Today, the highlight of springtime will finally arrive. That’s right; it’s April Fool’s Day! (Oh, yeah, it’s also Easter). Here are the top 5 legendary April Fools pranks to get you ready for the holiday hijinks.
1. Pasta grows on trees
The advent of the television helped spread the April Fool’s fraud. On April 1, 1957, the BBC TV show “Panorama” ran a segment about the year’s bumper crop Swiss spaghetti harvest, inspiring many listeners to inquire about purchasing their own trees. If you heard it on television, it has to be true, right?
2. Do-it-yourself color TV
In 1962, the Swedish national network tried a similar tactic; they put on a technical expert taught the audience that the black and white broadcasts could be made color simply by stretching a pair of nylon stockings over the screen. Reportedly, it would bend light’s wavelengths and produce a color image. Many pairs of stockings were lost to this hoax on that day.
3. The Taco Liberty Bell
It’s a well-loved classic: the Taco Liberty Bell prank of 1996. Taco Bell took out newspaper ads saying it had bought the Liberty Bell “in an effort to help the national debt.” Things got a bit out of hand, resulting in the National Park Service holding a press conference to deny the news. A few hours after the paper came out, Taco Bell admitted the joke and donated $50,000 for the bell’s care.
4. Left-handed toilet paper
In 2015, Cottonelle took a step towards left-handed acceptance and tweeted that it was finally introducing left-handed toilet paper. The ad even featured a quote from the supposedly respected- and fictional- founder of the “Lefties for the Ethical Treatment of Lefties” organization.
5. The YouTube Collection
In 2012, YouTube made the monumental announcement that it was putting every video ever uploaded onto DVDs. Logically, it would take a few disks to hold them all- delivered in 175 trucks- so pack mule delivery was offered for customers in rural areas. To make a comment, all the customer would have to do is complete a simple paper form and mail it to the video creator directly.
