Would you have been fooled by these photos?

[uzbradistan]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was.

http://www.randi.org/library/cottingley/

Comments

[uzbradistan]

Ha! Good one.

[phaethon]

Oh wow, I remember reading something about this ages ago. Those girls rule for being able to pull it off that well.

[darklordmoeser]

It always amused me that the writer of Sherlock Holmes, the master of deductive reasoning, could be taken in by hoaxes like this. He as also apparently a big spiritualist and believer in all that Alster Crowly type stuff with seances and ectoplasm and the like.
Its intersting that Harry Houdini apparently used to be big friends with Doyle, but they actually had a falling out after Houdini went around the country debunking spiritualists after one of them pretended they could communicate with his dead mother.
I'd recommend www.museumofhoaxes.com for you, it has a little "is this real" photo quiz which is pretty intereting, and you can stay abreast of the ranodm oddball things in life.

[uzbradistan]

It always amused me that the writer of Sherlock Holmes, the master of deductive reasoning, could be taken in by hoaxes like this.

Yes, exactly how I feel about it. One wants to shake one's head and say, "Sir Arthur, how could you? What would Holmes have said?"

Thanks for the link to the Museum of Hoaxes -- I hadn't seen that website before -- great stuff!