Bathtub hoax

The bathtub hoax was a famous hoax perpetrated by the American journalist H. L. Mencken involving the publication of a fictitious history of the bathtub.

"A Neglected Anniversary"

On December 28, 1917, an article titled "A Neglected Anniversary" by H. L. Mencken was published in the New York Evening Mail.[1] It claimed that the bathtub had been introduced into the United States as recently as 1842, the first ones having been made of mahogany lined with lead. The article went on to describe how the introduction of the bathtub was initially greatly discussed and opposed until President Millard Fillmore had a bathtub installed in the White House in 1850, making the invention more broadly acceptable.[1]

The article was entirely false but was still being widely quoted as fact for years, even as recently as January 2008 when a Kia TV ad referenced the story with no mention of its fictional nature.[2]

In 1949 Mencken wrote:

The success of this idle hoax, done in time of war, when more serious writing was impossible, vastly astonished me. It was taken gravely by a great many other newspapers, and presently made its way into medical literature and into standard reference books. It had, of course, no truth in it whatsoever, and I more than once confessed publicly that it was only a jocosity ... Scarcely a month goes by that I do not find the substance of it reprinted, not as foolishness but as fact, and not only in newspapers but in official documents and other works of the highest pretensions.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 "Mencken’s History of the Bathtub, 1917". Museum of Hoaxes. Retrieved 2 August 2014.
  2. ↑ "Kia knows their history". Who Are The Ad Wizards Who Came Up With THAT One?. Retrieved 2 August 2014.
  3. ↑ Mencken, H L (1982). A Mencken Chrestomathy. Vintage Books. p. 592. ISBN 9780394752099.

Further reading

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.