Hoaxes
1.April 1, 1957: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." Even the director-general of the BBC later admitted that after seeing the show he checked in an encyclopedia to find out if that was how spaghetti actually grew (but the encyclopedia had no information on the topic). The broadcast remains, by far, the most popular and widely acclaimed April Fool's Day hoax ever, making it an easy pick for number one.
2.April 1, 1962: Sweden's SVT (Sveriges Television) brought their technical expert, Kjell Stensson, onto the news to inform the public that, thanks to a new technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to display color reception. At the time, there was only the one TV channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white, so this was big news. Stensson explained that all viewers had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen, and the mesh would cause the light to bend in such a way that it would appear as if the image was in color. He proceeded to demonstrate the process. Thousands of people were taken in. Many Swedes today still report remembering their fathers rushing through the house trying to find stockings to place over the TV set. Regular color broadcasts only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970.
3.April 1, 1974: The residents of Sitka, Alaska woke to a disturbing sight. Clouds of black smoke were rising from the crater of Mount Edgecumbe, the long-dormant volcano neighboring them. People spilled out of their homes onto the streets to gaze up at the volcano, terrified that it was active again and might soon erupt. Luckily it turned out that man, not nature, was responsible for the smoke. A local practical joker named Porky Bickar had flown hundreds of old tires into the volcano's crater and then lit them on fire, all in a (successful) attempt to fool the city dwellers into believing that the volcano was stirring to life. According to local legend, when Mount St. Helens erupted six years later, a Sitka resident wrote to Bickar to tell him, "This time you've gone too far!"
4.April 1, 1978: A barge towing a giant iceberg appeared in Sydney Harbor. Sydneysiders were expecting it. Dick Smith, a local adventurer and millionaire businessman, had been loudly promoting his scheme to tow an iceberg from Antarctica for quite some time. Now he had apparently succeeded. He said that he was going to carve the berg into small ice cubes, which he would sell to the public for ten cents each. These well-traveled cubes, fresh from the pure waters of Antarctica, were promised to improve the flavor of any drink they cooled. Slowly the iceberg made its way into the harbor. Local radio stations provided blow-by-blow coverage of the scene. Only when the berg was well into the harbor was its secret revealed. It started to rain, and the firefighting foam and shaving cream that the berg was really made of washed away, uncovering the white plastic sheets beneath.
5.April 1, 1977: The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic said to consist of several semi-colon-shaped islands located in the Indian Ocean. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian's phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Only a few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer's terminology. The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that gripped the British tabloids in subsequent decades.
6.April 1, 1976: During an early-morning interview on BBC Radio 2, the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced that at 9:47 AM that day a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur. Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, and this planetary alignment would temporarily counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment the alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, the station began receiving hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman reported that she and her friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room. Moore had intended his annoucement to be a spoof of a pseudoscientific theory that had recently been promoted in a book called The Jupiter Effect, alleging that a rare alignment of the planets was going to cause massive earthquakes and the destruction of Los Angeles in 1982.
7.April 1, 1996: The Taco Bell Corporation took out a full-page ad that appeared in six major newspapers announcing it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell was housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed, a few hours later, that it was all a practical joke. The best line of the day came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale. Thinking on his feet, he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold. It would now be known, he said, as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
8.March 31, 1989: Thousands of motorists driving on the highway outside London looked up in the air to see a glowing flying saucer descending on their city. Many of them pulled to the side of the road to watch the bizarre craft float through the air. 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. Soon the police arrived on the scene, and one brave officer approached the craft with his truncheon extended before him. When a door in the craft popped open, and a small, silver-suited figure emerged, the policeman ran in the opposite direction. The saucer turned out to be a hot-air balloon that had been specially built to look like a UFO by Richard Branson, the 36-year-old chairman of Virgin Records. The stunt combined his passion for ballooning with his love of pranks. His plan was to land the craft in London's Hyde Park on April 1. Unfortunately, the wind blew him off course, and he was forced to land a day early in the wrong location.
9.The April 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated revealed that the New York Mets had recruited a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a baseball at 168 mph — 65 mph faster than the previous record. Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never played baseball before, but he had mastered the "art of the pitch" in a Tibetan monastery. Mets fans couldn't believe their good luck and, accepting at face value the peculiarities of Sidd Finch's past, flooded Sports Illustrated with requests for more information. But in reality this amazing player only existed in the imagination of author George Plimpton, who had left a clue in the sub-heading of the article: "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga —and his future in baseball." The first letter of each of these words, taken together, spelled "H-a-p-p-y A-p-r-i-l F-o-o-l-s D-a-y — A-h F-i-b".
10.April 1, 1992: National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation revealed that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again. His new campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." Accompanying this announcement were audio clips of Nixon delivering his candidacy speech. Listeners responded viscerally to the announcement, flooding the show with calls expressing shock and outrage. Only during the second half of the show did the host John Hockenberry reveal that the announcement was a practical joke. Nixon's voice was impersonated by comedian Rich Little.
11.The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Soon the article made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly spread around the world, forwarded by email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation. The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by physicist Mark Boslough.
12.In April 1934, many American newspapers (including The New York Times) printed a photograph of a man flying through the air by means of a device powered only by the breath from his lungs. Accompanying articles excitedly described this miraculous new invention. The man, identified as German pilot Erich Kocher, blew into a box on his chest. This activated rotors that created a powerful suction effect, lifting him aloft. Skis on his feet served as landing gear, and a tail fin allowed him to steer. What the American papers didn't realize was that the "lung-power motor" was a joke. The photo had first appeared in the April Fool's Day edition of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. It made its way to America thanks to Hearst's International News Photo agency which not only fell for the hoax but also distributed it to all its U.S. subscribers. In the original article, the pilot's name was spelled "Erich Koycher," which was a pun on the German word "keuchen," meaning to puff or wheeze.
13.April 1, 1972: Newspapers around the world reported the sensational news that the dead body of the Loch Ness Monster had been found. A team of zoologists from Yorkshire's Flamingo Park Zoo had come across it while working at the Loch. The researchers tried to take the Nessie corpse back to Yorkshire, but Scottish police promptly stopped them, citing an old law that made it illegal to remove "unidentified creatures" from Loch Ness. However, subsequent examination of the creature determined that it wasn't actually Nessie. Instead, it was a large bull elephant seal from the South Atlantic. But how had it gotten to Loch Ness? This was revealed the next day when the Flamingo Park's education officer, John Shields, confessed responsibility. The seal had died the week before at Dudley Zoo. He had shaved off its whiskers, padded its cheeks with stones, and kept it frozen for a week, before surreptitiously dumping it in the Loch, intending to play an April Fool's prank on his colleagues. He admitted the joke got somewhat out of hand when the police became involved.
14.April 1, 1950: Aftenposten, Norway's largest newspaper, announced on its front page that the government-owned Wine Monopoly (Vinmonopolet) had received a large shipment of wine in barrels, but it had run out of bottles. To get rid of the extra wine, the stores were running a one-day bargain sale, offering wine at 75% off and tax-free. The catch was that buyers had to bring their own containers to put the wine in. "Buckets, pitchers, and the like" were recommended. When the Vinmonopolets opened at 10 a.m., Norwegian wine lovers rushed to line up, forming long queues that stretched around the block. According to legend, numerous empty buckets were later seen lying in the streets, left there by people who had realized, while standing in line, that the sale was a hoax.
15.April 1, 1698: As reported in Dawks’s News-Letter the following day, "several persons were sent to the Tower Ditch to see the Lions washed." This is the earliest known record of an April Fool's Day prank. The joke was that there were no lions being washed in the Ditch (i.e. moat) of the Tower of London. It was a fool's errand. For well over a century after this, the prank of sending unsuspecting victims to see the "washing of the lions" at the Tower of London remained a favorite April Fool's Day joke. In the mid-nineteenth century, pranksters even printed up official-looking tickets that they distributed around London on April first, promising admittance to the (non-existent) annual lion-washing ceremony.
16.March 29, 1962: A man walking along the beach near the Dutch town of Zandvoort reported a bizarre discovery. He had found, washed up on the sand, a small statue that looked just like the famous statues on Easter Island. Based on the statue's weathered appearance, it seemed that the ocean currents must have carried it all the way from the South Pacific to the Netherlands. The discovery made headlines around the world. An expert from Norway confirmed that it seemed to be an authentic Easter Island artifact, and huge crowds showed up to see it. But on April 1, the man who had found the statue, a local artist named Edo van Tetterode, confessed he had made it and planted it on the beach, having been inspired by the research of Thor Heyerdahl. The next year, Tetterode created a National April First Society, which annually awarded small bronze replicas of the Easter Island statue to those who, in its estimation, had made the best jokes during the previous year. The society remained in existence until Tetterode's death in 1996.
17.April 1, 1952: Two teenage boys walked into a London police station and handed over a folder that appeared to contain blueprints for an atomic device. The boys said they had found the folder lying on the pavement at a bus stop. British authorities immediately went into high alert. Concern reached the highest levels of government, with members of the House of Commons informed of a possible loss of atomic secrets. The media got wind of the situation as well, raising public alarm. But when physicists finally got around to examining the documents, they couldn't make any sense of them and eventually concluded they were meaningless. The mystery was solved when a friend of the two boys, 15-year-old Victor Mehra, confessed he had created the papers out of old Norwegian blueprints (including a blueprint for a sausage machine) he had found in the office where he worked. As a prank, he had written "a lot of gibberish" on the papers and titled them "Plan for Atomic Device C.D.ZZ 29679 Nuclear Physics Pattern O. 778523 — Top Secret." Then he gave the folder to his friends, telling them he had found it lying in the street.
18.April 1, 1949: New Zealand DJ Phil Shone (of radio station 1ZB) warned his listeners that a mile-wide wasp swarm was headed towards Auckland, and he urged them to take steps to protect themselves, such as wearing their socks over their trousers when they left for work, and leaving honey-smeared traps outside their doors. Auckland residents dutifully heeded his advice, and panic grew until he finally admitted it had all been a joke. The New Zealand Broadcasting Service wasn't amused. Its director, Prof. James Shelley, denounced the hoax on the grounds 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 nothing but the truth.
19.The April 1995 issue of Discover magazine reported that the biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had found a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, 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 theorized 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.
20.April 1, 1998: Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version." Left-handed products of various kinds are actually an old joke on April first, but Burger King's announcement quickly became, by far, the most famous version of the joke.
21.February 1708: A previously unknown London astrologer named Isaac Bickerstaff published an almanac in which he predicted the death by fever of the famous rival astrologer John Partridge on March 29 of that year. Partridge indignantly denied the prediction, but on March 30 Bickerstaff released a pamphlet announcing that he had been correct: Partridge was dead. It took a day for the news to settle in, but soon everyone had heard of the astrologer's demise. And so, on April 1st the joke came to full fruition when Partridge was woken by a sexton outside his window wanting to know if there were any orders for his funeral sermon. As hard as he tried, Partridge couldn't convince people that he wasn't dead. Bickerstaff, it turned out, was a pseudonym for the satirist Jonathan Swift. His prognosticatory prank worked so well that Partridge was eventually forced to stop publishing almanacs, unable to shake his reputation as the man whose death had been foretold.
22.April 1, 1997: When comic strip fans opened their papers, they discovered that their favorite strips looked different. Not only that, but in many cases characters from other strips popped up out of place. The reason for the chaos was the Great Comics Switcheroonie. Forty-six comic-strip artists conspired to pen each other's strips for the day. For instance, Scott Adams of Dilbert took over Family Circus by Bil Keane, where he added a touch of corporate cynicism to the family-themed strip by having the mother tell her kid to "work cuter, not harder." Jim Davis of Garfield took over Blondie, which allowed him to show his famous overweight cat eating one of Dagwood's sandwiches. The stunt was masterminded by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott, creators of the Baby Blues comic strip. When asked why he participated, Scott Adams noted, "You don't get that many chances to tunnel under the fence."
23.April 1, 1989: Seattle's "Almost Live" comedy show started their program with a news flash: the Seattle Space Needle had collapsed. A reporter presented the news, and then several shots of the Space Needle lying on its side in a pile of rubble were shown. The show's host, John Keister, appeared after a commercial break and assured viewers the announcement had only been a joke. Nevertheless, thousands of people were fooled. Staff at the Space Needle reported receiving over 700 calls from concerned viewers, and 911 lines jammed from the sudden rush of calls from people seeking more information. The false report remains infamous in Seattle to this day.
24.An article by John Dvorak in the April 1994 issue of PC Computing magazine described a bill going through Congress that would make it illegal to use the internet while drunk, or even to discuss sexual matters over a public network. The bill was supposedly numbered 040194 (i.e. 04/01/94), and the contact person was listed as Lirpa Sloof. Passage of the bill was felt to be certain because "Who wants to come out and support drunkenness and computer sex?" Dvorak explained that the bill had come about because the Internet was often referred to as an "Information Highway." He noted that, "Congress apparently thinks being drunk on a highway is bad no matter what kind of highway it is." The article generated so many outraged phone calls to Congress that Senator Edward Kennedy's office had to release an official denial of the rumor that he was a sponsor of the bill.
25.April 1, 2008: The BBC announced that camera crews filming near the Antarctic for its natural history series Miracles of Evolution had captured footage of Adélie penguins taking to the air. It even offered a video clip of these flying penguins, which quickly became one of the most viewed videos on the internet. Presenter Terry Jones explained that, instead of huddling together to endure the Antarctic winter, these penguins took to the air and flew thousands of miles to the rainforests of South America where they "spend the winter basking in the tropical sun." A follow-up video explained how the BBC created the special effects of the flying penguins.
26.April 1, 1954: Hawaiian DJ Hal "Aku Head" Lewis announced on KHON radio that the U.S. Senate had not only approved Statehood for Hawaii but had also provided for an "immediate" refund of all 1953 Federal taxes to Island residents. The news caused massive turmoil throughout Hawaii. Radio stations, newspapers, and the Internal Revenue Bureau were flooded with calls from people seeking more information. Many banks received calls from people who wanted to place orders for stock and bond purchases with their forthcoming refund. The announcement seemed plausible because a Hawaiian tax refund had been in the news recently. Congressman Joseph Farrington had suggested that islanders should be given a refund of all federal taxes they had ever paid if Hawaii wasn't granted full statehood. In reality, Hawaii only achieved statehood in 1959, not 1954, and islanders' taxes were never refunded.
27.April 1, 1971: The Texas House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution honoring Albert DeSalvo, noting he had been "officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology." The Texas politicians were embarrassed when it was later revealed to them that DeSalvo was better known as the "Boston Strangler." He had confessed to killing 13 women. The resolution had been submitted by Representatives Tom Moore and Lane Denton, who said they did it to demonstrate that "No one reads these bills or resolutions."
28.April 1, 1967: Swiss Radio interrupted its regularly scheduled program with a news flash: U.S. astronauts had just landed on the moon. For the next hour, listeners heard a series of elaborately staged updates, complete with reports from correspondents around the world and interviews with experts. Belief was near total. Telephone exchanges became jammed, and even U.S. authorities in Switzerland, unsure what to believe, began to celebrate. The broadcast concluded with the report that the "moonship" would take off from the moon at 7 p.m., and listeners were told they could see it return to Earth by watching from a high vantage point, away from the city lights. In Zurich this prompted a mass exodus of people out of the city up to nearby Mt. Uetliberg. The railroad had to add additional trains to handle the sudden rush of passengers. It was another two years before U.S. astronauts actually did land on the moon.
29.April 1, 1980: In early 1980, the National Bank of Denmark had issued a 20-kroner banknote featuring a picture of two sparrows. Curiously, one of the sparrows appeared to be one-legged. This was the backdrop for the April first announcement in the Roskilde Tidende that all bills with one-legged birds were actually fake, but that they could be exchanged at the post office for genuine bills depicting two-legged birds. The paper showed a picture of a supposedly authentic bill — which was just a regular bill onto which the paper's cartoonist, Jan Robert Thoresen, had drawn an extra leg. Lines at post offices soon became so long, with people eager to exchange their money, that post office employees had to put notices on the doors explaining that no currency exchange was taking place. Thoresen was subsequently questioned by the police, but was let go without any charges filed.
30.April 1, 1983: New Scientist ran an article about the first successful "plant-animal hybrid" that had resulted in a tomato containing genes from a cow. The cow-tomato was said to have a "tough leathery skin" and grew "discus-shaped" clumps of animal protein sandwiched between an envelope of tomato fruit. The article included clues that it was a joke, such as the names of the researchers, MacDonald and Wimpey, who supposedly worked at the University of Hamburg. But these clues weren't recognized by the Brazilian science magazine Veja which ran a feature about the new cow-tomato hybrid several weeks later. Veja dubbed the hybrid "Boimate," and even created a graphic to show how the cow-tomato hybridization process occurred. The magazine was subsequently relentlessly ridiculed in the Brazilian media, until it eventually apologized for its "unfortunate mistake."
31.April 1, 1878: After Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, Americans firmly believed that there were no limits to his genius. So when the New York Graphic announced on this day 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 willing 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. The Graphic subsequently took the liberty of reprinting the Advertiser's editorial in full, placing above it a simple, two-word headline: "They Bite!"
32.April 1, 1905: The Berliner Tageblatt broke the news of a shocking and massive crime — all the gold and silver in the U.S. Federal Treasury had been stolen. A group of thieves funded by American millionaires, the paper explained, had tunneled beneath the Potomac River and then beneath the Treasury, robbing it from below and getting away with over $268,000,000. The U.S. Government was said to be desperately trying to conceal the crime, even as its forces chased the criminals across the oceans of the world. Much of the German media accepted the story without question and reprinted it, making it a major news story throughout Europe. Some newspapers even created illustrations to show the exact location of the tunnel dug by the thieves. When word reached America, most U.S. newspapers were bemused by the gullibility of their European counterparts. However, there were a few calls for a congressional investigation of the crime. It was noted that European editors probably accepted the story so readily because many of them were already firmly of the opinion that America was a country in the grips of millionaire criminals.
33.March 31, 1947: "Een zwarte dag voor Eindhoven" declared the headline on the front page of the Eindhovensch Dagblad (Translation: "A black day for Eindhoven"). The accompanying article reported that the Dutch town might be destroyed the next day (April 1) by an "atomic mist" blowing into the town because of an accident at the nearby N.V. Philips factory, unless the situation could be contained. The article proceeded to offer nonsensical advice in case the worst should occur, such as to sit on a thin pole with your arms and legs stretched out in front of you. But most people didn't read beyond the headline, and the result was widespread panic. Thousands of people attempted to flee. Even the RAF base at The Hague phoned the police, wanting to know if they should avoid flying over the area. The situation only began to calm down when the mayor went on the radio, emphatically assuring everyone that the story was false. The event is remembered as one of the more notorious media-created panics in the history of the Netherlands.
34.April 1, 1982: The Daily Mail reported that a local manufacturer had sold 10,000 "rogue bras" that were causing a unique and unprecedented problem, not to the wearers but to the public at large. Apparently the support wire in these bras had been made out of a kind of copper originally designed for use in fire alarms. When this copper came into contact with nylon and body heat, it produced static electricity which, in turn, was interfering with local television and radio broadcasts. The chief engineer of British Telecom, upon reading the article, is said to have immediately ordered that all his female laboratory employees disclose what type of bra they were wearing.
35.April 1, 1984: A message distributed to the members of Usenet (the online messaging community that was one of the first forms the internet took) announced that the Soviet Union was joining the network. This generated enormous excitement, since most Usenet members had assumed that cold war security concerns would forever prevent such a link-up. The message purported to come from Konstantin Chernenko (from the address chernenko@kremvax.UUCP) who explained that the Soviet Union wanted to join the network in order to "have a means of having an open discussion forum with the American and European people." The message created a flood of responses. Two weeks later its true author, a European man named Piet Beertema, revealed it was a hoax. This is believed to be the first hoax on the internet. Six years later, when Moscow really did link up to the internet, it adopted the domain name 'kremvax' in honor of the hoax.
36.April 1, 2002: The British supermarket chain Tesco ran an ad in The Sun announcing the successful development of a genetically modified 'whistling carrot.' The ad explained that the carrots had been specially engineered to grow with tapered airholes in their side. When fully cooked, these airholes caused the vegetable to emit a "97 decibel signal" indicating they should be removed from the stove. (97 decibels is roughly equivalent to the noise level of a jackhammer or pneumatic drill). Opponents of their carrots envisioned "a nightmare scenario for future generations becoming as deaf as a post, albeit with improved vision."
37.April 1, 2011: Google announced the introduction of Gmail Motion, a new technology that would allow people to write emails using only hand gestures. Gmail Motion, the company explained, used a computer's webcam and a "spatial tracking algorithm" to track a person's gestures and translate them into words and commands. For instance, a person could 'open a message' by making a motion with their hands as if opening an envelope. Or they could 'reply' to a message by pointing backward over their shoulder. By 2011, Google had become well-known for making spoof announcements every April first, with its annual spoofs both highly anticipated and widely shared. (The company earns a place in the Top 100 largely on the basis of that alone). But Gmail Motion was one of its more believable jokes. In fact, within a few days programmers had demonstrated that it was possible (if not practical) to create a working, gesture-based email system like Gmail Motion using existing, off-the-shelf technology.
38.April 1, 1981: The Daily Mail ran a story about an unfortunate Japanese long-distance runner, Kimo Nakajimi, who had entered the London Marathon but, on account of a translation error, thought that he had to run for 26 days, not 26 miles. Nakajimi was reported to be somewhere out on the roads of England, still running, determined to finish the race. Various people had spotted him, though they were unable to flag him down. The translation error was attributed to Timothy Bryant, an import director, who said, "I translated the rules and sent them off to him. But I have only been learning Japanese for two years, and I must have made a mistake. He seems to be taking this marathon to be something like the very long races they have over there."
39.April 1, 1933: The front page of the Madison Capital-Times announced with large headlines that the Wisconsin state capitol building lay in ruins following a series of mysterious explosions. The explosions were attributed to "large quantities of gas, generated through many weeks of verbose debate in the Senate and Assembly chambers." Accompanying the article was a picture showing the capitol building collapsing. The picture probably wouldn't fool many people nowadays, but by all accounts it fooled quite a few people at the time. Many readers were outraged. One reader wrote in declaring the hoax "was not only tactless and void of humor, but also a hideous jest." In fact, the "capitol building exploding because of a buildup of hot air" was a fairly old joke, even in 1933. But the Capital-Times's photo has come to be considered the classic representation of the joke.
40.April 1, 1949: A crowd of over 1000 people, paying a mark each, showed up at the Frankfurt Zoo to see a "snow-white elephant." Newspaper ads had said that the legendary animal had come all the way from Burma, accompanied by its handlers dressed in their traditional robes, and would be at the zoo for only a day before leaving for Copenhagen. And as promised, the crowd did get to see a snow-white elephant. But the next day they learned that it wasn't a genuine snow-white elephant. It was just one of the zoo's regular grey elephants painted white. However, the people of Frankfurt were willing to forgive the deception since it was the work of the zoo's director, Berhard Grzimek. He had become a hero in post-war Germany because of the passion with which he fought to save the animals of the Frankfurt Zoo, and he was known for being willing to do anything (including promising snow-white elephants that didn't exist) to lure people back to the zoo.
41.April 1, 1928: The Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung ran an article about a Bride Import company created to supply wives to the men of Liechtenstein. The small principality was losing women, the magazine said, because they were all going to neighboring Switzerland and Austria to find work. As a result, the gender ratio of the country was becoming seriously unbalanced — to such an extent that the government had decided to import brides to prevent depopulation. Suitable women were found in cities and towns throughout Europe and were then transported to Liechtenstein in freight cars, where they were sold in marriage markets. When news of this article reached Liechtenstein it provoked outrage. The men of Liechtenstein were particularly offended by a photo that showed the supposed brides (all of them large-sized) being carried out of a freight car. This was felt to be insulting to the beauty of the actual women of Liechtenstein. Government officials denounced the article and photo as an example of tasteless German humor. News of this "international row" was then picked up by the press and reported worldwide, which had the effect of circulating the offending photo even more widely than it originally had been.
42.In early 1960, a TV viewer complained to a network about seeing a black man kiss a white woman on one of their shows. The network, eager not to offend, flew an account executive down to meet with the viewer and explain to him that the actor was actually white, but that the local station had accidentally broadcast the show at a high contrast ratio, making him appear dark-skinned. When Paul Krassner (editor of the satirical underground magazine The Realist) heard about this he was outraged that a TV network would be so afraid of offending a racist. So he designed a prank to serve as payback. He asked his readers to write to the network after the April 1st airing of the celebrity panel show Masquerade Party (a completely unexceptionable show), and to complain that they had been offended by something on it, but not to specify what it was that had offended them. Hundreds of his readers obliged. The result was panic at the network. Reportedly the TV executives watched the tape of the show repeatedly, desperately trying to figure out what could have offended so many people.
43.The April 1972 issue of Veterinary Record, the weekly (and usually very serious) journal of the British veterinary profession, contained an article about the diseases that afflict a species it described as Brunus edwardii. The article warned that, "Pet ownership surveys have shown that 63.8 percent of households are inhabited by one or more of these animals, and there is a statistically significant relationship between their population and the number of children in a household. The public health implications of this fact are obvious, and it is imperative that more be known about their diseases." The reader response to the article was enormous. For months afterwards the correspondence section of the Veterinary Record was dominated by letters about Brunus edwardii, many of which offered new observations about the species. The article proved so popular that it was eventually published in a special edition by Whittington Press. Brunus edwardii is better known as the common "Teddy Bear."
44.The April 1980 issue of Soldier magazine (official publication of the British Army) revealed that the fur on the bearskin helmets worn by the Irish guards while on duty at Buckingham Palace keeps growing and needs to be regularly trimmed. It explained that the helmets were originally made from the skin of Russian bears, and the thickness of this skin was such that it retained "enough of the essential hormones and animal fats to sustain hair growth — in temperate climates almost indefinitely." The Cold War had eliminated new supplies of Russian bear pelts, but thankfully the fur of Canadian Grizzly bears turned out to have the same self-regenerating properties. An accompanying photo showed Guardsmen sitting in an army barbershop having their helmets trimmed. The editors of the London Daily Express were so impressed by the story that they passed the information on to their own readers, apparently not realizing it was an April Fool.
45.April 1, 1965: BBC TV interviewed a London University professor who had perfected a technology called "Smellovision" that allowed the transmission of smells over the airwaves. Viewers would be able to smell aromas produced in the television studio in their own homes. The professor explained that his machine broke scents down into their component molecules which were then transmitted through the screen. The professor demonstrated by placing some coffee beans and onions into the smellovision machine. He asked viewers to report whether they had smelled anything. Numerous viewers called in from across the country to confirm that they had distinctly experienced these scents. Some even claimed the onions made their eyes water.
46.April 1, 1961: In Milan, in 1961, many people from the surrounding countryside still rode their horses into the city. So La Notte newspaper announced that city authorities, in order to make sure the horses could continue to co-exist with motor traffic, had passed a law making it mandatory for horses to be outfitted with signaling and brake lights while being ridden through the streets. Many people subsequently brought their horses into car mechanics to have them outfitted with the necessary lights.
47.April 1, 1915: A British pilot flew over the Lille Aerodrome (occupied by the Germans) and dropped what appeared to be a huge bomb. The German soldiers down below immediately scattered in all directions, but no explosion followed. After some time, the soldiers crept back and gingerly approached the bomb. They discovered that it was actually a large football with a note tied to it that read, "April Fool — Gott Strafe England!" [Note: 'Gott strafe England' was a slogan used by the German Army during World War I meaning, "May God punish England." Its use by the British aviator was evidently meant to be ironic.
48.April 1, 1950: VARA, the Dutch national radio network, broadcast an interview with an emotional employee of the Rijksmuseum who confessed that, while he had been attempting to clean and restore The Night Watch by Rembrandt, he had accidentally used the wrong fluid. As a result, the famous painting was dissolving. Paint, he said, was dripping from the canvas even as he spoke. By midnight the masterpiece would be entirely gone, merely a puddle on the floor. The confession mobilized hundreds of art-lovers who showed up at the Rijksmuseum to view the beloved painting one last time. As they queued in front of the museum, VARA radio announcers walked up and down the line interviewing them. Some waited patiently in line for hours before realizing they had been fooled.
49.April 1, 1983: BMW's UK division ran an ad in British papers revealing that one of its engineers, Herr Blöhn, had designed a sunroof that could be kept open even in the rain, thanks to jets of air that blasted the water away from the top of the car. The system worked completely automatically, even in a car wash. Those seeking more information were directed to query "Miss April Wurst" in the BMW marketing department. The ad was the start of a long tradition of the company creating spoof ads every April 1st. In fact, BMW has been creating April Fool ads longer and more consistently than any other company that we're aware of, and the success of their ads played a large role in convincing other companies to run spoof ads on the first of April. This practice has now become so widespread that many companies say they feel compelled to create spoof ads for April 1, lest their customers think they lack a sense of humor.
50.April 1, 2000: A news release informed the media that the 15th annual New York City April Fool's Day Parade would begin at noon on 59th Street and proceed down to Fifth Avenue. It would include a "Beat 'em, Bust 'em, Book 'em" float created by the New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle police departments, portraying "themes of brutality, corruption and incompetence." There would also be an "Atlanta Braves Baseball Tribute to Racism" float featuring John Rocker "spewing racial epithets at the crowd." CNN and the Fox affiliate WNYW promptly sent news crews to cover the parade. They arrived at 59th Street at noon and patiently waited for the parade to start. It never did. The prank was the handiwork of long-time hoaxer Joey Skaggs, who had been issuing press releases announcing the nonexistent parade every April Fool's Day since 1986 (and, as of 2015, he's still maintaining the tradition).