GREAT APRIL FOOLS JOKES
gREAT aPRIL fOOLS jOKES
The Swiss Spagetti Harvest
In
1957, the BBC News announced that Swiss farmers were enjoying a huge
spaghetti crop thanks to the mild winter and elimination of Spaghetti
Weevil. There was even a footage of Swiss farmers pulling spaghetti
down from trees. Many people rang asking how they could grow their own
spaghetti tree. The BBC replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin
of tomato sauce and hope for the best."
Great
April Fools Jokes:
Metric
Time
Australia's
This Day Tonight news program revealed in 1975 that the country would
soon be converting to "metric time." Under the new system there would
be 100 seconds to the minute, 100 minutes to the hour, and 20-hour
days. Furthermore, seconds would become millidays, minutes become
centidays, and hours become decidays. The report included an interview
with Deputy Premier Des Corcoran who praised the new time system. The
Adelaide townhall was even shown sporting a new 10-hour metric clock
face. TDT received numerous calls from viewers who fell for the hoax.
One frustrated viewer wanted to know how he could convert his newly
purchased digital clock to metric time.
Great
April Fools Jokes:
Instant Color TV
In
1962 there was only one TV channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black
and white. The station's technical expert, Kjell Stensson, announced on
the news that, thanks to a new technology, it was now possible to
convert the existing sets to display color reception. All they had to
do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen. Stensson proceeded
to demonstrate the process. Thousands of people were taken in.
Great
April Fools Jokes:
The Left-Handed Whopper
1998:
Burger King announced in 1998 the introduction of a new item to their
menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for left handed
people. The new whopper included the same ingredients as the original
Whopper, but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the
benefit of their left-handed customers. Thousands of customers went
into restaurants to request the new burger. Many others requested their
own 'right handed' version.
Great
April Fools Jokes:
Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers
Discover
Magazine reported in 1995 that the highly respected wildlife biologist
Dr. Aprile Pazzo had found a new species in Antarctica - the hotheaded
naked ice borer. These creatures had bony plates on top of their heads
that could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice
at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the
ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the
resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them. After much research,
Dr. Pazzo suggested that the hotheads might have been responsible for
the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe
Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have looked like a
penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail
in response to this article than they had received for any other
article in their history.
Great
April Fools Jokes: Internet
Spring Cleaning
In
1997, an email message spread throughout the world announcing that the
internet would be shut down for cleaning for twenty-four hours from
March 31 until April 2. This cleaning was said to be necessary to clear
out the "electronic flotsam and jetsam" that had accumulated in the
network. During this period, users were warned to disconnect all
devices from the internet. The message supposedly originated from the
"Interconnected Network Maintenance Staff, Main Branch, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology." This joke was an updated version of an old
joke that used to be told about the phone system. For many years, phone
customers had been warned that the phone systems would be cleaned on
the 1st of April. They were cautioned to place plastic bags over the
ends of the phone to catch the dust that might be blown out of the
phone lines during this period.
Great
April Fools Jokes:
Tasmanian
Mock Walrus
In
1984, the Orlando Sentinel featured a story about a creature known as
the Tasmanian Mock Walrus that many people in Florida were supposedly
adopting as a pet. The creature was said to be four inches long,
resembled a walrus, purred like a cat, and had the temperament of a
hamster. What made it such an ideal pet was that it never had to be
bathed, it used a litter box, and it ate cockroaches. In fact, a single
Tasmanian Mock Walrus could entirely rid a house of its cockroach
problem. Reportedly, some Tasmanian Mock Walruses had been smuggled in
from Tasmania, and there were efforts being made to breed them, but the
local pest-control industry was pressuring the government not to allow
them into the country, fearing they would put cockroach controllers out
of business. Dozens of people called the paper trying to find out where
they could obtain their own Tasmanian Mock Walrus.
Great
April Fools Jokes:
Portable
Zip Codes
In 2004,
National Public Radio's All Things Considered announced that the post
office had begun a new 'portable zip codes' program. This program,
inspired by an FCC ruling that allowed phone users to take their phone
number with them when they moved, would allow people to also take their
zip code with them when they moved, no matter where they moved to. It
was hoped that with this new program zip codes would come to symbolize
"a citizen's place in the demographic, rather than geographic,
landscape." Assistant Postmaster General Lester Crandall was quoted as
saying, "Every year millions of Americans are on the go: People who
must relocate for work or other reasons. Those people may have been
quite attached to their original homes or an adopted town or city of
residence. For them this innovative measure will serve as an umbilical
cord to the place they love best."
Great
April Fools Jokes:
Thomas
Edison Invents Food
Machine
After
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, Americans firmly
believed that there were no limits to his genius. When the New York
Graphic announced in 1878 that Edison had invented a machine that could
transform soil directly into cereal and water directly into wine,
thereby ending the problem of world hunger, it found no shortage of
believers.
Newspapers throughout America copied the article, heaping
lavish praise on Edison. The conservative Buffalo Commercial Advertiser
was particularly effusive in its praise, waxing eloquent about Edison's
brilliance in a long editorial.
Great
April Fools Jokes:
PhDs
Exempt From China’s
One-Child Policy
In
1993, The China Youth Daily, an official state newspaper of China,
announced on its front page that the government had decided to make
Ph.D. holders exempt from the state-imposed one-child law. The logic
behind this decision was that it would eventually reduce the need to
invite as many foreign experts into the country to help with the
state's modernization effort. Despite a disclaimer beneath the story
identifying it as a joke, the report was repeated as fact by Hong
Kong's New Evening News and by Agence France-Presse, an international
news agency. The Chinese government responded to the hoax by condemning
April Fool's Day as a dangerous Western tradition. The Guangming Daily,
Beijing's main newspaper for intellectuals, ran an editorial stating
that April Fool's jokes "are an extremely bad influence." It went on to
declare that, "Put plainly, April Fool's Day is Liar's Day."
Great
April Fools Jokes:
Planetary Alignment Decreases
Gravity
The
British astronomer Patrick Moore announced in 1976 on BBC Radio 2 that
at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to happen
that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet
Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational
alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity.
Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact
moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a
strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive
hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the
sensation. One woman even reported that she and her friends had risen
from their chairs and floated around the room. (She was probably
running an April Fool back on BBC!).
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