April 1st: April Fool!

Here are 10 classic April Fool pranks:

1. 1915 During World War I, a French aviator flew over a German camp and dropped what appeared to be a huge bomb. The German soldiers ran for cover, but nothing happened. After a while, some brave soldiers went to investigate what they assumed was an unexploded bomb. They discovered it was actually a large football with a note tied to it reading, "April Fool!"
2. 1957 Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper Spaghetti crop. There was even film of Swiss peasants harvesting spaghetti from trees. People called the programme, wanting to know how they could grow spaghetti trees for themselves. "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best," was the advice.
3. 1962 Kjell Stensson, a Swedish TV boffin, appeared on the news to announce that, thanks to new technology, viewers could convert their existing black and white TV sets to display colour reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their TV screen, a procedure which Stensson proceeded to demonstrate.
4. 1977 The Guardian published a seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic consisting of several islands, shaped like semi-colons, in the Indian Ocean. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. People rang in in droves, wanting to know how they could book a holiday there! Only a few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer's terminology.
5. 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in the April 1st edition of USA Today announcing the introduction of the "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for left handed people. The ingredients were exactly the same as the original Whopper, just rotated by 180 degrees. Thousands of customers went into Burger King outlets and ordered them, or specified that they wanted the Right Handed Version.
6. 1860 Numerous people throughout London received the following invitation: "Tower of London: Admit Bearer and Friend to view annual ceremony of Washing the White Lions on Sunday, April 1, 1860. Admittance only at White Gate. It is particularly requested that no gratuities be given to wardens or attendants." By twelve o'clock on April 1 a large crowd had gathered outside the tower, looking for the non-existent White Gate.
7. 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 in flight. It even had a video clip of the flying penguins, which could be viewed 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."
8. 1997 A viral email message announced that the Internet would be shut down for cleaning for twenty-four hours from March 31 until April 2. The cleaning was said to be necessary to clear out the "electronic flotsam and jetsam" that had accumulated in the network. The cleaning would be done by "five very powerful Japanese-built multi-lingual Internet-crawling robots (Toshiba ML-2274) situated around the world." During this period, users were warned to disconnect all devices from the internet.
9. 2000 In the depths of night, anonymous pranksters spray painted a Zebra Crossing on the northern carriageway of the M3 near Farnborough, Hampshire. A police spokesman said that the prank, "must have been done very early in the morning when there was little or no traffic on the motorway." Maintenance workers were called in to wash the "crossing" away: luckily water based emulsion paint had been used. The police noted that, surprisingly, they had received no calls from the public about the crossing.
10. 1981 The Daily Mail ran a story about a Japanese long-distance runner, Kimo Nakajimi, who had entered the London Marathon but, due to a translation error, thought that he had to run for 26 days, not 26 miles. Nakajimi was now somewhere out on the roads of England, still running. Various people said they had spotted him, but were unable to flag him down. The translation error was attributed to Timothy Bryant, 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."