On the Jan. 30, 2015, broadcast of NBC Nightly News, Williams recalled being struck down in a helicopter while covering the Iraq War in 2003. But when veterans who were involved in the incident said that never happened, Williams was forced to recant and apologize on air, telling viewers that he had misremembered the incident. After voluntarily stepping down for a few days, NBC News suspended Williams for six months without pay while its internal investigation continues.

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman," Clinton declared in a press conference in January 1998, days after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. Seven months later, after Lewinsky handed over that infamous blue dress, Clinton admitted in a grand jury testimony to having had an "improper physical relationship" with his former intern. Clinton became the second president to be impeached, but was acquitted of all charges.

Armstrong had vehemently denied doping for years, but his cover-up began to unravel with his cohorts and riding partners confessed and/or were outed. Following Floyd Landis' confession and accusation that Armstrong had doped in 2010, a federal investigation was launched, culminating in the stripping of Armstrong's seven Tour de France titles in 2012 and a lifetime ban from cycling. Armstrong continued to claim he was innocent until he finally admitted to doping in a sit-down with Oprah Winfrey in January 2013. Two years later, he said he'ddo it all over again.

The boy is hers — just not legally. In early 2002, the singer shocked fans when she announced she was pregnant and had secretly gotten married to producer Robert Smith in 2001. The couple starred in an MTV reality series, Brandy: Special Delivery, chronicling the birth of their daughter Sy'rai in summer 2002. A year later, the two announced their separation, but Smith waited another year to reveal that the two were never actually married — they faked it to preserve her good girl image.

After crashing his SUV outside his home over Thanksgiving weekend 2009 — days after the National Enquirer reported an affair between Woods and Rachel Uchitel — Woods took the blame for the accident and denounced "unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me." But the damage was done, so to speak. Mistresses started coming out of the woodwork, forcing Woods to take a break from golf and slowly come clean about his "transgressions," culminating in a press conference on Feb. 19, 2010, during which he apologized and revealed he had been in a 45-day rehab program. "I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to," he said. "I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me." He and his wife, Elin Nordegren, divorced that August.

Girl, you know what's not true? Milli Vanilli singing. After persistent rumors that Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan didn't sing any of the tunes on their albums, the duo came clean on Nov. 19, 1990, confessing that they were hired by German music producer Frank Farian to front the band, and gave back their Grammy for Best New Artist. They recorded an album for real in 1998, but it was never released after Pilatus' death from a drug overdose.

The author's book, A Million Little Pieces, purportedly a memoir of about his drug addiction and recovery, topped the New York Times bestsellers list and was championed by Oprah Winfrey in her Book Club in 2005. The only problem: He made most of it up. Frey came clean about fabricating parts of the book in January 2006, including returning to Oprah's show to get his you-know-what handed to him. You don't put egg on O's face and get away with it.

In 2007, Edwards denied The National Enquirer's reports that he fathered a daughter with his mistress, Rielle Hunter, who was working on his presidential campaign. He confessed to the affair in August 2008, but insisted that the child was not his; his campaign aide Andrew Young claimed he was the father. A year later, Young recanted the paternity claim, and in January 2010, Edwards admitted to being the child's father. His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, divorced him shortly after and died after a long battle with breast cancer that December. In 2011, Edwards was indicted on six counts of misusing campaign funds to cover up his affair, but the charges were dropped in 2012. Edwards and Hunter dated until June 2012.

After getting into a car accident on the Pacific Coast Highway in June 2012, Lohan initially told police that her assistant was driving her Porsche because she was on probation. But a subsequent investigation proved that Lohan was in fact the driver, and she was charged with lying to police. She pleaded no contest and accepted a plea deal that included community service, rehab, and a two-year extension of her probation.

The Notre Dame linebacker won America's heart with his inspired play after the September 2012 deaths of his grandmother and girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, the latter of whom was said to have died in a car accident. In January 2013, Deadspin reported that Kekua did not exist and that a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was behind the catfishing. Te'o, who previously said he had met Kekua after a football game, denied being part of the hoax and said that he lied about meeting Kekua because he didn't want people to judge him for being in a relationship with someone he's never met.

Jones credited her dramatic weight loss, starting in 2003, to diet and Pilates, and repeatedly denied that she had undergone gastric bypass surgery. She finally admitted to having the procedure in an essay for Glamour in September 2007 and that she's dropped 160 pounds in three years. Her former View co-host Barbara Walters latertold Oprah Winfrey that Jones had asked her to keep her surgery secret, with which she was uncomfortable and thinks turned viewers off.

Despite porn star James Deen stating that he and the Teen Mom star had filmed a porno for Vivid Entertainment in April 2013, Abraham maintained that she had merely hired Deen to make a sex tape that was leaked. That, of course, didn't stop her from "selling" the "sex tape" to Vivid. Shefinally admitted in a February 2014 episode of Couples Therapy that the video was in fact a porno.

When the country star broke through in the early '90s, she reveled in her Native American background and said that Jerry Twain, an Ojibway Native American, was her father. Jerry was actually her stepfather who adopted her when she was 2; her biological father, Clarence Edwards, was of French and Irish descent and her mother, Sharon, was also of Irish descent. The singer, who was born Eileen Regina Edwards, admitted the truth in 1996. ''I don't know how much Indian blood I actually have in me, but as the adopted daughter of my father Jerry, I became legally registered as 50 percent North American Indian," she said in a statement. "Being raised by a full-blooded Indian and being a part of his family and their culture from such a young age is all I've ever known. That heritage is in my heart and my soul, and I'm proud of it.''

Jack and Meg White passed themselves off as siblings — the youngest of 10, even — but the rockers were actually married. Despite papers unearthing their 1996 marriage license in 2001 and later their 2000 divorce filing — right before they made it big — they vowed (no pun intended) they were siblings. Jack finally admitted the two were married and not related in a 2005 Rolling Stone interview, explaining that the big white lie was to keep the focus on their music. "When they're brother and sister, you go, 'Oh, that's interesting,'" he said. "You care more about the music, not the relationship."