10 of the Best April Fools Pranks EVER!

Other than the earliest mention of April Fools dates to the 16^th Century, we know very little about the origins of April’s Fools. What we do know is that on April 1st every year, there have been some amazing pranks played on unsuspecting people …

1940 – The world will end tomorrow

Some April Fools’ pranks are so elaborate, you wonder how people fell for them. But this prank in New York in 1940 is perhaps the most elaborate on the list and one that gets repeated from time to time with declarations that the end is nigh. A radio station in Philadelphia declared that at 3 pm, the world would end. The people of Philadelphia list their minds. The hoax didn’t go down well…

1952 – The Atomic Blue Print Scare

Unsure as to whether this was intended to be a hoax or not, two boys handed in a blueprint into a local police station. Full of odd symbols and drawings, the ‘atomic blueprint’ heading to the plan made everyone think atomic secrets had been leaked. The news was announced in Parliament that atomic secrets had been leaked. But when the Atomic Agency took a look, they confirmed the hoax. The odd symbols were from the Norwegian language and the blueprint was from the plans for a sausage machine…

1955 – Contra-Polar Energy

Another elaborate hoax in which the general public was told that this technology was being declassified from the war. It used negative energy therefore, you would be able to buy a lamp that emitted darkness and not light. It was never announced this was a hoax but ran and ran in a popular electronic magazine of the time.

1957 – The Spaghetti Harvest

BBC’s Panorama, the highly respected current affairs programme, aired The Spaghetti Harvest April Fool’s prank back in 1957. With such a brilliant film and Richard Dimbleby presenting, there was no reason to question whether spaghetti grew on trees or not.

1974 – Lighting up a volcano

Mount Edgecumbe, a dormant volcano in Alaska, was given a new lease of life in an April’s Fools prank in 1974 when a local resident dropped tyres soaked in an accelerant around the rim of the volcano. Setting them alight in the early morning, residents work to a burning mountain and assumed the volcano had sprung to life. Fortunately, everyone saw the funny side…

1976 – Gravity is decreasing

Respected astronomer Sir Patrick Moore gave an interview on Radio 2 in which he told the listening public that due to a strange phenomenon caused by a certain alignment in the planets, that the gravity of earth would decrease, for a short time at least. At 9.47am, he said, Pluto hiding behind Jupiter would lighten our gravity and declared we should “jump now”. We did. Nothing happened.

1979 – Operation Parallax

This hoax declared that the British Government were going to cancel April 5^th and April 12^th in an effort to realign the British calendar with the rest of the world. Due to a variety of phenomenon, they said, over the millennia, UK time was rushing ahead of the rest of the globe by 48 hours and to bring it into line, had to cancel two days from the calendar. Hosted by a London radio, they received hundreds of calls. One business owner called in to ask if she had to pay her employee on those days…

1980 – Big Ben Goes Digital

The BBC World Service announced that Big Ben would be going digital with the four clock faces replaced by digital clock faces instead. The response was huge with the vast majority of callers angry at the proposed changes. As a hoax it was genius, but the response was not.

1984 – The Origins of April Fools’ Hoax

A reporter from the Boston Globe was tasked with writing on the origins of April Fools and called a Boston University history professor to clarify the details. Knowing nothing of the subject, the professor made it all up. A court jester, he said, during Roman Empire times had been allowed to rule the kingdom for the day (1^st April) and allowed only ‘the absurd’ into the city on that day. Admitting he made it up, the professor allowed the story to continue for some time.

2008 – BBCs Flying Penguins

Fronted by Monty Pythons’ Terry Jones, we should have known that this was yet another elaborate hoax from the team at the BBC. It made for a fantastic April’s Fools joke with the short trailer for The Flying Penguins being a firm favourite.