April
Fool's Day!
When was the first
April Fool's Day? If you had to put a
date on it, you'd have to go back to 1582, when
Charles IX of France decided to adopt the Gregorian
Calendar. The most radical change was
to move New Year's Day to January 1. Prior
to that time, it had been an 8-day celebration
that began on what is now March 25, culminating
on April 1.
In
1582, there was no mass communications as we
know them today, and some folks just didn't
get the message very fast.
(Others simply refused to give up an 8-day celebration
in exchange for a one-day blast.) Those "in
the know" on the new calendar naturally made
fun of those who weren't quite up to speed,
and the teasing led to sending
people on "fool's errands" or playing pranks
on them, which has evolved into our modern April
Fool's Day.
Most pranks are low-key
affairs, usually between friends or family members.
Some, however, are quite elaborate and originate
with (or are perpetuated by) the media.
Here are some interesting ones from the past
(borrowed from a website
listing 100 great historic pranks,
check it out.)
#12:
Kremvax
In 1984, back in the Stone Age
of the internet, a message was distributed to
the members of Usenet (the online messaging
community that was one of the first forms the
internet took) announcing that the Soviet
Union was joining Usenet. This
was quite a shock to many, since most assumed
that cold war security concerns would have prevented
such a link-up. The message created a flood
of responses. Two weeks later its true author,
a European man named Piet Beertema, revealed
that it was a hoax. This
is believed to be the first hoax on the internet.
Six years later, when Moscow really
did link up to the internet, it adopted the
domain name 'kremvax' in honor of the hoax.
#21:
Whistling Carrots
In 2002 the British supermarket chain Tesco
published an advertisement in The Sun
announcing the successful development of a genetically
modified "whistling carrot." The ad explained
that the carrots had been specially engineered
to grow with tapered airholes in their side.
When fully cooked,
these airholes caused the vegetable to whistle.
[Who needs a timer when the food itself
tells you when it's done!]
#28:
Operation Parallax
In 1979 London's Capital Radio announced that
Operation Parallax would soon go into effect.
This was a government plan to resynchronize
the British calendar with the rest of the world.
It was explained that ever since 1945 Britain
had gradually become 48 hours ahead of all other
countries because of the constant switching
back and forth from British Summer Time. To
remedy this situation, the British government
had decided to cancel April 5 and 12 that year.
Capital Radio received numerous calls as a result
of this announcement. One employer wanted to
know if she had to pay her employees for the
missing days. Another woman was curious
about what would happen to her birthday, which
fell on one of the cancelled days.
#35:
Big Ben Goes Digital
In 1980 the BBC reported that Big
Ben, in order to keep up with
the times, was going
to be given a digital readout.
It received a huge response from listeners protesting
the change. The BBC Japanese service also announced
that the clock hands would be sold to the first
four listeners to contact them, and one
Japanese seaman in the mid-Atlantic immediately
radioed in a bid.
#40:
Internet Spring Cleaning --
Would this get rid of SPAM?
In 1997 an email message spread throughout the
world announcing that the
internet would be shut down for cleaning for
twenty-four hours from March 31 until April
2. This cleaning was said to
be necessary to clear out the "electronic flotsam
and jetsam" that had accumulated in the network.
Dead email and inactive ftp, www, and gopher
sites would be purged. 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. The message supposedly
originated from the "Interconnected Network
Maintenance Staff, Main Branch, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology." This joke was an updated
version of an old joke that used to be told
about the phone system. For many years, gullible
phone customers had been warned that the phone
systems would be cleaned on April Fool's Day.
They were cautioned to place plastic
bags over the ends of the phone to catch the
dust that might be blown out of the phone lines
during this period.
#56:
Y2K CD Bug -- You thought Y2K
couldn't get worse.
In 1999 a Canadian radio station, in conjunction
with Warner Music and Universal Music Group,
informed its listeners
that the arrival of Y2K would render all CD
players unable to read music discs created before
the year 2000. Luckily, the
deejay said, there was a solution. Hologram
stickers were available that would enable CD
players to read the old-format discs. These
stickers would be sold for approximately $2
apiece. Furious listeners,
outraged at the thought of having to pay $2
for the stickers, immediately jammed the phones
of both the radio station and the record companies,
demanding that the stickers be given away for
free. They continued to call even after
the radio station revealed that the announcement
was a joke.
#59:
Nat Tate -- Hoity-toity Ha Ha.
A lavish party was held at Jeff Koons's New
York studio in 1998 to
honor the memory of the late, great American
artist Nat Tate, that troubled abstract expressionist
who destroyed 99 percent of his own work before
leaping to his death from the Staten Island
ferry. At the party superstar
David Bowie read aloud selections from William
Boyd's soon-to-be released biography of Tate,
"Nat Tate: An American Artist, 1928-1960." Critics
in the crowd murmured appreciative comments
about Tate's work as they sipped their drinks.
The only catch
was that Tate had never existed.
He was the satirical creation of William Boyd.
Bowie, Boyd, and Boyd's publisher were the only
ones in on the joke.
#79:
PETA's Tournament of Sleeping Fish
In 2000 the People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals (PETA) warned that it
planned to sabotage the bass fishing tournament
on Lake Palestine in East Texas by releasing
tranquilizers into the lake before the tournament.
Their announcement stated that "this year, the
fish will be napping, not nibbling." State
officials took the threat seriously and stationed
rangers around the lake in order to stop any
tranquilizer-toting PETA activists from drugging
the fish, and numerous newspapers reported the
threat. Eventually PETA admitted that
it had been joking.
#99:
Virgin Cola's Blue Cans
In 1996 Virgin Cola announced that in the interest
of consumer safety it had integrated a new technology
into its cans. When
the cola passed its sell-by date, the liquid
would react with the metal in the can, turning
the can itself bright blue.
Virgin warned that consumers should therefore
avoid purchasing all blue cans. The
joke was that Pepsi had recently unveiled its
newly designed cans. They were bright blue.
[Somehow, we doubt Pepsi was laughing.]
(Also
on the site referenced above
you'll find April 1 hoaxes about the moving
of the Eiffel Tower, the excellent Spaghetti
Harvest one year, and the innovative One-way
Highway plan for London, among others.)
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