Even after confessing, one of the Cottingley cousins would not fully back down.

1917 · 1983 · apart: 66 years

In the early 1980s they admitted the fairies were cardboard, but Frances insisted to the end that the fifth and last photo was genuine.

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The event

• The Cottingley Fairies1917 · Cottingley, England. In 1917 cousins Elsie, 16, and Frances, 9, took photos of themselves with 'fairies' by a stream. Sherlock Holmes's creator Arthur Conan Doyle hailed them as proof that fairies exist. Only in the early 1980s did the cousins admit the fairies were cardboard cut-outs copied from a children's book.

20th century

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