In Case You Were Curious… About Some of the Best April Fools Pranks EVER

In Case You Were Curious… About Some of the Best April Fools Pranks EVER

April 01, 2022

• In 1957, a BBC news show broadcast an educational segment about a spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The show’s highly respected anchor played a video of a Swiss family pulling pasta off a spaghetti tree and placing them in baskets. Many viewers called in to inquire about how they could get their own spaghetti tree.
• In 1962, a Swedish TV station brought a technical expert on the news to inform the public that viewers could convert their existing black and white television sets to display color by pulling a nylon stocking over their TV screen. They explained that the mesh would cause the light to blend in a way that made the image appear as if it were in color. Thousands were taken in, and many Swedes remember their fathers running around the house in search of stockings to place over the TV set.
• In 1978, millionaire businessman Dick Smith towed a giant iceberg from Antarctica to Sydney, Australia. He said he planned to carve the iceberg into small ice cubes, which he would sell for ten cents each. He promised the ice cubes would improve flavor of any drink they cooled. Immediately residents began to call the local radio stations that provided coverage of the scene, to receive their own cubes. Then it began to rain, and the firefighting foam and shaving cream that the berg was really made of began to wash away, leaving white plastic sheets beneath.
• In 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed 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. When asked about the sale, White House press secretary Mike McCurry replied tongue-in-cheek that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would henceforth be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
• In 1997, ‘The Guardian’ published a special seven-page supplement about San Serriffe, a small republic that was said to consist of several semi-colon-shaped islands located in the Indian Ocean. The article described the geography and culture of this nation. There were two main islands, Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse, the capital was Bodoni, and its ruler was General Pica. Readers began to call the publication to learn more information about this vacation destination. Only a few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer’s terminology.