I was 8 or 10 when I first saw the photograph and while my Dad assured me it was a hoax, I had hoped that it somehow was not.
The Cottingley Fairies — one of the most famous photographic hoaxes of the 20th century.
In 1917, cousins Elsie Wright (16) and Frances Griffiths (9) took a series of five photographs in the garden of Elsie’s home in Cottingley, West Yorkshire, England. The most iconic shows young Frances sitting by a stream, chin in hand, with four small winged fairies dancing and playing in front of her.
They created the “fairies” by copying illustrations from a children’s book (Princess Mary’s Gift Book), cutting them out of cardboard, and propping them up with hatpins. Elsie’s father (an amateur photographer) developed the plates and was skeptical from the start, but the girls stuck to their story.
The photos gained worldwide attention in 1920 when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes and a committed spiritualist) published them in The Strand Magazine, presenting them as genuine evidence of fairies. He and others believed the working-class girls were too innocent and unskilled to pull off a sophisticated fraud.
It wasn’t until the early 1980s that the truth came out. In 1983, Elsie and Frances admitted the first four photos were faked. Frances continued to insist the fifth photograph (“Fairy Sunbath”) was genuine until her death, while Elsie said all five were staged.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
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2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
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The Beautiful
Said the Disciple to the Lover, “Sir, before I left the world I heard certain men who were held in high esteem and thought to know the will of the Beloved say that those who loved the Beautiful did not love the Beloved but loved idols, yet in the Garden of the Beloved we are ever striving to create beauty for the pleasure of the Beloved. Were they then speaking the truth?”
The Lover answered, “Those who said this had never glimpsed the form of the Beloved nor ever truly sought Him, for all beauty is but the reflection of the beauty of the Beloved, although seen very dimly as in a dark and faulty mirror, even as all goodness is a dim reflection of the goodness of the Beloved. So it is that those who love beauty and goodness recognize dimly in them the form of the Beloved and though often in ignorance those who are seeking the Beautiful and the Good are seeking after the Beloved.”
