Jokers' Day Hoax #6 Nixon For President

April 1st, April 1st Pranks, Hoaxes, Jokers' day, Pranks, Nixon -Tags

National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" program reported that former-President Richard Nixon had declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Accompanying the announcement were audio clips of Nixon delivering his candidacy speech and declaring "I never did anything wrong, and I won't do it again."

Harvard professor Laurence Tribe and Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman then came on the air to offer their analysis of Nixon's decision and its possible impact on the 1992 presidential race. A clip from Torrie Clarke, press secretary of the Bush-Quayle campaign, was also played in which she said, "We are stunned and think it's an obvious attempt by Nixon to upstage our foreign policy announcement today."

Listeners reacted emotionally to the announcement, flooding NPR with calls expressing shock and outrage. Only during the second half of the program did host John Hockenberry reveal that the announcement had been an April Fool's Day joke. Comedian Rich Little had impersonated Nixon's voice.

Source: http://hoaxes.org/af_database/permalink/nixon_for_president/

Jokers' Day Hoax 5# San Serriffe

April 1st, April 1st Pranks, Fun, Hoaxes, Jokers' day, Pranks, San Serriffe Hoax, San Serriffe, - Tags

On April 1, 1977 the British newspaper The Guardian published a seven-page "special report" about San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semi-colon-shaped islands. A series of articles described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. 

The report generated a huge response. The Guardian's phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. However, San Serriffe did not actually exist. The report was an elaborate April Fool's Day joke — one with a typographical twist, since numerous details about the island (such as its name) alluded to printer's terminology.

The success of this hoax is widely credited with inspiring the British media's enthusiasm for April Foolery in subsequent years.

The seven-page San Serriffe supplement

The Creation of San Serriffe

Philip Davies, who was in charge of the Guardian's Special Reports department, came up with the idea of an April Fool's Day feature about a fictitious island state. "Special Reports" were sections of the paper occasionally given over to exploring a subject (such as a country or a technology) in depth. Typically the subjects were quite dull, but lucrative from the newspaper's point-of-view since they were designed to attract related advertising.

Davies conceived of a special report about a fictitious island as a parody of the genre. He was later quoted as saying, "The Financial Times was always doing special reports on little countries I'd never heard of. I was thinking about April Fool's Day 1977 and I thought: why don't we just make a country up?"

Davies approached the other editors at The Guardian, and they enthusiastically embraced the concept. One of its great selling points was not only that it would be a funny joke, but also that it would be possible to get advertisers to play along. In other words, the spoof special report could make The Guardian a lot of money.

Davies had imagined a small, one-page feature, but the other editors, realizing the potential, decided to expand it into a seven-page supplement, making it the largest special report the Guardian had ever published.

Geoffrey Taylor was given the task of editing and designing the feature. He enlisted a crew of other writers, including Mark Arnold-Forster (writer of The World at War TV series), Tim Radford, and Stuart St. Clair-Legge. St. Clair-Legge came up with the idea for the name "San Serriffe," which then inspired further typographical allusions. St. Clair-Legge also wrote the synopsis from which the spoof was developed.

The Guardian turned to the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson to find companies willing to participate in the hoax. This proved to be an easy job.

Source: http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/san_serriffe

Joker's Day Hoax#4 The Taco Liberty Bell

April 1st, April 1st Pranks, Fun, Hoaxes, Pranks, Taco Bell, Liberty Bell,Bell Hoax-Tags
On April 1, 1996 a full page ad appeared in six major American newspapers (The Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, and USA Today) announcing that the fast food chain Taco Bell had purchased the Liberty Bell. The full text of the ad read:

Taco Bell Buys The Liberty Bell
In an effort to help the national debt, Taco Bell is pleased to announce that we have agreed to purchase the Liberty Bell, one of our country's most historic treasures. It will now be called the "Taco Liberty Bell" and will still be accessible to the American public for viewing. While some may find this controversial, we hope our move will prompt other corporations to take similar action to do their part to reduce the country's debt.

In a separate press release, Taco Bell explained that the Liberty Bell would divide its time between Philadelphia and the Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine. It compared the purchase to the adoption of highways by corporations. Taco Bell argued that it was simply "going one step further by purchasing one of the country's greatest historic treasures." The company boasted, "Taco Bell's heritage and imagery have revolved around the symbolism of the bell. Now we've got the crown jewel of bells."

Response

Taco Bell's announcement generated an enormous response. Thousands of worried citizens called both Taco Bell's headquarters and the National Park Service in Philadelphia to find out if the Bell had really been sold. Elaine Sevy, a Park Service spokeswoman, was quoted as saying, "We were shocked. We had no idea this was happening. We have just been getting hammered with phone calls from the public." 

Among those who called were staff aides from the offices of Sens. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) and J. James Exon (D-Neb.). 

The Philadelphia branch of the National Park Service arranged a midmorning news conference to assure the public that the Bell had not been sold. "The Liberty Bell is safe. It's not for sale," a spokeswoman announced.

In fact, the Bell could not have been sold by the federal government, as the ad implied, because the federal government did not own the Bell. It was the property of the City of Philadelphia.

At noon on April 1st, Taco Bell issued a second press release in which they confessed to the hoax, describing it as "The Best Joke of the Day." The company also announced that it would donate $50,000 for the upkeep of the Liberty Bell.

Even the White House got in on the joke that same day when press secretary Mike McCurry told reporters that, as part of its ongoing privatization efforts "We'll be doing a series of these. Ford Motor Co. is joining today in an effort to refurbish the Lincoln Memorial. It will be the Lincoln Mercury Memorial." 

Source: http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/taco_liberty_bell

Jokers' Day Hoax #3 Instant Color TV

April 1st, April 1st Pranks, Hoaxes, Pranks, Instant Color Tv, Instant Color, Color TV Hoax- Tags

Sweden's most famous April Fool's Day hoax occurred on April 1, 1962. At the time, SVT (Sveriges Television) was the only television channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white.

The station announced that their "technical expert," Kjell Stensson, was going to describe a process that would allow people to view color images on their existing black-and-white sets. 

The broadcast cut to Stensson sitting in front of a television set in the studio. He began to explain how the process worked. His discussion was highly technical, going into details about the prismatic nature of light and the phenomenon of "double slit interference." But at last he arrived at the main point. Researchers, he said, had recently discovered that a fine-meshed screen placed in front of a black-and-white television screen would cause the light to bend in such a way that it would appear as if the image was in color. 

Stensson told viewers they could experience the effect at home with the help of some simple, readily accessible materials. Nylon stockings, it turned out, were the perfect fabric to use as a fine-meshed screen. So all viewers had to do, Stensson said, was to cut open a pair of stockings and tape them over the screen of their television set. The image on the television should suddenly appear to be in color.

Stensson cautioned that the viewer would have to be seated at the correct distance from the screen in order to get the full effect. Also, it might be necessary to "move your head very carefully" back and forth, in order to align the color spectrum.

Thousands of viewers later admitted they had fallen for the hoax. Many Swedes today report that they remember their parents (their fathers in particular) rushing through the house trying to find nylon stockings to place over the TV set.

SVT attempted its first color broadcast four years later, in 1966. Regular color broadcasts were begun in Sweden on April 1, 1970.

Source: http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/instant_color_tv

Jokers' Day Hoax #2 Sidd Finch

April 1st, April 1st Pranks, Fun, Hoaxes, Sidd Finch, Sidd, Finch-Tags
In its April 1985 edition, Sports Illustrated published an article by George Plimpton that described an incredible rookie baseball player who was training at the Mets camp in St. Petersburg, Florida. The player was named Sidd Finch (Sidd being short for Siddhartha, the Indian mystic in Hermann Hesse's book of the same name). He could reportedly pitch a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy. The fastest previous recorded speed for a pitch was 103 mph. 

Finch had never played baseball before. He had been raised in an English orphanage before he was adopted by the archaeologist Francis Whyte-Finch who was later killed in an airplane crash in the Dhaulaglri mountain region of Nepal. Finch briefly attended Harvard before he headed to Tibet where he learned the teachings of the "great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa" and mastered "siddhi, namely the yogic mastery of mind-body." Through his Tibetan mind-body mastery, Finch had "learned the art of the pitch."

Finch showed up at the Mets camp in Florida, and so impressed their manager that he was invited to attend training camp. When pitching he looked, in the words of the catcher, "like a pretzel gone loony." Finch frequently wore a hiking boot on his right foot while pitching, his other foot being bare. His speed and power were so great that the catcher would only hear a small sound, "a little pft, pft-boom," before the ball would land in his glove, knocking him two or three feet back. One of the players declared that it was not "humanly possible" to hit Finch's pitches.

Unfortunately for the Mets, Finch had not yet decided whether to commit himself to a career as a baseball player, or to pursue a career as a French Horn player. He told the Mets management that he would let them know his decision on April 1. 

Response

Sports Illustrated received almost 2000 letters in response to the article, and it became one of their most famous stories ever. On April 8 they declared that Finch had held a press conference in which he said that he had lost the accuracy needed to throw his fastball and would therefore not be pursuing a career with the Mets. On April 15 they admitted that the story was a hoax.

George Plimpton actually left an obscure hint that the story was a hoax within the article itself (the non-obscure hint being that the story was absurd). The sub-heading of the article read: "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, spells "H-a-p-p-y A-p-r-i-l F-o-o-l-s D-a-y."

Source:http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/sidd_finch

Jokers' Day Hoax#1 The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

April 1st Pranks, Pranks Hoaxes, Jokers' Day, Fun -Tags

On April 1, 1957 the British news show Panorama broadcast.  It was a full  three-minute segment and was about a major spaghetti harvest, done in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was credited to both; a mild winter and also to the "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil."
The audience too was baffled, when they heard Richard Dimbleby, the show's
most respected and trusted anchor. He was discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage, in which a Swiss family was pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets.
The segment was then concluded with the assurance that, "For those who love this dish, there's nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti." The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they too could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." To this day the Panorama broadcast remains one of the most famous and popular April Fool's Day hoaxes of all time. It is also believed to be the first time the medium of television was used to stage an April Fool's Day hoax.

Source: http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_swiss_spaghetti_harvest

Origins

Fool's Day origin, April fool origin, origin, joker's day origin, April 1st - Tags

April's Fools day!!! These words bring the thought of mischievousness in our little prankful mind. It is a day of pranks, mischiefs, naughtiness and the Jokers. People play practical jokes on each other that are why it is also known as 'The Jokers' Day'. 

Origins- The Joker's Day

The tale of Origin of the day is equally fascinatong.There is many tales around it.

The earliest recorded association between 1 April and foolishness can be found in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1392). Many writers suggest that the restoration of 1 January as New Year's Day in the 16th century was responsible for the creation of the holiday, but this theory does not explain earlier references.

Ancient cultures, like Romans and Hindus, celebrated New Year on or around April 1, also known as the VERTICAL EQUINOX, in medieval times

IN 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar, which came to be known as the Gregorian Calendar, replacing the old Julian Calendar, which celebrated the New year on !set April.

According to a popular explanation, many people either refused to accept the new date, or did not learn about it, and continued to celebrate New Year's Day on April 1. Other people began to make fun of these traditionalists, sending them on "fool's errands" or trying to trick them into believing something false. Eventually, the practice spread throughout Europe.

It also worth noticing that the other cultures also had similar traditions in them, for foolishness, at or around the start of April. This makes the Tale of origin much more confusing. The romans had festival names Hilaria, on March 25. Hindus had Holi, and Jewish had Purim. Perhaps it’s something in the time of the year, the spring time, which invokes the foolishness within

The French call April 1 Poisson d'Avril, or "April Fish." French children sometimes tape a picture of a fish on the back of their schoolmates, crying "Poisson d'Avril" when the prank is discovered.