Some of the best April Fools Hoaxes ever recorded (SSL)

The Euro Anthem
In 1999 the Today program on BBC Radio 4 announced that the British
National anthem ("God Save the Queen") was to be replaced by a Euro
Anthem sung in German. The new anthem, which Today played for their
listeners, used extracts from Beethoven's music and was sung by pupils
of a German school in London. Reportedly, Prince Charles's office
telephoned Radio 4 to ask them for a copy of the new anthem. St. James
Palace later insisted that it had been playing along with the prank and
had never been taken in by it.

Big Ben Goes Digital
image 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.

Canadian Finance Minister Quits to Breed Cows and Ducks
In 2002 a rumor was posted on a Canadian gossip website, Bourque.org,
alleging that the finance minister, Paul Martin, was quitting his job
in order to breed "prize Charolais cattle and handsome Fawn Runner
ducks." Martin, it was said, would be showing his livestock at a local
fair in Havelock, a tiny Quebec town boasting a population of only 811.
The Bank of Canada was also said to be ready to intervene in case the
news rattled the currency markets. Of course, as soon as the word of
Martin's retirement began to spread, the markets did get rattled, and
the Canadian dollar promptly fell to its lowest level in a month. The
currency only recovered once the minister's office denied the rumor.
Pierre Bourque, the man behind bourque.org, readily admitted the story
had been a hoax. "The ducks," he pointed out, "were the tell-tale sign."

Nat Tate
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.

LA Highways Close for Repairs
In 1987 a Los Angeles disc jockey announced that on April 8 the LA
highway system would be shut down for repairs for an entire month. This
was alarming news in LA where it's necessary to use the highway to get
almost anywhere. The radio station immediately received hundreds of
frantic calls in response to the announcement, and the California
Highway Patrol reported that they were also flooded with calls
throughout the day. The station later admitted that it was stunned by
the intensity of the public reaction to the hoax. A representative from
the California Department of Transportation called the station's
managers to share their opinion of the prank. Reportedly "they didn't
think it was very funny."

Chunnel Blunder
In 1990 the News of the World reported that the Chunnel project, which
was already suffering from huge cost overruns, would face another big
additional expense caused by a colossal engineering blunder. Apparently
the two halves of the tunnel, being built simultaneously from the
coasts of France and England, would miss each other by 14 feet. The
error was attributed to the fact that French engineers had insisted on
using metric specifications in their blueprints. The mistake would
reportedly cost $14 billion to fix.

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.

The Taco Liberty Bell
In 1996 the Taco Bell Corporation announced that it had bought the
Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of
outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia
where the bell was housed to express their anger. Their nerves were
only calmed when Taco Bell revealed, a few hours later, that it was all
a practical joke. The best line of the day came when White House press
secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale. Thinking on his feet,
he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold. It would now
be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

Alabama Changes the Value of Pi
The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason
newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state
legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant
pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Before long the article
had made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly made its way
around the world, forwarded by people in their email. It only became
apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature
began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the
legislation. The original article, which was intended as a parody of
legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was
written by a physicist named Mark Boslough.

The Left-Handed Whopper
In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today
announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed
Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans.
According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same
ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty,
etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit
of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a
follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a
hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the
new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many
others requested their own 'right handed' version."

Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity
In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2
that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to
occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The
planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a
gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's
own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at
the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would
experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2
began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to
have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her
eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

The Eruption of Mount Edgecumbe
In 1974 residents of Sitka, Alaska were alarmed when the long-dormant
volcano neighboring them, Mount Edgecumbe, suddenly began to belch out
billows of black smoke. People spilled out of their homes onto the
streets to gaze up at the volcano, terrified that it was active again
and might soon erupt. Luckily it turned out that man, not nature, was
responsible for the smoke. A local practical joker named Porky Bickar
had flown hundreds of old tires into the volcano's crater and then lit
them on fire, all in a (successful) attempt to fool the city dwellers
into believing that the volcano was stirring to life. According to
local legend, when Mount St. Helens erupted six years later, a Sitka
resident wrote to Bickar to tell him, "This time you've gone too far!"

The Case of the Interfering Brassieres
In 1982 the Daily Mail reported that a local manufacturer had sold
10,000 "rogue bras" that were causing a unique and unprecedented
problem, not to the wearers but to the public at large. Apparently the
support wire in these bras had been made out of a kind of copper
originally designed for use in fire alarms. When this copper came into
contact with nylon and body heat, it produced static electricity which,
in turn, was interfering with local television and radio broadcasts.
The chief engineer of British Telecom, upon reading the article,
immediately ordered that all his female laboratory employees disclose
what type of bra they were wearing.

Guinness Mean Time
In 1998 Guinness issued a press release announcing that it had reached
an agreement with the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England to be
the official beer sponsor of the Observatory's millennium celebration.
According to this agreement, Greenwich Mean Time would be renamed
Guinness Mean Time until the end of 1999. In addition, where the
Observatory traditionally counted seconds in "pips," it would now count
them in "pint drips." The Financial Times, not realizing that the
release was a joke, declared that Guinness was setting a "brash tone
for the millennium." When the Financial Times learned that it had
fallen for a joke, it printed a curt retraction, stating that the news
it had disclosed "was apparently intended as part of an April 1 spoof."

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.


(see all 100 by visiting Museumofhoaxes.com)