The best April Fools Day pranks

Today is April Fools Day, a day when we see trickery and bit of fun. The origins of April Fools Day are a little unclear, but it is said to date back to at least 1500 and could have come from silliness around change in the season and warmer weather for the northern hemisphere. In any case there have been some pretty clever tricks over the years. Here are some of the best of them.

1. New Zealand Wasp Storm

In 1949, a New Zealand deejay for radio station 1ZB, announced to his listeners that a mile-wide wasp swarm was headed towards Auckland. He urged them to take his advice and take steps to protect themselves. He suggested that they wear their socks over their trousers when they left for work, and that they leave honey-smeared traps outside their doors. Hundreds of people followed his advice, until he finally admitted that it had all been a joke.

The New Zealand Broadcasting Service was not amused. Its director, denounced the hoax saying that it undermined the rules of proper broadcasting. From then on, a memo was sent out each year before April Fool’s Day reminding New Zealand radio stations of their obligation to report the truth, and nothing but the truth.

2. Spaghetti Trees

In 1957, a BBC news program managed to convince hundreds of people that spaghetti could grow on trees.

The broadcasters went all out. Before April 1 they went to Switzerland to film a segment about the great spaghetti harvest, which was made possible by the “virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.” They placed cooked pasta on tree branches and filmed local girls pulling the pasta off the branches and placing it in baskets.

After airing the segment, the station was bombarded with phone calls asking how to grow a spaghetti tree. But luckily before the broadcast ended for the night, the anchors confessed to the prank.

3. Colour TV

In 1962, Swedish television was broadcast in black and white. But this was about to change…

Sweden’s television station, STV, announced that viewers could easily watch color TV by simply placing a ‘fine-meshed screen’, or a nylon stocking, in front of the screen. They explained the process with a bunch of scientific-sounding talk. Pretty much everyone started trying to stretch stockings over their TVs, until they realized it was an April Fools of course!

4. Sans Seriffe

In 1977 the British newspaper, The Guardian published a seven-page “special report” about San Serriffe. A small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semi-colon-shaped islands. A series of articles described the geography and culture of this obscure nation.

The report generated a huge response. The newspapers phones rang off all day as readers sought more information about the holiday spot. However, San Serriffe did not exist. It was an elaborate April Fool’s Day joke, with a typographical twist as numerous details about the island (such as its name) alluded to printer’s terminology.

5. The Sydney Iceberg

On the morning of April 1, 1978, a barge appeared in Sydney Harbor towing a giant iceberg. But Sydney-siders were expecting it. Dick Smith, in the lead up had been loudly promoting his scheme to tow an iceberg from Antarctica. It looked like he had succeeded.

Smith said that he was going to moor the iceberg near the Sydney Opera House and then carve the berg into small ice cubes, which he would sell to the public for ten cents each. These cubes, fresh from the pure waters of Antarctica, were promised to improve the flavor of any drink they cooled. They would be marketed as ‘Dicksicles.’

As soon as the iceberg entered the harbor, phone calls started pouring into radio stations and newspapers, with people asking, “What’s that in the harbor? It looks like an iceberg.”

It was of course a prank. Smith estimated that at the time entire stunt cost him $1450, which he felt was cheap for the amount of publicity it generated.

6. A UFO Lands in London

In 1989 thousands of motorists driving on a highway outside London looked up in the sky and saw a glowing flying saucer descending on their city. The saucer finally landed in a field on the outskirts of London where local residents immediately called the police to warn them of an alien invasion. The police arrived on the scene, and a door in the craft popped open. A small, silver-suited figure emerged, the policeman quickly ran in the opposite direction.

The saucer of course, turned out to be a hot-air balloon that had been specially built to look like a UFO by Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Records. His original plan was to land the craft in London’s Hyde Park on April 1. The wind blew him off course, and he was forced to land a day early in the wrong location.

7. Flying Penguins

This is a personal favourite of mine. In 2008, the BBC announced that camera crews had captured footage of Adélie penguins taking to the air. It even offered an incredibly realistic video clip of these flying penguins, which became one of the most viewed videos on the internet. Many people believed this video and it was rapidly shared. Of course it was an April Food and a follow-up video then explained how the BBC created the special effects of the flying penguins.

Here is the wonderful YouTube clip of it.

Have you ever been involved in an  April Fools prank?