regardless of what sect, faith or creed it takes. That people of present day choose to believe that there is a only one person a superior being ‘The Creator of All Things’ would choose to converse with is absolutely incrediable to me. That billions of people across the world today choose to believe any book written by such a man is some how above and beyond anyother book of fantasy or myth is unbelievable.

There is nothing, in my opinion, which supercedes, the religion hoax.