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Don't think of 'fake news' as a modern inventionBy Joe Wos
Tuesday, March 31, 2015, 9:00 p.m.
Updated 13 hours ago
If you take your stories like your margaritas, with a grain of salt, I suggest you have both standing by for the tale of the world's greatest liar: Joe Mulhatton.
We think of "fake news" as a modern invention propagated by the Internet. We get our information from satirical outlets such as "The Daily Show" and The Onion. But long before the gullible masses began reposting clickbait images of 100-pound cats as the gospel truth on Facebook, Mulhatton was the undisputed King of the Liars.
Born in 1848, he began his reign of humor in Allegheny City, now known as Pittsburgh's North Side. He was the son of a Presbyterian minister and shared his father's gift for storytelling. He began fooling the Pittsburgh Leader newspaper as a teenager. For four years, he taunted the Leader with stories of romantic highway robberies, mystery caverns and fantastical oil wells. He reveled in his victory as newspapermen traveled 50 miles on buckboard wagons in hopes of capturing a story of stagecoach robbers that didn't exist.
Upon graduating high school with honors, he found another use for his gift of gab, as a "drummer," a colorful term for a traveling salesman trying to drum up business. After a stint with a Pittsburgh-based hardware company, he moved to Louisville, where he found work drumming for Belknap Hardware & Mfg. Co. and Hart and Co.
As a salesman, Mulhatton was known as a hardworking, honest man with a golden tongue who could sell ice to an Eskimo and fleas to a dog. By 1875, he was making upward of $15,000 a year — more than a quarter-million dollars adjusted to present day. He spread his wealth by providing meals for newsboys, lending a hand to fellow drummers and helping to found the Kentucky Humane Society.
The life of a traveling salesman can be lonely and strenuous, so Mulhatton passed the time making up outrageous tales for locals and other weary travelers. He often would submit the "news items" to local newspapers. In each city he encountered, up sprang an article that tested the boundaries of imaginative plausibility:
• He announced a proposal to exhume the bodies of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington to display for public viewing at 50 cents. It was met with outrage nationwide.
• He had a special fondness for stories of underground rivers, including tales of secret rivers under cities in Alabama, Texas and Kentucky.
• He caused a cat-tastrophe of sorts when a piece about a furrier needing fur for coats led people to crate up cats to ship via train from Kentucky to New York. When no such train arrived, people set the cats free on the unsuspecting town of Litchfield, N.Y.
• An 1878 news item by Mulhatton announced the discovery of the Crystal Caverns of Kentucky with Egyptian-style mummified remains inside. So convincing was the story that the master of humbug himself, P.T. Barnum, traveled to Pikesville to make an offer on the remains for his sideshows.
• He "discovered" an "Egyptian" tribe living underground in Wyoming. A newspaperman from Omaha went to investigate and was captured by the Sioux. He was released unharmed after several weeks.
• In 1883, Mulhatton witnessed a whale-size sea monster creep out of a lake in Wisconsin and devour flocks of sheep.
• His tale of Professor Birdwhistle caused a panic — 50 years before Orson Welles and two years before H.G. Wells — when he discovered Martians had been visiting Earth for many years and had won a battle with a horde of Earth invaders.
• In 1884, the Brown County meteor caused an international stir. The immense 300-foot meteor landed on a house in Texas. As "locals fled," reporters poured in from around the world. Many of them were unable to return to their respective countries because papers refused to pay their way back without a story. According to Mulhatton, a reporter from the London Times settled in to his new life and opened a saloon.
"The prince of liars" received hundreds of threats to shoot him on sight or, worse, send him off to Congress where he belonged. The threat of public service became a possible reality in 1884 when the National Drummers Association Conference nominated him for president of the United States. He proved too honest a man for political office.
Mulhatton's life was filled with tales of bird-eating trees, women floating away with helium balloons, lakes of hair dye, suicidal cows, magnetic cacti that followed its victims, rediscovering the star of Bethlehem, massive meteors and various wild ideas that captured headlines and the public's imaginations. He fooled universities, experts, scholars and journalists.
The lies that entertained the world were more than just tall tales: They were his escape. He claimed an injury suffered from falling off a streetcar had caused him great pain and stress. When his stories failed to help him escape, he turned to alcohol.
His father and brother had spent time institutionalized for what was likely a hereditary mental illness. Mulhatton's rapid speech patterns, addictions and often erratic and delusional behavior might today be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. He, too, spent time in and out of mental asylums in at least four states. His charm and persuasiveness would result in him being quickly released and declared sane every time.
In 1891, his travels led him back to Pittsburgh. There, he made his "last confession" in a story for the Pittsburg Dispatch that circulated nationwide. It ended with a promise to never lie again and was signed, "truthfully, Joseph Mulhatton."
A few years later, the Pittsburgh Dispatch would have to reassure the nation that the mining town of Scotch Valley near Hazelton had not been swallowed up as reported by the Associated Press in a story fabricated by Mulhatton.
After being arrested in Pittsburgh later that year, he was arrested in Indiana and, finally, in Texas, where he died in 1901.
He was then found alive a year later in New Orleans before ending up in an asylum in Napa, Calif., where he died in 1903.
He then moved to Arizona, where he died in 1906.
In 1908, the Baltimore Sun found him and declared Mulhatton "resurrected!" He died several more times before drowning and his body being swept away in the Gila River in Kelvin, Ariz. He died on Dec. 5, 1913, according to an obituary likely written by Mulhatton.
Wherever he may lie, Mulhatton should be remembered as a larger-than-life Pittsburgh legend, and the greatest liar to have ever lived.
That's the gospel truth.
Joe Wos is a contributing writer for Trib Total Media.
Read more: http://triblive.com/lifestyles/morelifestyles/8047984-74/mulhatton-joe-fake#ixzz3W4DBBczD
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Infamous newspaper pranksters
Ben Franklin: Silence Dogood, 1722
As a teenager, Franklin tried several times to get his work in the Courant, a newspaper published by his older brother, James. Finally, in frustration and, perhaps, a bit of mischievous vengeance, he created a personal of a middle-aged widow named Silence Dogood. Her letters appeared under the door of the elder Franklin's home and appeared in his publication 15 times. When James caught on, he was furious. The younger Franklin fled to Philadelphia to continue his rabble-rousing ways. Twenty-five years later, a speech by Polly Baker, a woman put on trial for having illegitimate children, eloquently protested injustice toward women. Twenty years after its publication, Franklin admitted he was Baker.
Edgar Allan Poe: The Balloon Hoax, 1844
On April 15, 1844, The New York Sun published a sensational, detailed account of the first transatlantic balloon trip, making the journey in just three days. The fabulous tale proved to be a flight of fantasy by Poe. The hoax inspired another writer, Jules Verne, to pen a tale of traveling around the world in 80 days.
Mark Twain: The Petrified Man, 1862
A young newspaperman by the name of Samuel Clemens wrote a piece for Virginia City, Nevada's Territorial Enterprise. In the story, he described the discovery of a 100-year-old petrified stony man (oddly possessing a wooden leg) in the mountains south of Gravelly Ford.
The obvious satire was taken for a true story and published as far away as the London Lancet, despite the description of the mummy as follows: "The right thumb resting against the side of the nose; the left thumb partially supporting the chin, the fore-finger pressing the inner corner of the left eye and drawing it partly open; the right eye was closed, and the fingers of the right hand spread apart."
Twain literally thumbed his nose at the reader, and no one even noticed.
H.L Mencken: The Bathtub Hoax, 1917
Mencken was greatly influenced by Twain's works. He often employed satire in his covering of stories such as the Scopes Monkey Trial.
But his most lasting contribution lies in his historical account of the bathtub. The article, titled "A Neglected Anniversary," recounted how the bathtub was not popularly received until Millard Fillmore had one installed in the White House.
if you want more on Joe check these outJoe Mulhatton and the Magnetic Saguaro - DesertUSA
www.desertusa.com/desert-people/joe-mulhatton.html
Joe Mulhatton and the Magnetic Saguaro. Arizona's Tallest Tale-Teller. Our love of stories, in both the telling and the hearing, is one of the things that makes us ...
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Hoaxes of Joseph Mulhattan - The Museum of Hoaxes
http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/joseph_mulhattan
During the 1870s and 1880s Joseph Mulhattan was perhaps the most ... Variant spellings of his name appear, including Mulhatten, Mulhatton, and Mulholland.
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Experience Arizona - Arizona History: Joe Mulhattan
www.experience-az.com/About/arizona/people/mulhattan.html
The stories of huge gold strikes near Ripsey came from the imaginative mind of Joseph Mulhattan (sometimes called Joe Mulhatton or Col. Joe Mulhattan), who ...
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Joe Mulhatton: The Appalachian Baron Munchausen ...
http://vacreeper.com/2014/10/joe-mulhatton/
Oct 28, 2014 - Joseph "Joe" Mulhatton (1848-1913) was an icon of the Appalachians at one time who slipped through the fingers of memory. Despite a surge ...
(http://vacreeper.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/mulhattan-300x252.jpg)
Old newspaper drawing of Joe Mulhatton in his younger years.