George Mason University's historical hoaxes

Students of George Mason University, as part of T. Mills Kelly's course, "Lying about the past", created two popular Internet hoaxes: the "Edward Owens hoax", and the "Reddit serial killer hoax". The goal of the course was the creation of a widespread Internet deception. As Kelly stated in the course's syllabus:

What's our goal? Buzz, of course! Viral! We want our hoax to be picked up and spread around the Internet like wildfire!