Happy Deceit Day

“At a meeting of the Geological Society of London on 18 December 1912, Charles Dawson claimed that a workman at the Piltdown gravel pit had given him a fragment of the skull four years earlier…. Woodward announced that a reconstruction of the fragments indicated that the skull was in many ways similar to that of a modern human, except for the occiput (the part of the skull that sits on the spinal column) and for brain size, which was about two-thirds that of a modern human. He went on to indicate that save for the presence of two human-like molar teeth, the jaw bone found would be indistinguishable from that of a modern, young chimpanzee. From the British Museum’s reconstruction of the skull, [Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of the geological department at the British Museum] proposed that Piltdown man represented an evolutionary missing link between apes and humans, since the combination of a human-like cranium with an ape-like jaw tended to support the notion then prevailing in England that human evolution began with the brain.”
 — The Piltdown Man hoax — after the ideas of “God” and “happiness,” the third greatest fraud to take advantage of the gullibility of man — was first perpetrated on this day one hundred years ago. What steaming pile of lies are you going to swallow today just because it is easier to do so than think critically? Tell us in the comments.