Edison Star Panic (1897)

In 1899, the so-called "kissing bug" gained unwarranted notoriety in the United States when a Washington Post reporter, James McElhone, sensationalized the insects as the cause of suspected bites on people's lips, framing them as a threat to start a new plague. Kissing bugs were attributed to all facial wounds, sparking nationwide panic. Entomologists dismissed the episode as nothing more than a "newspaper epidemic" since they never caught any actual kissing bug in the act, despite the hysteria.