Source: Futility Closet
One of the most exquisite of telephone hoaxes known to me was one contrived by Dr Carl Bosch when he was a research student in Germany. He happened to work in a laboratory situated several floors up, where from his window he found that he could survey a block of flats across the road.
Having discovered that the occupant of one of the flats was a newspaper correspondent, Bosch telephoned him pretending to be…