By Haddon Libby
Boston University professor Joseph Boskin was interviewed in 1983 by the Associated Press on the origins of April Fool’s Day. Boskin attributed the day to Roman Emperor Constantine who set aside one day each year where the court jesters ruled the country. After his fake story was disseminated across the country, Boskin apologized for the “joke” at the urging of his employer.
In truth, April Fool’s Day appears to find its roots with a March 25th Roman festival called Hilaria. This celebration noted the first day of the year where day was longer than night.
The San Diego’s Museum of Hoaxes has compiled a list of some of the greatest April Fool’s hoaxes of all time.
Their favorite occurred in 1957 when the BBC reported that there had been an “especially heavy spaghetti crop” in Switzerland due to a mild winter and no crop loss from the spaghetti weevil. The “news” segment went as far as showing Swiss peasants pulling spaghetti from trees. Hundreds of viewers fell for the gag and went as far as trying to grow their own spaghetti trees by sticking a sprig of spaghetti in a can of tomato sauce.
NBC made tribute to this hoax in 1970 when John Chancellor reported on that year’s dill pickle tree crop from Dimbledy Pickle Farm.
National Public Radio has done many hoaxes throughout the years. In 1992, they announced that Richard Nixon would be running for President again with the slogan, “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.” NPR used impressionist Rich Little as the voice of the impeached president in the fake interview.
New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter in 1998 included a satirical news story that the Alabama legislature had voted to change the value of pi from 3.14159 to the ‘Biblical value’ of 3.0.
Normally, the newscasters are not the pranksters but the pranked.
In 1878, the New York Graphic magazine announced that Thomas Edison had created a food machine that could turn soil into food and water into wine. A Buffalo newspaper took the story to be real and published it as truth.
In 1934, the Hearst International News service reported that German pilot Erich Koycher had invented a flying device that operated on only the air of his lungs that created the suction necessary to lift his body into the air. Originally written as a spoof by Berliner Illustrite Zeitung, the Hearst News Service missed the fact that the story was a joke causing many US newspapers to publish the joke as truth. Worth noting, Koycher in German is a pun that translates to a puff or wheeze.
Advertisers have used April Fool’s Day as a fun way to generate free publicity.
In one of the funniest spoofs, Burger King took out an ad in USA Today announcing a new menu item: a “Left-Handed Whopper” that was meant to serve the needs of 32 million left-handers in the United States. This prompted thousands of people to visit the restaurant looking for the new item.
Guinness Beer issued a faux press release in 1998 stating that they had bought the rights to the Greenwich Mean Time and changed it to Guinness Mean Time for the year leading up to the millennium. The Financial Times did not pick up on the joke and issued a scathing criticism of the move.
Meanwhile British supermarket Tesco joined the fun in 2002 when they published an ad touting the successful development of the genetically engineered ‘whistling carrot.’ Once cooked, the air holes in the carrot cause it to whistle indicating that they are properly cooked.
By the way, if you ever want to visit the Museum of Hoaxes, it is open 24/7/365 and can be found alongside the I-5 next to the floating jackalope.
