The Dreadnought Hoax
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The\\xa0Dreadnought\\xa0hoax\\xa0was a\\xa0practical joke\\xa0pulled by\\xa0Horace de Vere Cole\\xa0in 1910. Cole tricked the\\xa0Royal Navy\\xa0into showing their\\xa0flagship, the\\xa0battleship\\xa0HMS\\xa0Dreadnought, to a fake delegation of\\xa0Abyssinian\\xa0royals. The hoax drew attention in Britain to the emergence of the\\xa0Bloomsbury Group, among whom some of Cole\'s collaborators numbered. The hoax was a repeat of a similar impersonation which Cole and\\xa0Adrian Stephenhad organised while they were students at Cambridge in 1905.
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