Lincoln, Northern England. The body of a nine-year-old boy, Hugh, is found at the bottom of a well. Rumors spread through the village that the boy may have been sacrificed by the Jews during one of their dark rites. The story spread by word of mouth, and one of the most influential chroniclers of the time, Matthew Paris, reports that the Jews had convened to kidnap, fatten, torture, and finally crucify the child. Nineteen Jews were tried and executed for this. And a series of vendettas and pogroms would follow for years throughout England. Finally, in 1290, the entire Jewish population was expelled from England. Hugh was buried in Lincoln Cathedral, and miracles were attributed to him in the centuries that followed. Only in 1955, ten years after the Holocaust, did Lincoln Cathedral repudiate the bloody defamation, placing a plaque acknowledging that the story of Jewish responsibility was fabricated and unsupported by any evidence, and that this had cost the lives of many innocent Jews. Some fake news stories last 700 years…
