Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
Photographing Fairies
37 minutes Posted Apr 22, 2022 at 4:01 am.
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Show notes

Sherlock Holmes is known for approaching all mysteries with cool logic - and yet when his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saw photographs taken by two young girls purporting to show real life fairies at play... he unwisely declared them genuine.

How did Elsie and Frances fool so many people with their photography... and why did they keep the hoax going for decades?

For a full list of sources go to timharford.com

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