Over the years, some epic pranks have been played on the enduringly gullible public. Following are some of our favourites.
Top 10 April Fools' Day pranks
Death of John Partridge
In 1708, satirist Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver’s Travels) predicted the death of famous astrologer John Partridge. Writing in a fake almanac, using the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff, Swift said Partridge would die ‘of a raging fever’ on 29 March. Revealing his ruse on 1 April, Swift said he’d created the hoax to discredit Partridge’s predictions.
Winged humanoids on the Moon
In 1835, New York newspaper The Sun ran several stories claiming astronomer Sir John Herschel had observed life on the Moon, describing the creatures as winged humanoids, about 4ft tall, covered in copper-coloured hair. Herschel’s heritage (his father, Sir William Herschel, discovered Uranus) and references to real scientific journals convinced many readers.
Spaghetti harvest
In 1957, when foreign food was a novelty in Britain, the BBC ran a fake film narrated by Richard Dimbleby, featuring workers supposedly harvesting spaghetti from trees in Switzerland. Seen by a wide-eyed audience of 8 million, it prompted people to phone in and ask where they could get a spaghetti tree.
Volcano eruption
In 1974, a local logger named Oliver ‘Porky’ Bickar successfully convinced residents of the city of Sitka in Alaska that nearby Mount Edgecumbe was erupting by setting fire to 70 tyres, which he’d spent years collecting before chartering a helicopter to drop them into the crater of the dormant volcano.
Loss of gravity
In 1976, astronomer and The Sky at Night presenter, Patrick Moore, informed radio listeners that a rare planetary alignment of Pluto and Jupiter was about to weaken the Earth’s gravitational pull. At exactly 9:47am, Moore told his audience to ‘Jump now!’ Some called in to claim they’d floated (one even sought compensation for hitting his head on the ceiling).
Font islands
Although font fans might not have been fooled, in 1977 The Guardian published a travel guide to a fictitious island grouping called San Serriffe, comprised of two islands, Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse, which formed the shape of a semicolon.
Digital Dave
In 1980, the BBC World Service announced that the Westminster clocktower containing Big Ben would be going digital, would be renamed ‘Digital Dave’ and the iconic bongs would be replaced with beeps.
Left-handed burgers
In 1998, Burger King took out a full-page advert in USA Today saying they were releasing a ‘Left-Handed Whopper’, with all the condiments rotated 180 degrees to suit southpaw burger munchers. The following day, hundreds queued and requested the dish.
Redefining pi
In an issue of New Mexicans for Science and Reason in 1998, physicist Mark Boslough (writing under the pseudonym April Holiday) claimed the Alabama legislature was planning on redefining pi as 3.0 instead of 3.14, to keep it closer to the ’biblical value’. There was a large, very outraged response.
Churchill telegram
In 2023, the Royal Albert Hall announced on social media that they had discovered a telegram sent from Winston Churchill in 1940 enquiring as to whether they really did have one of Hitler’s testicles (as claimed in the famous wartime ditty) and seeking to use the object as a propaganda tool.
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