1st April is being known traditionally as Fool’s Day, April fool’s day or All fool’s Day in many countries particularly in western culture. It is an odd celebration celebrated for the sense of humor usually involves harmless jokes, pranks and hoaxes which are socially sanctioned. Although, there is a huge list of April fools pranks and hoaxes but few of which get most popular and still confusing the people. Here is the list of top 10 all the time most Popular April fools Pranks or hoaxes.
1. Dead Fairy Hoax
Dead fairy hoax is one of the most popular April fool’s day pranks, which is still going strong well and many believed it yet to be real even after the creator of the hoax has been declared it as a prank.
The hoax appear a day or two before the Fool’s Day, April 1st of 2007, where an image of a Dead mummified fairy which is roughly 8-inches or the size of our palm, was posted on the website Lebanon Circle Magic Company in an article titled “Do Fairies Live at the Bottom of Your Garden?”. The website published several closed up detailed images of remains of Dead Fairy with the explanation that the creature (resemble to fairy) had been found in Derbyshire on an old Roman road by a dog walker.
The hoax was so strong attracted too many people and the website received more than 20,000 visitors hits, thousands of calls and hundreds of emails on April 1st, 2007 seeking clarification. The Mummy of Dead fairy was actually an art piece made by Dan Baines, a skill prop-maker and the owner of the website. He, at the end of the day, announced that the Corpse of fairy is a hoax but many still refused to accept the fact that the fairy was not real.
Note: The artifact of Dead Fairy was then sold on eBay received the highest bid 0f £280.
2. Spaghetti Tree Hoax
Dated back to 1957, when Spaghetti grew on trees.
On April 1st, BBC news show Panorama broadcast a three minutes documentary segment about bumper spaghetti farms in Switzerland where a Swiss family carrying out their annual spaghetti harvest and pulling the strands of spaghetti off the trees and placing it into baskets. The show attracts a huge number of viewers many of which got crazy about spaghetti farming and contacted BBC to know how to grow their own spaghetti trees. At that time spaghetti was not so famous and so there composition, thus many people believe the hoax as reality.
3. Swedish Instant Color TV DIY Prank
On April 1, 1962 in Sweden, the most famous April’s Fool day prank occurred. At that time, the only TV channel was Sveriges Television (SVT) which broadcast their shows in black and white. Although the regular color transmission was began in Sweden on April 1, 1970. But on April’s fool day of the year 1962, the technical expert’s of SVT TV Station Kjell Stensson which was a well known and respected person, announced something which the viewers really get excited about, and that was, converting the existing Black and White into Color TV. All it required was easily accessible material, the pieces of nylon stocking, they had to pull over the TV screen and that’s it. Stensson explain and demonstrate the process and thousand of viewers follow him in an attempt to color their TVs. People got crazy and rush through house to find nylon stocking and place on TV set, as they are instructed, to get color picture.
4. Planetary Alignment 1976, Decreases Gravity
BBC is good in making April’s Fool day pranks; although the company had been criticize for that. On the April’s Fool Day of the year 1976, one of the famous astronomers, Patrick Moore, announced that there is once in a lifetime event going to take place at 9:47 AM. He says that the Pluto would pass behind the planet Jupiter and this planetary alignment, he said, would reduce the Earth’s own force of gravity and the people will feel less weight than usual at this moment. He adds more that if someone jumped in the air at the specific time when planetary alignment occurred, he will float or experience floating sensation. After the announcement, many people fell in the hoax and BBC received hundreds of calls from people who claiming to have felt the same floating sensation as Patrick Moore states.
5. Metric Time System
The next most famous Aprils Fools day prank is from Australia. On 1 April 1975, Australia’s famous news program, This Day Tonight or TDT announced that the country would be converting soon the traditional time system to “metric time” the base of which will be 10. The station added more that in this new proposed metric time system, there would be 100 seconds in a minute, 100 minutes in an hour and 20 hours in a day and, furthermore, a second would turned into milli-day, a minute would become centi-day and hour would become deci-day. The report also show image of one of their reporter Nigel Starck posing with a metric clock. This really confuses the viewers make them fell in the hoax and numbers of frustrated viewers call TDT.
6. Republic of San Serriffe
On 1 April 1977, a seven-page hoax supplement was published by one of the famous British newspaper, The Guardian, devoted to discovery of a small republic San Serriffe located in Indian Ocean. The country was said to consist of several island resemble to semi colon, the main two island of which are Lower Caisse (Case) and Upper Caisse (Case) and its capital was Bodoni. The hoax fooled many readers and only few noticed that the name of the republic and all other information published are just taken from printing terminology, which were not famous among people at the time.
Note: The San Serriffe hoax is the most successful hoax and reused many time, even today, you can register yourself in The Guardian website and can select San Serriffe as your country of origin.
7. UFO landing in London
On March 31, 1989, a day before April fool’s day, a glowing bizarre craft resemble to flying saucer appears in the air draw attention of thousands of drivers driving on highway outside London. The flying saucer or UFO was descending on London City and finally landed in a field in Surrey on the outskirts of London. The local resident around the flying saucer landing zone immediately call police and warn them about the landing of UFO and alien invasion. The police just after a while arrived at the site and one of them approached the bizarre craft which is thought to be UFO. Suddenly the door of the UFO opened and a silver suited, small creature walk out of the flying saucer make the scene more real.
But soon the reality disclosed on people and declared as April fool prank, the flying saucer was actually a hot air balloon made specially and skillfully to like UFO and the alien who emerged from it was a midget person.
Note: Although the prank was planned for 1st April on April fool’s day with landing of craft in Hyde Park of London but wind changes causes the balloon to blow down a day earlier
8. Discovery of Life on Jupiter
Evidence of life on planets other than the Earth is what we all are curious about, and this is what the American Online (AOL) had took advantage of on April fool day in 1996 to draw the attention of people. On April 1 1996, the company announced the news that USA Government source claims the signs of life on Jupiter as detected by Galileo mission to Jupiter. The news was supported by statements from planetary biologist and stated that the government is hiding the discovery of life on Jupiter but the company (AOL) has documents to prove the fact.
The hoax fooled many people and as the news speared and until the story being declared as a hoax, company received hundreds of mails and calls from subscribers to obtain more information about the discovery.
9. Wisconsin State Capitol Collapses
April 1 1933, The Madison Capital Times April fool’s day edition front page showed a picture of collapsing Wisconsin State Capitol dome under the headline which announced “Dome Topples Off Statehouse”. The news reported that the beautiful capital of Wisconsin state was destroyed today following a series of six small and large mysterious explosion resulted from too much hot air or gas generated at the base dome. Although the news was concluded with the words “April fool”, it upset many readers and they being fell for hoax.
Note: 1n 1985The hoax had been listed in The Science Digest as one of the Best hoax ever.
10. Internet Spring Cleaning
A few days before the April fool’s day of the year 1997, an email was circulated worldwide announcing that internet service would be closed between March 31 and April 2 all around the world due to cleaning process of internet, so do not connect to the internet during the cleaning process.
The mail which is supposedly generated by “Interconnected Network Maintenance Staff, Main Branch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology” rationalizes that the cleaning process is necessary to remove dead email, www, inactive ftp accounts and to clear out “flotsam and jetsam” all the efforts would be done to improve the speed of internet.
