Alan MacMasters hoax

Additionally, the lecturer pointed out that his friend, named Maddy Kennedy, had edited the Wikipedia article about toasters, falsely claiming he was the inventor.

In February 2013, he created an article dedicated to Alan MacMasters, including an image of himself manipulated to resemble a 19th century photograph, and published it on Wikipedia.

He also attributed the invention of the electric kettle to MacMasters and suggested that the toaster had contributed to one of Britain’s earliest fatal appliance fires.

[2][4] Alex intended the article as a jest; however, newspapers, encyclopedias, government agencies, and the Hagley Museum and Library in Delaware perpetuated the false story of MacMasters as the inventor.

A viewer of the Reddit post reported their concern on the Internet forum Wikipediocracy, where users discovered the article’s fraudulent nature and alerted Wikipedia administrators, who promptly marked the page for deletion.