This Day In History: Forger and counterfeiter Mark Hofmann was born on this day in 1954. Considered as one of the most accomplished forgers in history, he often created documents relating to Mormon history that could embarrass them, and then sell those documents to the Church so that they could suppress them. Hofmann also forged and sold signatures of George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Boone, John Brown, Andrew Jackson, Mark Twain, Nathan Hale, John Hancock, Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln, John Milton, Paul Revere, Myles Standish, etc. Hofmann also forged an Emily Dickinson poem. Afraid of being discovered, he killed several people with bombs to throw suspicion away from himself. All this made for a fascinating book called The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit and Death by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith.
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