Newspaper Hoax - The Whale That Swallowed Jonah
The Story: In the early 1920’s, the Toronto Mail and Empire reported that two scientists named Dr. Schmierkase and Dr. Butterbrod had discovered “what appeared to be the fossil of the whale that had swallowed Jonah.” The whale had a muscle that functioned like a trapdoor, giving access to it’s stomach.
The next day, evangelists all over Toronto read the story from the pulpit, citing it as confirmation that the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale was true . . . and the day after that, a rival newspaper ran a story reporting on the evangelists’ speech.
The Truth: Three days after the original story ran, the Toronto Mail and Empire ran a second story exposing the first as a hoax, the work of a journalist named Charles Langdon Clarke.
Clarke liked to spend his free time cooking up news items based on Biblical stories, and then attributing them to fictionally newspapers like the Babylon Gazette or the Jerusalem Times for added credibility. Anyone who spoke German would have had an inkling that the story was a joke - Dr. Schmierkase and Dr. Butterbrod translates as Dr. Cheese and Dr. Butter Bread.
