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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