Whether you’re a fan of practical jokes or not, I thought these examples of major April Fools’ Day hoaxes might entertain you.
- In 1957, the BBC reported on spaghetti-growing trees in Switzerland. They even aired clips of people ‘harvesting’ the spaghetti.
- In 1965, the BBC interviewed a professor who had invented ‘Smellovision’, a new technology that allowed for the transmission of aromas through a television screen.
- In 1977, The Guardian newspaper printed a travel supplement on San Serriffe, an island republic in the tropics. The text was heavily laced with printing and typesetting terms, including the name of the island and the island’s dictator, a certain General M J Pica.
- In 1992, National Public Radio (NPR) declared that Richard Nixon, who resigned as president in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal, was entering that year’s presidential race. The radio network said his slogan was “I never did anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.”
* There is some debate as to whether the apostrophe should come after the ‘s’ or between the ‘s’ and the ‘el’. My preference is for the former. (In the same way as I’m about the only person in the world who thinks the apostrophe in ‘Mothers’ Day’ should come after the ‘s’!)