The Majestic 12 Documents
In December 1984 an undeveloped roll of film arrived in the post for the television producer Jaime Shandera, with no return address. On it was a briefing for President-elect Eisenhower dated 18 November 1952: a secret committee of twelve set up by Truman to handle crashed craft and bodies. The FBI examined the papers at the Air Force's request and concluded in 1988 that they were entirely bogus. Truman's signature proved to be a photocopy of one on a genuine 1947 letter, matching line for line; the dates were written in a format Eisenhower never used; and the Pica typeface belonged to a machine that went on sale later.
The Cardiff Giant
On 16 October 1869 men digging a well on William Newell's farm at Cardiff, near Syracuse, struck a stone man ten feet tall. It cost fifty cents to see, the queue lasted all day, and clergymen argued over whether this was a petrified giant out of Genesis. It had been commissioned by Newell's cousin George Hull, a tobacconist and an atheist who had lost his temper in an argument with a preacher: a block of gypsum hauled from Fort Dodge in Iowa, carved in Chicago, aged with sulphuric acid, stippled with darning needles for pores, and buried a year before it was found. Hull confessed that December. P. T. Barnum, refused the original, exhibited a copy of his own — and the public paid to see both.
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