10 Fascinating Historical Artefacts (That Weren't Real)

In the early 1980s, the Church of the Latter Day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church, acquired a letter that cast a stunning new light on the story of its founding.

According to this document, Joseph Smith, who received the 'golden plates' holding the writings on which the church was founded, got them from a magical 'white salamander' and not the more conventional and PR-friendly angel as existing versions of the story had maintained.

The 'Salamander Letter' was poised to turn the LDS on its head. It was part of a huge cache of early Smith-related documents sold to the church by a rare book dealer named Mark Hofmann.

The sheer number of documents originating with Hofmann should probably have rung some alarm bells. When they didn't, a couple of letter bombs did the job, which killed a document collector who was looking into Hofmann's shenanigans along with an innocent woman targeted solely to cloud the motive.

Hofmann almost killed himself with another bomb, was arrested and exposed, and the Salamander Letter ceased to be a historical document and became a footnote in one of America's strangest murder cases.