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| Fifteen rabbits later, Mrs Toft began to regret her passionate evening with Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail |
But while pulling the wool over the eyes of the general public is one thing - such as the Panorama spaghetti crop hoax of 1957 - tricking the experts takes another level of cunning.
The following people, who among them fooled doctors, scientists, the Royal Navy and historians, deserve a special mention.
Unlikely as it sounds, in the 18th Century a woman called Mary Toft convinced doctors she had given birth to rabbits. Yes, doctors. And yes, rabbits.
Mrs Toft, a servant from Godalming in Surrey, surprised her family by going into labour. Even more surprisingly, she produced something resembling a kitten.
Her explanation was rooted in the long-discredited theory of "maternal impression" - caused by being startled by a rabbit in a field in 1726 . From that moment, she said, she dreamed about, and had a "constant and strong desire" to eat, rabbits.
An obstetrician named John Howard, who seems to have been less than rigorous with his examinations, was convinced by her story. He wrote to some of England's greatest doctors and King George I, informing them of the miraculous births - including the momentous occasion when his patient produced nine dead bunnies.
The King sent his doctor to investigate. The medic, who arrived when Mrs Toft was in labour with her 15th rabbit, was certain she was genuine - and took some of her offspring back to London to show the monarch and Prince of Wales.
A surgeon was then sent by the royal household to have a look. The surgeon, apparently more sensible than the others, examined the rabbits and found that dung inside one of them contained corn - proving it could not have developed inside Mrs Toft's womb.
Meanwhile, Mrs Toft was busy giving birth to other unusual things, including a cat's legs and a hog's bladder.
Medical opinion was divided - until a man was caught sneaking a rabbit into Mrs Toft's room.
She was eventually forced to admit she had manually inserted the dead rabbits and then allowed them to be removed as if she were giving birth.
The hoaxer was later charged with fraud and imprisoned. She spent a few months in prison then returned to relative obscurity.
As for the King's doctor - he met an unhappy end after being convinced by the scam. He published a pamphlet called A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets but after the ruse was exposed, he lost favour with the court and died a pauper.
They say the bookie always wins - but in 1898 a mystery syndicate managed to gammon the establishment and make themselves a tidy sum with an audacious scam.
The Sportsman, a leading racing paper, was contacted by the Trodmore Hunt Club to tell them of the August Bank Holiday meeting at Trodmore Racecourse in Cornwall. All the information generally provided by racecourses - rules, purses, the names of patrons, stewards, sponsors and officials - were provided.
The racecard was a good one, and a man calling himself Mr Martin, from the Trodmore Hunt Club, said he would telegraph the results to the office. The Sportsman printed it.
Bookmakers took bets as usual, and when the results came through punters collected their winnings. The following day, rival newspaper The Sporting Life printed the results after seeing them in The Sportsman.
However, there was a discrepancy in the odds given on one of the winning horses, called Reaper. The Sportsman had it down as 5-1, while Sporting Life had it at 5-2.
The newspapers needed to check which was correct, so tried to contact the racecourse.
At the same time, bookmakers were suffering after having to pay out on Reaper - a horse nobody had heard of. Some of them started to investigate its pedigree.
It emerged that there was no such place as Trodmore, let alone a racecourse. The people behind the hoax had made themselves hundreds of thousands of pounds by betting on non-existent horses, in non-existent races on a non-existent track in a non-existent village.
They were never Caught.
(BBC)
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