El Paso Herald from El Paso, Texas • Page 3

EL PASO DAILY HERALD, FRIDAY, NOVtMBER 23, 1900. Famous Hoaxes of the Century. By Rene Bache, In The Saturday Evening Post Practical jokes have gone out of fashion. simply for the reason that people have come to realize that such fun nearly always has malice in it. It is pretty sure to hurt somebody.

A hoax is a practical joke on a large scale; but its victims are the public at large, and, inasmuch as no harm is done to anybody, save in exceptional instances, the fun of it is usually innocent enough. One of the most alarming and ingenious hoaxes of this century was a full page article printed in the New York Herald fNovember 9, 1874. describing the escape on the previous most of the wild animals in the Zoo at Central Park. When people opened the paper that morning they were horrified by a which read: as inventor designed it, inasmuch furnished him means of support. Human credulity is indeed inexhaustible.

When the excitement over the phonograph was at its height, a number of years ago, the New Graphic came out with a grave announcement to the effect that Edison had discovered a process for converting water into wine and ordinary earth into a cereal-like food. Newspapers all over the country accepted the statement as true, printing editorials on the subject, which were subsequently reproduced by the Graphic under the derisive head. How Hook Made Berners Famous. of London. Admit bearer and friend to view the Annual Ceremony of Washing the White Lions, on April 1 Admission only at the White Gate.

It is Particularly Requested that no gratuities be Given to the Wardens or their Strange as it may seem, large numbers of people were fooled by this invitation, and all day long on April 1 cabs were rattling about looking for the alleged White Gate, which as a matter of fact, did not exist. It had never occurred to these ap- York I parent! that white lions were unheard of, or that the washing of such beasts might be regarded as an astonishing performance. George Stevnes. wrell known as a Shakespearian commentator, was much given to practical jests, and it was he who gave wide publicity to the classic story of the deadly upas tree. He wrote an account of his owrn imaginary observations of this noxious tree of Java, whose through Street AWFUL CALAMITY.

WILD ANIMALS BROKEN LOOSE FROM CENTRAL PARK TERRIBL SC SOP MUTILATI A SHOCKING SABBATH CARNIVAL OF DEATH GOVERNOR DIX SHOOTS THE BENGAL TIGER IN THE STREETS. Another Sunday of horror has been added to those already memorable in our city ananls. We have a list of 49 killed, of which only 27 bodies have been identified. The list of mutilated, trampled, and injured in various ways must reach nearly tw'o hundred persons of all ages, of which, so far as known, about sixty are very serious. Twelve of the wild carnivorous beasts are still at large, their lurking places not being konwn to a certainty.

General Duryea deserves credit for his plan, carired out so far with effect, but a telegram from police headquarters did not reach him, and thus a valuable hour was lost, as he wras at first informed of the catastrophe by seeing the mutilated body of an unfortunate sewing girl, Annie Thomas, borne on an improvised stretcher to the Thirty- first. precinct station house, near West Eighty-sixth street. All New York City Frightened by the Story. The article kept right on in this style ingeniously lurid description with a convincing richness of detail. It told how the 7th.

8 th. 9th and 69th regiments hade been called out, and quoted a proclamation by the mayor enjoining the citizens to keep indoors the wild animals now at large are either killed or captui ed. The condition of affairs were described in the proclamation as a of and it wound up by announcing the opening of subscriptions at the hall for the benefit of the sufferers. The writer w-ent to tell how' the Zoo was jammed with the usual bundaj throng when an impudent keeper poked a stick through the bars at the rhinoceros striking the animal accidentally in the eye. The infuriated animal thereupon burst out of his cage, knocking the keeper dowrn and trampling upon him.

After impaling another keeper on his horn, he proceeded to assault the cages containing the lions and tigers. and within a few minutes most of the carnivora, including the wolves, leopards and jaguar were at liberty. the Numidian lion, urged to indescribable fury by bullets that pierced his flanks and shoulders, jumped into a landaulet occupied by a nurse maid and her four young charges, mangling the delicate little things past all The scenes which ensued were of the most terrible description, the animals first fighting with one another, and then attacking the people. Many were killed and wounded, and some of the most dangerous creatures found their way out of the park, a eougai aftei- wards entering St, church, while a tiger succeeded in boarding a ferrv boat, stampeding the horses on board and causing numbers of passengers to be thrown into the water. To make the.

story complete, a list of killed and wounded persons added; also a list of slaughtered animals. from the rhinoceros who caused trouble to an unfortunate It was not until the last paragraph was reached that the apprehensions were relieved by a few' words stating that the whole of the foregonig account wras purely a figment of the imagination. This hoax caused the greatest excitement The whole city wa sfrightened. people kept their children away from school and many business men did not o-o down town to their offices. When the hoax was discovered the outcry the newspaper was strong and general, but the defense was that the hoax had a purpose, in that the zoological buildings were unsafe and needed to be strengthened, which, by the wrav.

was done. The Famous Case of the Keely Motor. Keely, the inventor of the famous must have had confidence in the credulity of his fellow beings. For more than a quarter of a century he lived on that motor, deriving from it a large income, though nobody ever saw it Many persons of more than ordinary intelligence invested large sums of money in the machine, which was supposed to utilize a so-called dynamic principle discovered by Keely himself and understood by him alone, w'hich would in- vitably revolutionize the mechanical arts, furnishing unlimited power at an extremely lowr rate. Whenever the confidence of the shareholders in the enterprise impaired owing to lack of results, Keely would call a meeting of those interested.

and would so beguile them with his talk, which was always plentifully interlarded with scientific verbiage, that they would subscribe further sums of money and go away quite satisfied tha the machine was nearing completion. When Keely died, not long ago, the source of the was found to be a small engine in the cellar of the adjoining house. Then, and only then, was all confidence abandoned in the motor, which, after all. had served admirably the purpose for which the One of the most famous of its kind was the Berners street hoax, perpetrated by Theodore Hook. One day, in the year 1809, he was walking with a friend through Berners sereet in London, and a remark was made upon the exceptional quietness of the neighborhood.

Hook, ahvays ready for a bet and a though frequently the latter had no small ingredient of malice, pointed out the house of a respectable shopkeeper's window on the opopsite side of the way, the door of which bore her name on a plate, and offered a wager that he would wrake the modest dwelling within a week the most talked of house in London. The wager being accepted Hook went home and devoted the next four days to writing several hundred letters, signed with the name, to tradesmen and persons of various conditions of life. Then he hired a house opposite the residence, and from the front windows he and his friend en- I joyed the subsequent proceedings which were remarkable enough, inasmuch as, on the day appointed for the observation, Berners street, erstwhile so peaceful, became just the busiest and noisiest place in the metropolis Vans loaded with pianos, carts with coffins, vehicles bringing every imaginable kind of merchandise jammed the little thoroughfare. Pastry cooks with wedding cakes, butchers with meats. and greengrocers with their produce pushed and scrambled.

The throng wras dense. In the midst of it the Lord Mayor drove up in his state coach, folohved by a member of the cabinet, a governor of the Bank of England, the Lord hief Justice. the Archbishop of Canterbury, and finally his Royal Highness the Commander- in-Chief. The tradesmen, of course, had been drawn by imaginary orders, but the ingenuity exercised in the composition of the letters wrhich fetched the great personages to Berners street were really remarkable. In the case of the Lord Mayor, for instance, an appeal represent in gthat the writer dying, and that she had a communication to make on oath which could only be addressed to the Lord Mayor in person, was the bait that served.

Incidentally to the affair, a great deal of damag wTas done, some persons being hurt, casks of ale. sent for delievery broken open in the street and emptied by the loafers who joined the mob. a district of twelve or fourteen A FamousBull Movement Market. in the Cat Somewhat similar in character, and happily less injurious to the victims, was the cat hoax, perpetrated in the English town of Chester. Newrs had just been received that Nepoleon Bonaparte was to be taken to the Island of St.

Helena, and popular interest in the matter was necessarily great. It in August 1815, and handbills were distributed thorughout the city, stating that the island was dreadfully infested with rats, and that the government had determined to clean them out. The advertiser had been appointed to purchase cats and kittens for this purpose, and he offered shillings for every full-growrn tom-cat, ten shillings for every adult female puss, and half a crowfn for every thriving kitten that could swill milk, pursue a ball of thread, or fasten its fangs in a dying Now' the chief element of success in a hoax is that it shall be new. Such an advertisement would excite suspicion at once nowadays, but up to that time no cheat of the kind had been attempted. It was absolutely novel, and therin lay its effectiveness.

The address given by the advertiser was that, of an empty house, to which three thousand or more oats w'ere brought on the appointed day. Mythical Literary Treasures. In 1840 wras published the catalogue of the Fortsas Library, alleged to be the colection oft he late Count ,1. N. A.

Fortsas. of Binche. in Belgium. The library was to be offered for sale according to the announcement, and it contained only fifty-two books. But every one of these books was absolutely unique.

So peculiar had been the fad of the late count that, if the title of one of his books turned up in any published catalogue he discarded it at once, though he might have paid its weight in gold for it. The Titles of the fifty-two works comprising the Fortsas colection were tantalizing, and orders for their purchase came from all parts of Europe. The Princess de Ligne ordered number forty-eight at any book entitled A Catalogue More Than Curious of the Love Affairs of the Prince de Ligne. It wras a period of excitement for ilbrarians and bibliophiles all over Europe, who contended with each other by all sorts of strategems for the possession of the literary treasures. Just before the day appointed for the sale it.

was announced that after all. the library would be bought in by the town of Binche, and would not be placed on the market, but it was not until some time later that it came out that the whole affair was oiiginatedby a humorist named Rene Chalons. Tale of the Deadly Tree. Among the cleverest of April Fool jokes was one that deceived a great many Londoners in the year 1860, each of whom received a card of invitation that had an official appearance of being veritable, even to the seal with which it wras adorned. The inscription on it read: miles had killed all vegetation.

and had spread the skeletons of men and animals far and wide. This was an ex- Nicollet ample of the kind of haox that sur- I terward vives. inasmuch as the myth of the upas tree has not only secured a place in literature, but is still popularly accepted as good natural story, that is to say. of a tree which, merely by the distribution of its mephitic perfume destroys all living things within a vast radius. In 1894 a very remarkable corpse wras exhibited in eastern cities, purported to have been discovered by a party of prospectors in a cave near San Diego.

California. Tt wras the mummy of a giant man. who, alolwing for shrinkage must have been about nine feet. As shrunk, he was, by tapeline measurement four inches above eight feet in stature, and was in an excellent state of preservation. Over his head was a leather hood, which seemed to have beon part of a garment used as a shroud.

Now this, if veritable, was a very interesting find, inasmuch as the mummified giant. wrhen alive, must have surpassed in stature any human being of whom there is historic record. The tallest man ever reliably measured was Winckelmeyer. who eight and a half feet in height: Chang, the Chinese giant, and the tallest person ever ex hibited in this country, only seven and a half feet high, though he claimed to be over eight feet. The claims of the mummified giant were exploded by Mr.

Lucas. Osteologist of the Nationa Museum. wrho found him in pawn in sou thern city, and discovered that he wras largely composed of gunny sack ing and scrap iron. Tablets covered with hieroglyphic were found a few years ago in a mount near Davenport. Towa.

together with pipes carved in the shape of elephants The latter were modeled apparently after the proboscidean which is known to have roamed over this continent ages ago. The interest attaching to them wras therefore obvious. inasmuch as, if genuine, they would prove that the men wrho made them had seen mastodons, and must have lived at least 50,000 years ago. Probably they were fraudulent, but the question whether they were so or not is still in dispute. way the magnifying powrer of the telescope.

and the instruments employed were described in the utmost detail. So were the results obtained that, when the great tube wras turned upon the moon, the surface of the satellite was brought within an apparent distance of two hundred yards. Flowr- ers, recognizable as rose-poppies, were actually over the basaltic rocks, and the shifting of a screwr brought into view green valleys, in which browsed animals resembling the bison, with here and threre flocks of pelicans and cranes, and goats that had a single horn, like the fabled unicorn. At length, as the lunar landscapes were made to travel successively across the field of the telescope, some wingeb be- ings. in other respects human-like I were seen to alight upon a grassy plain.

Their wings were like those of bats, and they conducted themselves in a singular manner. For the time being the article was generally accepted as entirely veracious and there were few' people who expressed skeptism. When the joke was revealed it was at first attributed to a French astronomer, but aft wras ascertained that the actual author was Richard Alton Locke, a New York journalist. Edgar A. Poe was the originator of an almost equally successful hoax, which was likewise published in the New York Sun nine years later, in April, 1844.

It described a supposit- itoius journey across the Atlantic in a balloon-car, and was printed as an item of news, the trip being alleged to have been accomplished in three days. The public swrallowred the bait whole and nearly everybody took it for granted that the story was true, the joke achieving a success exceeding the best expectations of its author. R. R. Tickets AT CUT RATES Ticket Brokers.

Jewelers and Money Loaners. Mexican Money Bought and Sold Bruck and 'Cleanliness la Next to KL PASO a The Curious Skull of Calaveras Scientific illustrated by instances without much ex posed to hoaxes. Plain people love to prey upon their credulity, which is often the greater by reason of their anxiety to discover new things. No man as yet is in a position to say positively w'hether the famous Calaveras man was a hoax or not. though that it wras such is tronglv suspected.

He wras represented by a skull dug out of a hole in the Bald Mountain, in California, and. if there was no cheat; he was not far from a million years old. Bald mountain is near Altaville and Angels. in Calaveras county. The names suggest Bret Harte.

and no wonder. inasmuch as the region is one which he rendered famous with his pen, and this particular dispute as to the Calaveras man wras made by him the subject of a most delightful poem. A claim owned by Mattison and company ran into Bald Mountain, in the shape of a tunnel, and Mattison himself, according to his own statement, found the cranium in question, which was fragmentary, in a load of It was incrusted with earthy and stony material, and in this condition was delivered to Prof. J. D.

Whitney, the geologist. It may be mentioned incidentally that the wrord Calaveras means being derived from the Mexico-Spanish title given to the Rio de las Calaveras, or River of designated originally because the stream had turned up at one point a large number of human bones. Mattison said he found the skull mi ebruary. and. supposing it to be of interest, carired it out of the tunnel in a bag and sent it off by express to the geological experts at San Francisco.

who.handed it over to Professor Whitney. It was dug out 130 feet below the surface of the ground in close proximity to a petrified oak. and immediately beneath the lava-cap of Paid Mountain. What this last point signifies can only be realized by geologists, inasmuch there has been no man to whom the skull belonged must have lived in the time when the gravels in which his cranium were found were the gravels of a running stream, and long befor a volcanic eruption in that region spread a sheet of lava over the sands of the river and his remains. The Story of the Great Moon Hoax.

When Sir John Herschell. in the year 1825. sent on an astronomical expedition to the Cape of Good Hope, he carried with im a telescope of huge size, from which great things were expected, and also private instruction to the effect that wiiatever he accomplished was to be kept profoundly secret until he should return. Consequently for a long time after his departure no news whatever reached England in regard to his doings in South Africa. Here wras the opportunity w'hich gave birth to a luminous idea and one September morning there appeared in the columns of the New York Sun a long article filled with the information that well calculated to astonish the world.

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