3.Well-known hoaxes
Alabama Changes the Value of Pi: The April 1998 newsletter of New Mexicans for Science and Reason contained an article claiming that the Alabama Legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi to the "Biblical value" of 3.0. This claim originally appeared as a news story in the 1961 sci-fi classic "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein.
Spaghetti trees: The BBC television programme Panorama ran a famous hoax in 1957, showing the Swiss harvesting spaghetti from trees. They had claimed that the despised pest the spaghetti wevil had been eradicated. A large number of people contacted the BBC wanting to know how to cultivate their own spaghetti trees.
South Park: April 1st was advertised as being the premiere of the show's second season—and also the resolution of a cliffhanger where Eric Cartman was about to discover the identity of his father. Fans spent weeks speculating on the father's identity, but when they tuned in to the episode, they were instead treated to a half-hour of Terrance and Phillip fart jokes. The true resolution to the cliffhanger aired several weeks later. The show's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone claim during the DVD introduction to this episode that they received death threats over pulling the prank, although there were not any police reports to prove this.
Left Handed Whoppers: In 1998, Burger King ran an ad in USA Today, saying that people could get a Whopper for left-handed people whos
e condiments were designed to drip out the right side.
Taco Liberty Bell: In 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell." When asked about the sale, White House press secretary Mike McCurry replied with tongue-in-cheek that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would henceforth be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
Lies to Get You Out of the House In 1985, the L.A. Weekly printed an entire page of fake things to do on April Fools day, by which hundreds of people were fooled.
Kremvax: In 1984, in one of the earliest on-line hoaxes, a message was circulated that Usenet had been opened to users in the Soviet Union.
San Serriffe: The Guardian printed a supplement in 1977 praising this fictional resort, its two main islands (Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse), its capital (Bodoni), and its leader (General Pica). Intrigued readers were later disappointed to learn that San Serriffe (sans serif) did not exist except as references to typeface terminology. (This comes from a Jorge Luis Borges story).
FBI Crackdowns on On-line File Sharing of Music: Such announcements on April Fools Day have become common.
Metric time: Repeated several times in various countries, this hoax involves claiming that the time system will be changed to one in which units of time are based on powers of 10.
Smell-o-vision: In 1965, the BBC purported to conduct a trial of a new technology allowing the transmission of odor over the airwaves to all viewers. Many viewers reportedly contacted the BBC to report the trial's success. This hoax was also conducted by the Seven Network in Australia in 2005.
Tower of Pisa: The Dutch television news reported once in the 1950s that the Tower of Pisa had fallen. Many shocked people contacted the station [citation needed].
Wrapping Televisions in Foil: In another year, the Dutch television news reported that the government had new technology to detect unlicensed televisions (in many European countries, television license fees fund public broadcasting), but that wrapping a television in aluminium foil could prevent its detection.
Breast Exams by Satellite: In the 1990s, Portuguese national television network RTP announced the Ministry of Health would perform free breast exams by satellite, causing thousands of women to go out topless [citation needed].
Assassination of Bill Gates: Many Chinese and South Korean websites claimed that CNN reported Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, was assassinated [3].
Write Only Memory: Signetics advertised Write Only Memory IC databooks in 1972 through the late 1970s.
Wheel of Fortune/Jeopardy! Double Switch: In 1997, Pat Sajak, the host of Wheel of Fortune, traded hosting duties with Jeopardy!'s Alex Trebek for one show. In addition to Sajak hosting Jeopardy!, he and co-host Vanna White appeared as contestants on the episode of Wheel hosted by Trebek. White's position was filled by Sajak's wife Leslie [4].
Comic strip switcheroo: Cartoonists of popularly syndicated comic strips draw each others' strips. In some cases, the artist draws characters in the other strip's milieu, while in others, the artist draws in characters from other visiting characters from his own. Cartoonists have done this sort of "switcheroo" for several years. The 1997 switch was particularly widespread.
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