Joseph Mulhatton



Joseph Mulhattan (sometimes credited as Joseph Mulhatton; c. 1848 - December 5, 1913) was an American travelling hardware salesman and serial hoaxer, the author of a multitude of fabricated stories that were widely published in local, American national, and international newspapers as legitimate news, including: alleged plans to have George Washington's petrified remains put on public display at Washington Monument; the exploration of an enormous underground river beneath Birmingham, Alabama; the fall of the largest meteor ever known; the calculation of the precise location of the Star of Bethlehem; an invisible moon thirty-thousand miles from the Earth; a lost pyramid and the golden treasures of an extinct race in Kentucky; hemp-harvesting monkeys and a plan to import them in huge numbers; the hair bleaching and reddening properties of Mono Lake, California; and the discoveries of the Magnetic Saguaro Cacti of Arizona and the Arbor Diaboli (Devil Tree) of Mexico. He was frequently compared in later years to Raspe's Baron Munchausen character, and amassed an impressive array of headline titles from "Prince of Liars" to "King of Romancers."