Michael Farquhar - A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of Historys Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes and Frauds

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PENGUIN BOOKS

A TREASURY OF DECEPTION

Michael Farquhar is the author of A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories of Historys Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors and A Treasury of Great American Scandals: Tantalizing True Tales of Historic Misbehavior by the Founding Fathers and Others Who Let Freedom Swing. A writer and editor at The Washington Post specializing in history, he is coauthor of The Century: History as It Happened on the Front Page of the Capitals Newspaper. His work has been published in The Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, Readers Digest, and Discovery Online. He appeared on the History Channels programs Russia:The Land of the Tsars and The French Revolution.

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First published in Penguin Books 2005

Copyright Michael Farquhar, 2005

All rights reserved

Illustration credits
Frontispiece: Patterson Clark
Page 140: Copyright Nick Galifianakis, 2005
All other illustrations: The Granger Collection, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Farquhar, Michael.
A treasury of deception : liars, misleaders, hoodwinkers, and the extraordinary true
stories of historys greatest hoaxes, fakes, and frauds / Michael Farquhar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN : 978-0-143-03544-2

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C/R TK

For my mom and dad,
who (except about Santa Claus)
have always told me the truth.

All that deceives may be said to enchant.

PLATO

Introduction

Beauty is truth, Keats wrote, truth beauty. History, however, is blemished, disfigured even, by deception. The quest for truth, mankinds greatest ambition, has forever been compromised in favor of more immediate considerationsnot all of them ignoble, by the way. The hoodwinking of Hitler, for example, may very well have saved civilization. The frequent sacrifice of our ideals is a fundamental part of being human, and the great lies perpetrated throughout history are as varied and nuanced as humanity itself.

For centuries the Vatican laid claim to much of Europe because of a preposterously forged document known as the Donation of Constantine. In 1915 renowned scientists declared the so-called Piltdown Man irrefutable evidence of the missing link between man and ape, even though it turned out to be a clumsy concoction made from the skull of a medieval Englishman and the jawbone of an orangutan. Hitler never wrote his diaries. Anastasia never escaped the Bolsheviks. Nostradamus didnt have a clue about the future. And Bill Clinton really did have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

Call this a historical treasury of imposters, charlatans, and liars. Or call it a hoax: a bogus excuse for a book of no actual value, other than the gleeful celebration of the art of deceit. Some of the stories may be familiar. Pardon the retelling, but no collection of deception would be complete without them. Many are culled from the annals of Western civilization, a reflection of the authors woeful ignorance of the Eastern world. And, most important, though this is an anthology of lies, every story is true!

Nostradamus: Fraud of the Centuries

Part I

SUPER-DUPERS

All of the characters in this treasury of deception could rightly be called super-dupers, but those featured in this part of the book dont fit neatly into categories as the others do. Sure, they were all con men of sorts, but each had a unique flair for mendacity.

Charlatans Web

If Nostradamus was such a know-it-all, why didnt he clue in his beloved king that it might be a good idea to sit out the tournament that would kill him in 1559? Instead, the famed sixteenth-century seer, born Michel de Nostredame, wrote a dedicatory epistle to Henri II in his book of prophesies, Centuries, predicting great things for the French monarch. He even went so far as to call the king invincible. Soon after, Henri was dead, the victim of a freak jousting accident. Subsequently, however, Nostradamus flourished under the patronage of King Henris widow, Catherine de Mdicis. And, thanks to four centuries worth of credulous disciples, he is still flourishing.

Through the nearly one thousand quatrains that constitute Centuries, Nostradamus has been credited with predicting a wide range of calamities, from the Great Fire of London to the rise of Hitler. The methods he used to write his predictions, and the way his believers have interpreted them, are a marvel of systematic deception and unwavering faith. The trick, perhaps best articulated by noted debunker James The Amazing Randi, is to make lots of pronouncements, cage them in ambiguous language, and use as much symbolism and allegory as possible. Those who are desperate to believe can then cram into them an almost infinite amount of meaning and truth.

John Hogue, for example, marvels over Nostradamuss remarkable abilities in a number of books. He has a field day with this quatrain:

The religion of the name of the seas will win,
Against the sect of the son of Adaluncatif,
The obstinate deplored sect will be afraid
Of the two who are wounded by A & A.

This of course refers to Libyan despot Muammar Gadhafi, Hogue gushes. Adaluncatif is obviously an anagram for Cadafi Luna (even if there is no place for that extra t ), which he translates into Gadhafi Moon. The moon features a crescent, which happens to be a symbol of Islam. Then theres this quatrain, used to prove the masters foreknowledge of the Beast of Berlin:

Beasts mad with hunger will swim across rivers,
Most of the army will be against the Lower Danube.
The great one shall be dragged in an iron cage
When the child brother will observe nothing.

The old Latin word for the Lower Danube, used on Roman maps of the area, is Hister, which sounds so much like Hitler that Nostradamians have been in ecstasy ever since they made the (tenuous) connection. Before then, the verse was applied to a Turkish invasion of the region, an event that conveniently occurred before Nostradamus wrote Centuries . This was a sure way to guarantee a successful prophecy.

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