Be alert, don't get fooled
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By Times staff | Wednesday, March 26, 2008 |
VIDEO: Quadrants: April Fools'
Corn growing in highway medians? That doesn't sound so strange.…
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Tuesday is April Fools’ Day. Consider this your warning. Be wary of what you hear and spend the day looking for hidden objects, such as buckets of water resting on half-open closet doors.
The Museum of Hoaxes — museumofhoaxes.com on the Web — lists the “Top 100 April Fools’ Day Hoaxes of All Time.” For your entertainment, we bring you the top five:
No. 1: The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest
In 1957, the respected British Broadcasting Corporation news show “Panorama” announced that, thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti from trees.
No. 2: Sidd Finch
In an April 1985 edition, Sports Illustrated published a story about a rookie baseball pitcher who planned to play for the New York Mets. His name was Sidd Finch and he could reportedly throw a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy. This was 65 mph faster than the previous record. Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the “art of the pitch” in a Tibetan monastery. Mets fans celebrated their teams’ amazing luck at having found such a gifted player, who did not exist except in the mind of noted writer George Plimpton.
No. 3: Instant Color TV
In 1962, there was only one TV channel in Sweden and it broadcast in black and white. The station’s technical expert, Kjell Stensson, appeared on the news to announce that, thanks to a new technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their TV screen.
No. 4: The Taco Liberty Bell
In 1996, the Taco Bell Corp. announced in a full-page ad in USA Today 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 is housed, to express their anger.
No. 5: San Serriffe
In 1977, the British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean and consisting of several semicolon-shaped islands. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian’s phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot featuring names and terms common mostly to those in the newspaper business
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