Scams are an omnipresent danger in modern life (investment opportunities, wonder-products, diet fads and so on) but they were a feature of the past as well - and in some cases, rather inventive. Let's take a look at...
- The suspicious spirit photos
- The Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814
- The Martians brought to Mexico
- The ancient copper con-artist
- The 1834 semaphore cyber-attack
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| "Extra-terrestrials" were presented to Mexican Congress in 2023... (Hollanddesign) |
The Suspicious Spirit Photos
Spirit photography was all the rage in the Victorian era. The idea was simple - the camera could reveal a spirit lingering behind the subject, often a deceased loved-one.
One such spirit photographer was William Mumler - and he was confident enough to challenge experts to debunk his "art." An attempt to do so was made by photographer James Black, who sent an assistant to get his photo taken... and report back on the process. Everything seemed legitimate to the assistant, prompting Black himself to visit. He offered a wager to Mumler - if he could take a photo of Black with a spirit in it, Black would hand over $50 - a handsome sum in those days.
Mumler took the bet - he allowed Black the opportunity to inspect his camera, check the glass plate and observe him preparing it, then took his photo. They then developed the plate under Black's watchful eye... and shockingly enough, a second figure appeared. Black now admitted he couldn't disprove Mumler's spirits - and he was far from alone in trying and failing to expose the spirit photographer.
It's not entirely clear what Mumler was doing to get his ghosts (which even included Abraham Lincoln behind his widow) but he may have been placing a previously exposed plate in front of the fresh plate to generate a faint ghost image. We do know that he ended up accused of fraud and brought to court. The famous showman (and conman) P. T. Barnum even presented a spirit image of himself with Abraham Lincoln to the court to demonstrate that these photos could be faked. Despite all the evidence against him, Mumler was acquitted... but enough damage had been done to his reputation that his spirit photography racket was well and truly dead.
The Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814
It was 1814 and Napoleon was being driven back into France. When "Colonel de Bourg" arrived by ship and brought news that Napoleon had been slain, the rumor traveled like wildfire... especially since he stopped at every inn to spread it. When the news hit the London Stock Exchange prices skyrocketed - everyone wanted in on the opportunities opened up by victory.
Suffice to say, the news was false. Napoleon was not dead, the war was not over and those investment opportunities didn't exist though a group had managed to sell stock worth over a million pounds - a huge amount in those days. Curiously, the majority of those stocks had been purchased at a fraction of the price mere weeks before.
Captain Random de Berenger (aka "Colonel de Bourg") and Rear Admiral Lord Cochrane were amongst those accused of manipulating the stocks in what would now be called a "pump and dump" scheme. Cochrane had been a war hero (and maintained public support) but lost his rank, was fined and was sentenced to being pilloried (put in stocks for public ridicule) though that last penalty was commuted. Cochrane continued to protest his innocence and was later pardoned and had his rank restored - in his defense, his wealth meant he had little motive to participate in the scheme.
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| Con-artists manipulated the 1814 London Stock Exchange with rumors about Napoleon... (Tumisu) |
The Martians Brought to Mexico
In 2023, Ufologist Jaime Maussan presented a pair of "non-human" bodies to Mexican Congress. The remains were small, possessed three fingers and lacked teeth... but Maussan claimed that they had osmium (rare on Earth) implants and were not part of terrestrial evolution. The intrepid Ufologist claimed the bodies came from diatom mines in Cusco, Peru, suggesting that they had lived and died on Earth before being fossilized.
The bodies were eventually seized by Peruvian customs during a border crossing and subjected to forensic examination. The results were both disappointing and disturbing - the aliens were actually animal and human remains bound together with modern glue.
There's another reason these claims should have been treated with skepticism - Maussan has been caught with fabricated aliens before, with bodies supposedly found near the Nazca Lines (huge glyphs carved into the soil of Peru) eventually being revealed as human children.
The Ancient Copper Con-Artist
Perhaps the oldest known con is recorded on a clay tablet from the ancient city of Ur. It details a dispute between two traders, Ea-nāṣir and Nanni. Nearly 4000 years ago in the city of Ur, the traders made a deal for fine copper ingots... only for Ea-nāṣir to provide low quality copper instead. He also treated the messenger sent by Nanni poorly, brushing off his complaints with an ancient form of "take 'em or leave 'em."
Ea-nāṣir must have had a choke-hold on the copper market, as Nanni was not the only one to complain about him. A tablet from the merchant Imgur-Sin tells Ea-nāṣir that he is fed-up and to give his agent Niga-Nanna good quality copper before he gets angry as well. Yet another tablet from the trader Nar-am warns Ea-nāṣir against giving out bad copper, while a tablet from Ea-nāṣir himself tells his associates how to appease some men asking about a quantity of missing metal!
The 1834 Semaphore Cyber-Attack
Communication was slow in the early 19th century, relying on riders and mail carts. The government of France had a way around that handicap - a set of wooden towers with arms that could pass a signal across France at an astounding rate for the time.
The towers didn't offer their services to the public... in theory. In 1834 the bond-trading brothers Francois and Joseph Blanc bribed an operator to put "errors" into the messages. An agent in Paris monitored the stock exchange and sent packages of clothing (color-coded to specific changes in the market) to the operator. The operator would then put errors carrying the information into government messages, followed by an "error" signal. Because of the signal, the errors were not transcribed into the official record... but an ex-operator with a view of the tower outside Bordeaux was able to read and pass them to the brothers, allowing them to make a killing in the Bordeaux markets with their uncanny "foresight."
The scheme was uncovered when their crooked operator fell ill and a new (but decidedly more moral) operator reported an attempt to recruit him to the scheme. Though the government put a stop to the arrangement, the brothers actually walked away without penalty - no law had yet been written against what they were doing!
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