
A video released late last year showed a bald eagle apparently picking up an unattended baby and almost flying off with it. It went viral, attracting more than 41 million views on YouTube alone. You may have even seen it yourself. If so, like the rest of us you probably didn’t realise that it was a fake, created by University students in Montreal to showcase their digital editing skills.
It’s not the first ruse to have fooled the globe however. In fact throughout history a string of hoaxes have conned the public, the media and even the scientific community. Here’s some of the most famous.