Hugh Troy
This celebrity goo was created by Scott Hardie.
publication date: Friday, December 19, 2025 (part of December 2025)
category: 
hoaxes
clue: If a light bulb goes off for you while trying to name this prankster behind fake severed Van Gogh ears and rhinoceros tracks across campus, it probably didn't come from the Waldorf Astoria. Then again, his biggest prank of all might have been making up the majority or even entirety of the stories about him.
explanation: Troy was a painter known for pulling off a long list of public pranks, including making animal tracks across Cornell University with a fake rhino foot, smuggling dried beef in the shape of a severed ear into a Van Gogh museum exhibit and passing it off as the artist's real ear, and dressing in a maintenance worker's outfit to steal every light bulb in the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Little evidence exists for his claims; in the years since his 1964 death, it has become commonly accepted that most of them never actually happened. more…
intended difficulty: medium
solved by: Russ Wilhelm, Steve West, Samir Mehta, and Richard Slominsky
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