Top 10 Most Infamous Lies in History

#10: WMD (2002-03)

Post-9/11 America was primed for fear. The Bush administration poured gasoline on it. After invading Afghanistan, W. set his sights on Iraq, implying that Saddam had ties to 9/11. Worse, the Iraqi dictator was supposedly sitting on a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Enter Colin Powell, the administration’s most trusted face, sent to the U.N. to sell the war. He sat before the world, holding up a vial he said could contain anthrax. Powell echoed now-discredited claims from U.S. intelligence about secret biolabs and mobile weapons programs. When U.S. troops stormed in, they found nothing but the wreckage of a cooked-up war. The lie killed hundreds of thousands, destroyed America's credibility for decades, and haunted Powell until his death.

#9: Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme (2008)

Charles Ponzi made headlines in 1920 by promising absurd profits on postage stamps. He told investors that they could rake in 50% returns in 45 days by flipping international postal coupons. It was a scam. He paid early investors with new money, not actual returns. It was a scheme that would define financial scams for the next century. If Ponzi was a financial demon, then Bernie Madoff was the devil. For decades, he posed as Wall Street’s safest bet. Celebrities, charities, and retirees lined up to hand him their savings. Behind the curtain: it was an empty house of cards. There were no trades, no profits: just a $64 billion illusion. When the 2008 crash hit, it all came crashing down.

#8: LBJ & Vietnam (1964)

In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson made a grave promise: “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home.” Less than a year later, he did exactly that. The Gulf of Tonkin incident - an alleged unprovoked attack by North Vietnam - was used to justify escalation. But one of the two reported attacks never happened. They lied about going, about why they went - and, as the world would come to learn - their chances once they got there. The Pentagon Papers, leaked years later, confirmed it: escalation was planned well in advance of Tonkin. Worse, Johnson and others knew the war was unwinnable. Over 58,000 Americans died; millions of Vietnamese lives were lost, and America’s trust was forever shattered.

#7: Stalin: “There Is No Famine” (1932-34)

Left wing or right wing, there is one consistent truth about autocrats: lies are their greatest weapon. In the early 1930s, Joseph Stalin engineered a famine across Ukraine. He seized grain and sealed borders as millions starved. When foreign journalists started asking questions, the Soviet line was simple: “There is no famine.” Anyone who said otherwise was silenced or expelled. Just a few years later came the Great Purge. Stalin blamed every failure and civil unrest on “enemies of the people.” That lie justified show trials, mass executions, and gulags filled with innocents. Millions died, slain by hunger and bullets alike. All of it was cloaked in official denials and false narratives. To this day, Kremlin-aligned voices still push Holodomor denial online.

#6: The Tobacco Industry on Cigarettes (1964-98)

Imagine if Don Draper ran an ad campaign for the devil, and you'll come close to Big Tobacco. They sold glamour, freedom, and rugged masculinity while knowing full well their product caused cancer. Even after the 1964 Surgeon General’s report linked smoking to disease, tobacco executives doubled down. For decades, they swore nicotine wasn’t addictive. They called filters “safer.” They buried internal research, bought off scientists, and ran ads with doctors holding Lucky Strikes. It wasn’t until 1998, with the Master Settlement Agreement, that the truth fully came out. Decades of calculated deception were exposed in damning internal memos. Smoking killed millions. This was evident since the 1950s. The industry’s real product wasn’t cigarettes: it was the lies they peddled to keep the world smoking.

#5: Watergate (1972)

The break-in was sloppy, but the cover-up was worse. In June 1972, five men were caught bugging the Democratic National Committee’s office at the Watergate complex. As it turned out, the burglars were directly tied to President Nixon’s re-election campaign. The White House denied everything in public. Behind the scenes, Nixon and his inner circle were busy on a crime spree. They paid hush money, obstructed justice, and weaponized federal agencies against their enemies. It worked for a while, until the revelation of tapes. Subpoenaed recordings revealed Nixon knew about the cover-up from the start. The truth unraveled his presidency. Faced with certain impeachment, Nixon resigned in disgrace. Trust in government never fully recovered.

#4: The Donation of Constantine (8th Century)

Did you know that the biggest power move in Catholic history was backdated? During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church claimed Emperor Constantine had granted it control over Rome and the Western Roman Empire. The 'proof' was a 4th-century document called the “Donation of Constantine.” It gave the Pope supreme political and spiritual authority. There was just one problem: it was a fake. Created in the 8th century, the document was used for centuries to justify papal supremacy. Rome’s influence over kings and emperors rested on a forgery. It wasn’t until the 15th century that Renaissance scholar Lorenzo Valla exposed the fraud. But by then, the damage was done. Wars were fought, crowns were bestowed, and power was centralized - all thanks to a fake scroll.

#3: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903-)

It surfaced in 1903 in Tsarist Russia: a pamphlet “proving” that a secret Jewish cabal was bent on global domination. Equal parts plagiarism and pure fiction, its lurid conspiracies spread like wildfire across Europe and America. When the Nazis needed a scapegoat, they turned to the Protocols. They reprinted it by the millions, ran it in newsreels, and taught it in classrooms. Goebbels called it “essential reading,” and Hitler echoed its themes in Mein Kampf. It was a lie that helped grease the machinery of the Holocaust. A century later, the Protocols still circulate online. They're pushed in fringe forums, rebranded as memes, and amplified by state-sponsored troll farms. Today, it muddies the waters of anti-Israel sentiment with antisemitism to divide loyalties and complicate geopolitics.

#2: The Commentarii de Bello Gallico (58-49 BCE)

Julius Caesar didn’t just conquer Gaul: he used the war to ghostwrite his own legend. In 'Commentarii de Bello Gallico,' his official war memoirs, Caesar painted himself as a heroic general defending Rome from barbaric hordes. He claimed to have killed over a million Gauls and taken another million as slaves. In truth, these claims were wild exaggerations. Modern historians estimate those numbers were inflated several times over. Roman losses, too, were far greater than Caesar let on. The “barbarians” he crushed included thousands of women and children. But his propaganda worked. The memoir made Caesar a superstar back home. It paved his path to dictatorship, giving history its earliest - and most successful - example of wartime spin.

#1: The Munich Agreement (1938)

Sometimes, those who believe blatant lies deserve some of the blame. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Germany victorious. He gleefully waved a piece of paper before the British public, promising “peace for our time.” It was the Munich Agreement: a deal with Adolf Hitler allowing Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland. Chamberlain believed it would satisfy Hitler’s ambitions. He was wrong. Within six months, Hitler broke the agreement, seizing the rest of Czechoslovakia. Within a year, he invaded Poland, igniting World War II. The Munich Agreement was just appeasement dressed up as diplomacy. Chamberlain wasn’t completely naïve; he gambled that Hitler could be managed. Instead, the lie that peace had been secured gave a genocidal regime time to grow stronger.

Did we lie to you about history’s worst falsehoods? Let us know in the comments below!