Christine Seifert - Whoppers: Historys Most Outrageous Lies and Liars

Whats the biggest tall tale youve ever told? No matter what it was, Im willing to bet the people in this chapter told stories that were crazier than anything you are likely to imagine.

Before you get started, take this quiz to find out if your tall tales are as wild as the tales told by historys biggest liars.

HOW BIG OF A TALL-TALE TELLER ARE YOU?

Answer the following questions with yes or no. No lying!

1. Have you claimed your parents, siblings, or friends were rabbits? Like, actual rabbits?

2. Have you told people you think eating babies is perfectly okay?

3. Have you created a mermaid out of a monkey head and a fish fin, and then charged your friends to see it?

4. Have you claimed to have discovered an island full of human- eating natives?

5. Have you written stories about Christopher Columbus and claimed they were all totally, completely true?

6. Have you claimed a dead body was cursed?

7. Have you built a giant horse, filled it with soldiers, and attacked your enemies within the walls of their own city?

8. Have you claimed your pet horse can do algebra?

9. Have you made up a story about the presidents toilet?

10. Did you invent a disease to sell something people didnt even know they needed?

11. Have you told your friend just before he bites into his double bacon cheeseburger that the burger is made out of poop?

If you answered no to all of these questions, congratulate yourself. You are a very honest human being. You should be proud of yourself. What kind of person pretends a cheeseburger is made out of poop? (Oh, just wait. Youll see.)

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are a tall-tale teller. And you have much in common with historys biggest liars. You might want to see somebody about your lying.

THE LIAR:

MARY TOFT

DATE: 1726

THE LIE: That she gave birth to rabbits

REASON: For money and fame

Mary Toft had a plan to get rich. At twenty-five, she was married to Joshua, a poor cloth-worker, but Mary wanted more from life than just being a housewife. So she cooked up a scheme to get so good a living that I should never want as long as I lived. Mary decided to tell her neighbors and any doctors who would listen that shed given birth to a monster.

In the eighteenth century, people loved looking at monsters. They would pay big money to see weird stuff, like a giant, a bearded lady, a two-headed woman, a two-bodied man, a boy with a live bear growing from his back, mermaids. You get the picture. Not surprisingly, most of these people were great big frauds, but that didnt stop them from making a whole lot of money. Mary decided she was going to get on this gravy train.

Her first monster baby was actually a cat a dead cat with its limbs cut off and its guts removed. She slipped an eel backbone (a convenient leftover from Sunday dinner) through its intestines. Ta-da. Instant monster baby.

She pretended to give birth to the cat creature and then called her neighbors to examine the monster. (Can you imagine getting that call?) The disgusted neighbors sent for John Howard, a surgeon who thought the whole thing was pretty suspicious. He said he wouldnt believe Mary unless he saw the cats head.

Unfortunately, Mary had lost the head.

Fortunately, John Howard wasnt so smart. He was fooled by Mary, who improvised. She had no cat head, but she did have a rabbit head handy. Now she really had something to write home about. A cat with an eel backbone and a rabbit head! This was bound to make her the talk of the town, if not the whole of England.

John could hardly believe his eyes. It was good news for him because the doctor who discovered the woman who gave birth to cat-eel-rabbit babies would most certainly become rich and famous too. He stuck around while Mary pretended to give birth to almost twenty more rabbit creatures over the course of a few weeks.