12-year-old Calvin Graham lied about his age in order to serve in World War II. He became a decorated war hero at age 13, but was thrown out of the Navy after his mom found out.

Laurence Fishburne was only 14 when filming Apocalypse Now, as he had lied about his age to get the role. Production took so long, he was 18 by the time of its release.

Otto von Bismarck once altered a telegram to France that made it seem as though France was being aggressive to a budding German state. This led to not only a war between Prussia and France, but also led to the declaration of the German Empire in the hall of mirrors at Versailles.

The diamond industry started promoting engagement rings in the 1940s, inflating the cost of diamonds, and changing the scope and value of diamonds forever.

Darius the Great, 522–486 BC, governed the Achaemenid Empire at its peak, which included a quarter to a third of mankind. He retained power after killing a priest named Gaumata, who was leading an uprising by pretending to be an heir named Bardiya. It’s only more recently that historians are starting to believe that Darius lied to everyone, and the man was Bardiya all along.

The story of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree and saying, "I can not tell a lie," to his father, was itself a lie created by Washington's personal biographer and minister after his death to sell books.

The Nuremberg Trials executioner, John C. Woods, lied to the US Military about his prior experience. This led to a number of botched, and extra brutal executions.

The original surveyors of Mount Everest lied and added two feet to its height to make it 29,002 feet, because they didn't think people would believe them if they said it was really 29,000 feet high.

Marilee Jones, the former director of admissions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was let go after she was found to have fabricated her academic background. She invented degrees for 28 years, both before and after the job. She had “begged college applicants not to pad their resumes." She is now a college admissions consultant.

For six years after her death, the brothers of Joan of Arc passed off an imposter as their sister, claiming that she’d escaped death. They received lavish gifts and traveled from one festive reception to the next, until finally admitting their deception to the King of France.

KFC only became a success in Japan after a junior store manager lied about whether Kentucky Fried Chicken was a staple of American Christmas.

The woman who accused 14-year-old Emmett Till of flirting with her admitted that she lied 62 years later.

"Super Size Me" was mostly a lie. There was little to no record of what Morgan Spurlock, and many of his symptoms shown on the show can be attributed to alcohol withdrawal.

American author Washington Irving lied when he said Christopher Columbus sailed the world in a bid to prove it wasn't flat. The truth is that 'Flat Earth' has not been a mainstream theory since at least 600 B.C. In the 1400s, almost everybody would have known the Earth was round.

The myth that carrots help improve eyesight was a lie used by the allies to hide their new radar systems that greatly improved their effectiveness in night conflicts against the Germans.

The Monkees never outsold the Beatles and Rolling Stones, as widely reported. Michael Nesmith was giving an interview in 1977 and lied. "It isn’t too well known that we sold over 35 million records in 1967." He wondered if it was too outrageous. The next day it was printed as fact.

The distributor for the movie Snowpiercer, 2013, requested that the scene involving a fish be removed, but director Bong Joon-h convinced them to keep it in by lying about his father being a fisherman and claiming the scene was dedicated to him. Bong's father was never a fisherman.

Hot cheetos were not proposed by a janitor, and while the man who makes that claim, Richard Montañez, did rise from the factory floor to the executive level, hot cheetos were in production well before he could have proposed them.

The Count of St. Germain was an 18th-century adventurer who achieved prominence in European high society, but he was such a prolific liar that nothing about him can be completely confirmed.

Betsy Ross didn’t actually make the first American flag in 1776. It was a story made up by her grandson, 100 years later.

The con-artist, Frank Abagnale, from Catch Me if You Can, lied about most of the story. His book retelling his "crimes" was the only successful con he ever pulled.