During an uneasy and unprecedented time like the present, it helps to laugh at more lighthearted things in the world. April Fools is a holiday to do just that; a day committed to playful pranks each year.
To spread positivity in this time lacking just that, let’s take a look at a few funny April Fools’ jokes over the years.
Fusili Farming
On April Fools’ Day in 1957, the television program Panorama attempted to convince its viewers that spaghetti was a harvest crop in Switzerland. A mockingly professional video segment about spaghetti’s successful harvest that year aired on the show.
The British news show even fabricated funny yet fake details to support their prank. For example, a pest to the spaghetti tree called the “spaghetti weavel” had supposedly been at an all time low for that year’s harvest. Further, the program attributed seemingly artificially uniform spaghetti length to skillful harvesting.
Watch the original Panorama Spaghetti Harvest video below.
Getting Away from Gravity
On April 1st, 1976, Patrick Moore took advantage of his status as a well-known physicist by going on BBC Radio 2 to detail what he named the “Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect.”
Moore claimed that at 9:47 am, the planets would align, essentially decreasing the effect of gravity. Anyone with an understanding of Earth’s gravitational pole could poke holes in this claim immediately, but this didn’t stop some from feeling the effects.
BBC reportedly received many calls from listeners detailing the feeling of zero gravity at 9:47 that morning.
The Father, The Son, and the Holy Number
On April 1st, 1998, physicist Mark Boslough wrote an article under the pseudonym “April Holiday” suggesting that Alabama state legislators were changing the mathematical constant pi from its long decimal value to a simple 3.
The reason behind this, Boslough wrote in the article, was to reflect the biblical number 3. And in a state riddled by the debate over evolution and creationism in education, people were upset at this nonsensical change.
Alabama lawmakers received plenty of complaints from angry citizens before the change in pi was revealed to be an April Fools’ joke.
A Brand New Big Ben
On April Fools’ Day in 1980, BBC Overseas Service announced on their program that Big Ben would be getting a makeover. Specifically, its iconic clock face would be replaced with a modernized digital clock face.
Even further, BBC contended that the first to call would win the hands of the clock. Many people fell for this prank, and even more called BBC angry and upset about the possibility of Big Ben losing its iconic clock.
Understandably, many April Fools’ jokes were understandably forgone this year due to the climate of uneasiness that the Coronavirus pandemic has already caused. Google notably postponed its annual April Fools’ joke until next April.
According to Digital Spy, the Google head of marketing, Lorraine Twohill explained why.
“Our highest goal right now is to be helpful to people, so let’s save the jokes for next April, which will undoubtedly be a whole lot brighter than this one.”
And although it is important to take our global situation seriously by refraining from April Fools’ activities like Google did, it is also important to make light of some of the situations we are in. Click here to read about a funny consequence of our current situation of transitioning business meetings online.
