Fake news is nothing new. The internet teems with hoaxes but, long before Microsoft and mobile phones, human beings have been sharing misinformation and counterfeit claims.
Charles Dawson was celebrated as the man to discover the earliest missing link between man and ape.
The Piltdown Man: a case study in archaeological deception
In 1908 workmen digging gravel for road repairs near Dawson's home in Piltdown, East Sussex, showed him fragments of human skull. As an amateur collector of some note he gained the support of palaeontologists and scholars to search the area further.
Comedy, free speech and warnings from the past
Hannah Arendt was a Jewish philosopher who grew up in Nazi Germany. Eventually she had to flee to France and, …