At the portrait gallery today, I read about the "anti vaccination movement" that rallied against the smallpox vaccine https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-50713991 and the Warming Pan Plot (the unsubstantiated yet widely believed rumour that James II's son was substituted at birth) https://royalcentral.co.uk/features/history-blogs/royal-history-mystery-the-warming-pan-scandal-140948/. It made me think about how some of the challenges we face with misinformation these days are not so new and not necessarily "caused" by the Internet.