There’s No Fool Like An April Fools’ Day Gone Wrong! | Seasons, Stories & Sundays
There are many theories as to the origins of April Fools’ Day, a day on the first of April for pranks and hoaxes. Some historians believe the day originated in 1582 when France switched over to the Gregorian calendar, which changed New Year’s Day from April 1 to January 1. Back then the news took a little longer to reach everyone, and those who were a bit slow on the uptake (celebrating New Year’s Day on April 1), became the butt of pranks, including having paper fish glued to their backs—because fish are easy to catch. To this day, people still refer to those who are easily fooled as “fish.”
Not everyone observes the holiday on April 1, but countries from France and Brazil to Iran and India dedicate at least one calendar day to jokes and pranks.
For more than 59 years my wife, Marty, and I have spent the April day in trepidation, constantly wondering what the other one is going to try and pull off or already had. In fact, the best trick of all we’ve both discovered lately is to do nothing “foolish” so each of us lives the day suspicious of everything!
As a hopeful defense, this year I looked up some of the most outstanding April Fool’s jokes ever pulled starting with the British Broadcasting Company’s 1957 “spaghetti harvest” hoax. The prank successfully convinced a large segment of the British public that spaghetti grew on trees by showing footage of farmers’ wives picking spaghetti from trees. Since spaghetti was relatively unfamiliar in the UK at the time, many viewers believed it and called the BBC for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees.
Other well-known pranks include Taco Bell announcing in 1996 in newspaper ads that it had purchased the Liberty Bell and Burger King advertising in 1998 a Whopper for left-handed customers with rotated condiments. Numerous April Fools’ jokes have backfired, leading to lawsuits, firings, public apologies, and even police involvement. These incidents often cross the line from lighthearted fun into causing genuine panic, financial loss, or emotional distress.
In 2001, a DJ in England decided to prank his listeners on April 1 by broadcasting that a ship that looked suspiciously like the Titanic could be seen from the cliffs at Beachy Head in East Sussex. Hundreds of listeners believed him, trekking to the cliffs to catch a glimpse. Unfortunately, all the foot traffic caused a large crack in the cliff face, and a few days later it fell into the sea.
A couple of Kansas City DJs announced in 2002 that the local water supply had been found to contain high levels of “dihydrogen monoxide,” whose side effects included sweating, urination, and skin-pruning.
Hundreds of citizens flooded the water department and the police with distressed phone calls. Actually, dihydrogen monoxide is H2O, the chemical name for water. The DJs were widely criticized, and one government official even accused them of “terrorism.” In 2013, two Florida DJs pulled the same prank. The resulting clamor got the DJs yanked off the air and nearly saddled with felony charges.
In 2003, a clothing-store employee in Columbus, Ohio, decided to call her boss and tell him that someone was robbing the store at gunpoint. Before she had time to call him back and confess to the prank, her boss had called the police. Four patrol cars rolled up to the store. The employee was arrested for inducing panic.
In 2010, a newspaper in Jordan ran an article claiming a UFO had landed near the town of Jafr. It’s no wonder this was a prank gone wrong, as the mayor responded by issuing an order to evacuate 13,000 people. Facing a potential lawsuit, the newspaper staff apologized publicly, saying they “meant to entertain, not scare people.”
In 1980, a Boston TV news producer aired a television broadcast about a hill in Milton, Massachusetts, that had begun oozing lava and spewing flames. He included fake warnings from then-president Jimmy Carter and real footage from Mount St. Helens eruptions that implied the Massachusetts volcano had fully erupted. “April Fool” read the card at the end of the segment, but hundreds of panicked citizens flooded law-enforcement phone lines anyway. The news producer was promptly fired for failing to exercise “good news judgment” and breaching FCC regulations.
In 2001, a Hooters restaurant in Panama City, Florida, held a contest promising a “new Toyota” to the waitress who sold the most beer. The winner was presented with a “toy Yoda” (a Star Wars doll) as an April Fools’ joke. She quit and sued the company for fraudulent misrepresentation, eventually settling for enough money to buy an actual Toyota.
In a more personal incident around 1900, a man placed a live mouse inside his fiancée’s breakfast eggshell. When she cracked the egg, the mouse scurried out, causing her such severe shock that she fainted and suffered multiple nervous fits, requiring a doctor’s attention.
The moral of these stories is to prank wisely, stick to people who can take a joke, and always think twice before pulling a stunt!
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