User:Smokingloud/sandbox/Wilhemina Pinkle

= Wilhelmina Pinkle = Wilhemina Pinkle was the subject of a widely publicized missing person hoax from late 1905 and early 1906. First reported in the Kansas City Star, the story of Pinkle being marooned on a small island near Morocco was picked up by hundreds of news outlets nationwide. Over ten thousand readers signed a petition for the the U.S. Navy to rescue Pinkle before a leaked telegram revealed her to be a hoax. Historians now believe that the story was invented by the German Consulate in Gibraltar as means of discrediting France.

History
The first article on Pinkle was run on October 4th, 1905. The Star's international correspondent reported that Pinkle, originally from Chicago and traveling in Northern Africa on missionary work, had been kidnapped for ransom by Barbary pirates but abandoned on a small island due to her "vigor and upright morals." Despite attempts by several local fishermen to rescue her, she was allegedly unable to leave the island due to an unspecified issue with her passport, compounded by confusion surrounding newly-asserted French authority in the region. Though initially claiming that he had "met and liked well this traveler at the Continental Hotel in Casablanca, a mere two weeks before her marooning," the Star's correspondent later clarified that he had met a similarly named American from Milwaukee.

Within a week the story had been repeated in most of the country's major newspapers. The Washington Post claimed it had independently corroborated the story, and several less reputable sources even claimed to have been in contact with Pinkle; sensational details such as Pinkle surviving solely off clams and seagrass were widely circulated. The hoax grew in notoriety until a young H.L. Mencken, in a letter to his local newspaper reprinted nationwide, pointed out numerous inconsistencies in the story, including the fact that there had been no Barbary pirates for over fifty years. In March of 1906 several European outlets published a telegram "from a well-known source in the Kaiser's government" advocating for the creation of a similar hoax; that same month, a British merchant vessel visited several islands matching the description of where Pinkle was located and found no evidence of her existence, definitively discrediting the story.

Cultural Impact
At the height of the hoax Pinkle was the second-most discussed individual in the United States, according to archival searches. Collection efforts for her rescue were taken up in several major cities, and President Theodore Roosevelt allegedly asked an aide "whether or not we can do something to help that poor Pinkle woman." It was also common to wear a yellow ribbon in support of Pinkle, and over the Christmas season many charity choirs performed the German folksong "Remember my Dear Wilhelmina."