10 Fascinating Historical Artefacts (That Weren't Real)

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a fake anti-Semitic document that turned up in Russia at the start of the 20th Century, which by a stunning coincidence was just before a series of pogroms displaced huge numbers of Russian Jews.

The document purported to be a plan by a Jewish cabal to take over the world, and was either completely made up or cobbled together from similarly bigoted diatribes from previous works.

The Protocols are an example of how even an obvious fake can find adherents as long as it tells them something they want to hear. The document has turned up again and again, being distributed by notable anti-Semite Henry Ford, being taught as fact in schools during the Third Reich, and even showing up as justification for terrorism and hate crime today in the hands of Hamas, right wing extremists and others.

All this is in spite of the Protocols being proven an obvious and not even very good fake in the 1920s.