The Think Tank

Joel sent me an interesting link today regarding the origins of April Fool’s Day, which set me off on a little internet search for Tid Bits about the day to celebrate jokes and hoaxes.

The exact origins of April Fools Day is not completely clear, although the most commonly accepted idea is that the tradition started in the 1500’s when the Gregorian calender was adopted.  Prior to that, on the Julian Calendar, the New Year started on March 25 (which makes perfect sense to me since that is my birthday) but, since March 25 is in the middle of Holy Week the actual celebration of the new year was held on April 1st.

Celebrating the new year at roughly the same time as the Spring Equinox makes perfect sense: everything is starting anew after a long, hard winter.  The weather is warming, the trees and flowers are blooming, and the rabbits are… well, they are doing what rabbits do.  For those reasons and many others, the new Gregorian date was met with resistance by many people and as such they continued to celebrate the New Year on April 1st.  This seemed very foolish for those who did get (and accept) the memo, and those enlightened folks gave the foolish oldschooler’s the lasting moniker of April Fools.

Since that time traditions have evolved somewhat from pure admonishment to general bafoonery and joke making.  Many individuals have fallen prey to these endeavors over the years, but in my reading today I found out about several  large-scale jokes which have been pulled on an unsuspecting populace.

Here are some of my favorites:

• In 1957 the BBC released an April Fool’s Day newscast about the bumper crop from the Spaghetti Trees in  Switzerland, due in no small part to the eradication of the Spaghetti Weevil.  The broadcast caused an avalanche of correspondence requesting information on where Spaghetti Trees saplings could be purchased and how to maintain them.
• In 1998 the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter
  informed its readers that the Alabama state government had changed the mathematical constant pi.
• In 1996 Taco Bell took out a full page ad in the New York Times saying that they had purchased the Liberty Bell in a effort to reduce the nations debt.  They also announced they were renaming it the “Taco Liberty Bell.”  When asked about the add later that day, Whitehouse Press Secretary McCurry said it was true and that in addition the government had sold the Lincoln Memorial, and that it would henceforth be known as the “Lincoln Mercury Memorial”.
• In 1965 the BBC struck again, telling its viewers that they were conducting tests of Smell-O-Vision.  Many people reportedly called in to say that it was working.
• Google has proven itself to be a regular with broadband April Fools jokes including Gmail Paper and renaming themselves to “Topeka”, which they did today.But my personal favorite was in 2007 when they introduced their TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider) option.  They described TiSP as  “self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a Wi-Fi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.” To use the service, all you had to do was flush a fiber-optic cable down the john and connect the other end to a specially provided router.
• In 1962 a technical expert for the only broadcast television channel in Sweden assured everyone in the country that they could convert the black and white broadcast to full color by pulling a nylon sock over the television set.
• In 1977 the British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic said to consist of several semi-colon-shaped islands located in the Indian Ocean. 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.
• National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation program announced that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again in 1992. His new campaign slogan was, “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.”
• In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a “Left-Handed Whopper” specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original , but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers.
• In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio that at 9:47 AM the planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth’s own gravity.  Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBCbegan to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation.

Are these facts true?  Or are they my own April Fool’s trick?  I guess you’ll just have to make up your own minds…

Or you could always Topeka them