April fools day has a long evolving history and has been around since before the 1500's! For fun I gathered some pranks that have been pulled since the 1900's:
1915 A fake bomb: During World War I, a French pilot dropped what appeared to be a bomb after no explosion occurred, those it had been dropped on, found that it was actually a football with a note tied to it that read, "April Fool!"
1933 Wisconsin state capitol building in ruins: The Madison Capital Times printed that the Wisconsin state capitol building collapsed after a series of mysterious explosions attributed to "large quantities of gas, generated through many weeks of verbose debate in the Senate and Assembly chambers." The article also showed an altered photo of the capitol building in ruins.
1950 Orange bearing pine trees: Led by cartoonist Frank Adams residents of the nearby town of Skyforest had crept out during the night and hung 50,000 oranges in the trees along the Rim of the World highway in California. Motorists were surprised to find pine and cedar trees had "grown" oranges.
1957 The Swiss spaghetti harvest: A BBC news show announced that due a mild winter and the near elimination of the spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. This was accompanied with photos of people pulling spaghetti from trees. A large number of people fell for this prank calling the station wanting to know how to grow their own spaghetti.
1976 planetary alignment decreases gravity: Patrick Moore, a British astronomer, as a prank on April fools announced on radio that Pluto would pass behind Jupiter and would lessen Earth's gravity. He told radio listeners that they would experience a strange floating sensation if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred. Many were fooled and hundreds called in to the radio station claiming to have felt the sensation.
1989 u.f.o. in London: Motorists driving on the highway outside London looked up in the air to see a glowing flying saucer descending on their city. The saucer landed in a field on the outskirts of London, and local residents called police. When police arrived one brave officer approached the craft with his club extended before him. The door of the craft opened, and a silver-suited figure emerged, the policeman ran in the opposite direction. The saucer was a hot-air balloon that had been built to look like a UFO by Richard Branson, the 36-year-old chairman of Virgin Records.
1992 Richard Nixon Runs for President {again}: On National Public Radio it was announced that Richard Nixon was running for President again. Listeners heard a candidacy speech delivered by comedian Rich Little who impersonated Nixon. His new campaign slogan was: "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." Listeners called in shocked an outraged. During the second half of the show, the host John Hockenberry, revealed the announcement as a practical joke.
1998 The left handed Whopper: A advertisement in USA Today
announcing the introduction of a new "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for left handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients but were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The next day a follow-up revealed that the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax and that thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request it and that "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."
2002 Whistling carrots: Tesco, a British supermarket chain, published an advertisement announcing the successful a genetically modified 'whistling carrot.' The ad explained that the carrots had been specially engineered to grow with tapered air holes in their side and when fully cooked would whistle.
2008 Flying penguins: The BBC announced that camera crews filming near the Antarctic had captured footage of Adélie penguins taking flight. They even offered a video clip of these flying penguins! In the video Terry Jones explained that, during the Antarctic winter, these penguins flew to the rain forests of South America to "spend the winter basking in the tropical sun."
2010 Google changed it's name to Topeka: And who can forget last year Google changed it's name to Topeka. Their homepage had the word Topeka where the Google logo normally appears. This was in honor of Topeka, Kansas. A couple of weeks before Topeka, the capital city of Kansas, unofficially changed its name to Google in an effort to convince google to select it as a test site for its super-fast, fiber-optic network. As Google has a history of pulling these kind of jokes, it should be fun to see what they have cooked up for this year!
Need some tricks? See my post from last year:
Seven Simple April Fools Tricks
*I have added this to the APRIL FOOL'S DAY linky party at Someday Crafts. Visit to see more hoaxes!!
Sources: museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/ & Wikipedia.com
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