Some April Fools’ Day pranks are part of history
Not many people know just how long April Fools’ Day has been around.
Officially, it began in 1700 in England, though it is speculated that it’s origin could be traced as far back as 1582, according to history.com.
That’s at least 300-plus years of pranks that have been played, so obviously there’s been a doozy here and there. Here are a few of the most memorable April Fools’ Day pranks ever played.
1.The Great Spaghetti Harvest – Seemingly cited online more than any other prank as the best, the story behind the Great Spaghetti Harvest began with the reputable and (usually) serious British Broadcasting Corporation.
The network reported April 1, 1957 that a region in Switzerland was having a bountiful spaghetti crop that year, according to history.com. Spaghetti wasn’t a common food in Britain at the time.
The story even showed people picking spaghetti strands from trees. This led to a mountain of calls to the BBC as to how people could grow their own spaghetti trees. The network milked the joke for awhile before coming clean.
2. Sidd Finch – This one’s generally considered the best April Fools’ Day prank ever in the sports world. The April 1, 1985, edition of Sports Illustrated arrived in folks’ mailboxes with a story on an unknown New York Mets prospect named Sidd Finch.
The story went like this: Finch allegedly could throw a baseball 168 miles per hour (more than 60 mph faster than the fastest pitch ever thrown, even today), play the French horn, only wore one shoe and generally was considered wildly eccentric. Mets players and coaches went along with the ruse. There even were pics of “Sidd Finch.”
Fans and news outlets heavily followed the story until the magazine finally admitted to the hoax 15 days after the article ran.
3. Jovian–plutonian Gravitational Effect – The BBC strikes again, this time looking beyond the bounds of the Earth to pull a fast one.
According to enacademic.com, the BBC radio network reported that April 1, 1976, at 9:47 a.m., the alignment of Pluto and Jupiter would lead to a powerful gravity combination that briefly would decrease gravity on Earth. Listeners were told that if they jumped at the right moment, they would get a floating sensation.
Though the BBC got calls from hundreds reporting the unique effects, the story quickly was revealed as false.
4. Nixon For President ... Again – Richard Nixon is one of the most reviled U.S. presidents because of Watergate, but according to National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” on April 1, 1992, he announced he was running for president 18 years after resigning in disgrace.
There even were (doctored) audio clips of Nixon saying, “I never did anything wrong, and I won’t do it again” in his announcement speech, according to hoaxes.org.
Response was immediate and highly negative, from listeners to political pundits. But the second half of the program revealed the prank.
5. Prankster in a Bottle – This one goes back to the earlier days of April Fools’ Day, occurring in 1749.
An ad in a London newspaper advertised an event where a man would squeeze himself into a wine bottle and sing inside it, among other tricks, according to history.com. The legend is that two men had a bet over whether people would show up to watch something impossible.
Show up they did, filling the house. However, no performer ever showed up onstage. The audience, realizing they’d been hoodwinked, rioted.