Buzz
Intentional inaccuracies and distortions appear across various areas of human activity. The reasons behind these errors and distortions range widely. Some are justified, others are humorous, a few are malicious, and some are simply strange. Despite their differences, all these intentional inaccuracies and distortions share one thing: they are undeniably fascinating.
10. Rand McNally’s Map Mistakes
Travelers depend on road atlases and maps to navigate, particularly during trips. Precision is crucial, both for the drivers who trust these maps and for the cartographers who design them. But is it always a priority? Apparently not.
Since the 1800s, mapmakers have intentionally included fake streets, known as “trap streets,” to catch those who copy their work illegally. These imaginary roads serve as a safeguard against plagiarism, a persistent issue in the industry. Creating detailed maps of urban, suburban, and rural areas, often on a national or global scale, requires significant time, effort, and resources. As a result, unauthorized copies of their work are not only frustrating but also costly. Trap streets act as a tool for cartographers to identify and expose plagiarists.
Rand McNally, for instance, employed trap streets until the 1980s, such as the fictional “La Taza Drive” in Upland, California. However, fake streets aren’t the only method used to catch copycats. Mapmakers might also alter real streets, adding nonexistent curves or depicting a major road as a narrow lane.
Another tactic involves creating fictional towns, often referred to as “paper towns.” Rebecca Maxwell of GIS Lounge notes that both Rand McNally and Google have been fooled by this strategy:
In the 1930s, Otto Lindberg and his assistant Ernest Alpers invented a fake town named Agloe in upstate New York. Despite its nonexistence, Rand McNally later included Agloe in their New York map. Similarly, Google Maps featured a fabricated English town called Argleton until 2009. Google claimed this was a human error, but Argleton also appeared in printed maps from Tele Atlas.
These deceptive practices may be fading. In today’s digital era, with free online maps widely available, sales of physical maps and atlases have declined. Additionally, legal rulings on cartographic copyright violations are unclear. In Feist v. Rural Telephone Company, the US Supreme Court determined that map data is not intellectual property and cannot be copyrighted. As a result, drivers likely no longer need to worry about accidentally finding themselves on Upland’s La Taza Drive or getting lost in the fictional town of Agloe.
9. The New Columbia Encyclopedia’s Fabricated Entry
Even encyclopedias can’t always be trusted.
The 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia included a deliberate fabrication—a full article about Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a supposed photographer from Bangs, Ohio. The entry claimed that Mountweazel, who lived from 1942 to 1973, “created [ . . . ] acclaimed portraits of the South Sierra Miwok in 1964.” The government reportedly admired her work so much that she received “grants to produce photo-essays on unique subjects, such as New York City buses, Parisian cemeteries, and rural American mailboxes.” Ironically, the fictional photographer died young at 31, “in an explosion while working for Combustibles magazine.” Before her tragic death, her work was “widely exhibited internationally and published in Flags Up! (1972).”
She was remarkably accomplished, especially considering she never actually existed. Her story was a “copyright trap,” intended to identify those who copied the encyclopedia’s content “without proper credit or payment.”
8. Royal Mail’s PostZon Database
The UK’s Royal Mail, now a privatized entity, maintains 1.8 million postcodes in its PostZon database, stored in “comma-separated variable format.” A version of this database was leaked by Wikileaks, revealing the longitude and latitude coordinates for each postcode.
The leaked database could be a treasure trove for advertisers or others seeking access to postcode data. However, this hasn’t proven to be the case. Many suspect the database might include intentional errors, allowing Royal Mail to “detect unauthorized use” and prove that the data was copied rather than independently generated. While the company neither confirmed nor denied the presence of such errors, the mere possibility has been enough to deter potential data thieves.
7. Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington Portrait
A portrait of George Washington, not the man himself, is displayed in the White House’s East Room. This is a replica of the original painting, one of several copies made. The original, commissioned by Senator William Bingham and created by Gilbert Stuart, is proudly housed in the Smithsonian Institute’s National Portrait Gallery. Stuart also produced the copies, all depicting Washington declining a third presidential term.
The White House replica, along with the other copies, features a deliberate spelling mistake. This error isn’t due to Stuart’s poor spelling but serves a specific purpose. It appears in the title of a book shown in the portrait’s lower left corner—Constitution and Laws of the United Sates. The mistake helps differentiate the copies from the original. Each replica includes Stuart’s intentional error for this reason.
6. The Jefferson Memorial
Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the United States, was not only a president and the principal author of The Declaration of Independence but also a “civic humanist” who distrusted commerce, a “proto-socialist” wary of industry, and an opponent of capitalism. He took strong stances on numerous political, economic, and social issues. Advocates of various causes have often used Jefferson’s legacy to claim his support, regardless of whether he actually endorsed their views. His historical significance has made him a symbol for countless movements, even those he might not have supported.
The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, sometimes misrepresents Jefferson’s words for political purposes. Inscriptions on its walls occasionally include phrases he never uttered or present his quotes out of context. Ronald Hamowy, a professor emeritus of intellectual history at the University of Alberta, considers these distortions of Jefferson’s views as “some of the most blatant examples of exploiting Jefferson for short-term political gains.”
Constructed during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, the memorial’s inscriptions imply that Jefferson supported policies aligned with the New Deal—a stance many scholars argue he would have opposed. The memorial not only suggests Jefferson sympathized with Roosevelt’s New Deal but also twists his belief in an educated electorate to imply his endorsement of universal public education.
5. Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to Philip Mazzei
As vice president, Jefferson made a critical error by writing a personal letter to his former neighbor, Philip Mazzei, who had relocated to Pisa, Italy. Sent on April 24, 1796, from Monticello, Virginia, the letter primarily discussed business updates and mutual acquaintances. However, paragraphs Jefferson had written on another occasion—but not included in this letter—were later added, causing significant turmoil for the rest of his life.
Mazzei breached Jefferson’s trust by sharing the letter with three friends—Giovanni Fabbroni, Jacob Van Staphorst, and Giovanni Lorenzo Ferri de Saint-Constant—whom he was courting for business or personal reasons. When the letter was translated into French and published in Paris’s Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur Universel on January 25, 1797, it included four extra paragraphs criticizing the Federalists. These paragraphs, written earlier and unrelated to the original letter, were inserted without clarification, misleading readers.
The altered letter’s publication in US newspapers sparked widespread controversy. Editor Noah Webster obtained a copy from a French newspaper, translated it back into English, and published it in the May 2, 1797, issue of his paper, Minerva. By then, the letter had undergone multiple translations—from English to French and back to English—further distorting its content.
Jefferson confided in James Madison that he couldn’t entirely disown the letter, as most of it was genuine, despite the added paragraphs. He noted a translation error: the French version changed “forms” to “form,” a subtle but significant alteration that misrepresented his intent. Jefferson also speculated that the letter had been translated into Italian at some point, adding another layer of potential distortion. However, his assumption about an Italian translation appears to have been incorrect.
Federalists viewed Jefferson’s letter as “a veiled criticism of George Washington,” the nation’s revered first president. They exploited the letter extensively to further their agenda, often harming Jefferson’s reputation. The French translation of the letter contained inaccuracies and errors, which were left uncorrected and unexplained, and its “unauthorized publication” frequently appeared “out of context.”
Once again, a deliberate error was employed to serve political purposes. Despite the turmoil, Jefferson was later elected president and maintained his friendship with Mazzei, the man who had caused him significant distress.
4. The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, the English nobleman and poet widely known as Lord Byron, left behind a wealth of personal letters and journal entries that fill numerous volumes. These writings document his eventful life, portraying him not only as a literary figure but also as a globetrotter, correspondent with renowned poets and celebrities, a romantic, a grieving father, a wit, and a political revolutionary. His correspondents included literary giants like Sir Thomas Moore, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Matthew Lewis, and Mary Shelley. Despite his brilliance, Byron struggled with the apparent chaos of punctuation in his works.
G. Thomas Tanselle notes that Lord Byron’s punctuation “defies any established rules. He used dashes and commas liberally, often without clear purpose, perhaps to indicate natural pauses or emphasize certain phrases. He frequently committed the ‘comma splice,’ and it’s often unclear where he intended to end a sentence or if he even recognized sentences as distinct units of expression.” Byron himself acknowledged his lack of understanding of punctuation rules, yet he chose to leave these errors uncorrected, making them deliberate.
Byron’s erratic punctuation posed a challenge for the editors of his collected letters and journals. They faced the dilemma of imposing structure on his chaotic writing without stripping away its unique style and emotional intensity. Most editors, including R. E. Prothero, decided to organize his work into sentences and paragraphs based on their interpretation of his intended meaning, fearing that otherwise, his writings might be incomprehensible to readers.
However, this editorial intervention may have backfired. Tanselle argues that by imposing structure, editors risked diminishing the spontaneous, rapid flow of ideas that characterized Byron’s writing, without necessarily improving clarity. Their interpretations might have imposed meanings or emphases Byron never intended. In attempting to correct his prose, the editors may have inadvertently done more harm than good, suggesting that some of Byron’s deliberate errors should have been left untouched.
3. King Tut’s Privates
Not all intentional errors or misrepresentations are documented in print, digital, or handwritten form. King Tutankhamun’s anatomy is a prime example.
The young pharaoh was “buried in an unconventional manner,” missing his heart and with his penis “mummified in an erect position” at a 90-degree angle. Adding to the mystery, his remains and coffins were coated in a thick layer of black liquid, which may have caused Tut’s body to ignite.
Why was King Tut interred in such a strange way? These peculiarities have naturally drawn the attention of scholars and the media. Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo, offers his theory in a recent paper published in the journal Études et Travaux.
King Tut’s erect posture and the black liquid covering his body and coffins were intentional elements of his embalming process, crafted to portray him as Osiris, the god of the underworld. His erect manhood symbolizes Osiris’s fertility, while the black liquid mirrors Osiris’s dark complexion. The absence of Tut’s heart references Osiris’s dismemberment by his brother Seth. Like Osiris, Tut’s heart was buried separately from his body.
2. Scriptural Errors
When translating the New Testament from Greek manuscripts, translators occasionally introduced deliberate changes, altering spellings, censoring vulgar language, and correcting grammar. For instance, the Gospel of Mark originally contained coarse language, which scribes later refined.
Other intentional changes were made to align Old Testament quotes with “Gospel parallels” and “common expressions.” Scribes would tweak one speaker’s words to match another’s when discussing the same topic. For example, if one text said “eat and drink” but a later one only mentioned “eat,” scribes might add “and drink” to maintain consistency. They also corrected awkward inconsistencies, such as changing “Isaiah” to “prophets” in Mark 1:2–3 when multiple prophets were referenced elsewhere.
The Byz manuscript, the foundation of the King James Version (KJV), merged two readings into one. While earlier manuscripts might have used “blessing God” or “pleasing God” in Luke 24:53, the KJV scribes combined both: “They were continually in the temple blessing and praising God.”
Other intentional errors arose when scribes introduced “doctrinally driven alterations” or included “additional enriching content.”
1. Hitler’s Horoscope
Adolf Hitler was deeply superstitious, often relying on his astrologer’s guidance and making significant decisions based on his horoscope. British intelligence viewed his dependence on astrology as a vulnerability that could be manipulated to their advantage.
Louis de Wohl, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, aimed to persuade British officials to exploit Hitler’s horoscope for strategic advantage. Employed by Sir Charles Hambro, leader of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, de Wohl was stationed in a luxurious Park Lane hotel suite in London. There, he crafted “ambiguous” horoscopes for Hitler and other Nazi figures, attributing them to the “Psychological Research Bureau” on official letterhead.
During a visit to the United States, de Wohl was tasked with undermining the astrological predictions of German astrologers. Branding himself “The Modern Nostradamus,” after the renowned French prophet, he argued that periods deemed favorable by German astrologers for Hitler’s plans were, in reality, fraught with peril. De Wohl claimed the stars foretold Hitler’s defeat, not victory.
When his services were deemed unnecessary, de Wohl was recalled to London, where he discovered his “hotel suite had been cleared out” and his “department dissolved.” Although intelligence officials debated how to handle him, they chose to keep him content and employed, fearing that de Wohl could harm their reputation. After all, his intentionally misleading horoscopes had played a role in the war effort, amplifying Hitler’s doubts and fears.
