So, I was watching the Danny Wallace's Hoax Files on Sky which features the 19 greatest hoaxes, and they mentioned Mary Tofts. Now I'll let Wikipedia fill in a few blanks :

Mary Tofts was a maidservant from Godalming, England who in 1726 became the subject of considerable controversy due to a hoax where she was alleged by her doctors to have given birth to at least 16 rabbits.

Tofts was 25 years old and married at the time, and despite a miscarriage in August still seemed pregnant. She went into apparent labor and the local doctor John Howard arrived to assist. Howard reported that he delivered several rabbits, all stillborn, and that afterward she still seemed pregnant. He sent letters to some of England's greatest doctors and scientists asking for help investigating the situation, and among those who came to his assistance were Nathaniel St. Andre, surgeon-anatomist to King George I, and Sir Richard Manningham, the most famous obstetrician in London. Toft gave birth to several more dead rabbits in their presence.

Tofts claimed that during pregnancy she had an intense craving for roast rabbit, that she tried to catch rabbits in the garden, that she had admired them in the village market, and that she had dreamed about rabbits. Based on this the doctors explained the births as a result of "maternal impressions", contending that a pregnant woman's experiences could be imprinted directly on the fetus at conception and cause birth defects.

Sir Richard Manningham eventually exposed the rabbit birthings as a hoax, but not before many of London's most eminent doctors had been thoroughly taken in by it. In the aftermath of the hoax the medical profession received a great deal of public mockery for its gullibility.

(Source : Wikipedia)

What happened in the end was that on 29 November 1726 Mary was brought to London, by that time her case had become a national sensation, and huge crowds surrounded the house where she was kept. But when kept under constant supervision, Mary stopped giving birth to rabbits, and her case quickly began to unravel.

Witnesses came forward who claimed that they had supplied Mary's husband with rabbits. Then Manningham threatened that he might have to surgically examine Mary's uterus in the name of science, she wisely decided to confess.

She explained that she had simply inserted the dead rabbits inside her womb when no one was looking, motivated by a desire for fame and the hope of receiving a pension from the King. She was briefly imprisoned for fraud, but was released without trial.

However, she isn't by any stretch of the imagination crazy or a con artist, she was merely ahead of her time. Nowadays, it's really common to have an expensive rabbit 'down there', but usually it's moving not dead. But yeah, from previously purchased gifts I've given, I hear they are 'quite good' - I've had to take peoples word for that though, shucks. Maybe I still have a chance at a market.

I love Bunny webcomic, it's a wonderful glimpse of the surreal through the medium of freakin' kewtness. Following Todays (25 September 2005) when a fellow reader, chibisalee, pointed out an artistic piece in Italy.

Oh my god...
( Cut for freaky Bunny )

As I mentioned I'm waiting for the story about a landslide and headlines of "Giant Pink Bunny Crushes Town, Citizens Worried", "Survivors Set Camp In Left Ear", "Italy Declares War On Giant Bunnies" and in The Sun "Sharon Shows Her Support For Victims In Her Cottontail - Pictures on Page Three".