Word: faked
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...Grigory Potemkin, one of the more artful lovers of Catherine the Great, accomplished many things during his long domination of Russia, but he is best remembered for an illusion. To impress Catherine with the prosperity that he had brought to her subjects, he is said to have built handsome fake villages all along the route of her tour through southern Russia in 1787. Historians doubt this tale, which they blame on malicious court gossip, yet there is something about the idea of "Potemkin villages" that lingers in the memory as a symbol of political craft...
...pickpockets, but also the police. Los Angeles authorities discovered a few years ago that an empty police car parked alongside a speedway would serve just as well as a manned cruiser to slow down traffic. In fact, at least one Beverly Hills denizen has taken to keeping a fake patrol car in the driveway to deter thieves. Mere burglar alarms are obsolete today; the up-to-date suburban paranoiac installs timers in his house to turn lights off and on while he is away...
...horse. Macduff knew it when he disguised his soldiers with branches from Birnam Wood as they marched against Macbeth. In World War II, the Allies created a phantom First U.S. Army Group, outfitted with rubber tanks and canvas landing barges (courtesy of the Shepperton movie studios). Its swirl of fake radio messages about an impending invasion at Calais helped keep the entire German 15th Army pinned down 200 miles east of the actual invasion site on Omaha Beach...
...Villanueva--now 6-ft., 2-in., 195 pounds--was big enough to play wide receiver and defensive back in high school. He has even run the ball twice for the Crimson this year--once on a fake punt and once on a fake field goal. Both times he has made first downs...
Only five days after the game The Stanford Daily published a fake Daily Californian telling of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) decision to disallow the play and award the same to Stanford. Luckily for the Stanford pranksters, the Californian's press broke down the night before the parody's publication, so the parody succeeded and cheerleaders wept in public...