April Fools Pranks

The Museum of Hoaxes wrote a few years ago their Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes, and it's quite a treasure if you haven't read it yet. Some of my favorite are the 1976 hoax by British astronomer Patrick Moore announced that a special alignment with Pluto would temporarily reduce the earth's gravity and that if you were to jump at just the right moment, you would experience a strange floating sensation. Unsurprisingly, people reported that they did feel this sensation. Amazing the type of things you can convince people that they can perceive.

Or there's the 1933 report that the Wisconsin State Capitol building had collapsed due to a series of internal explosions; these explosions were caused by the voluminous amount of hot air being spewed by politicians.

Then there was the great comic strip switcheroonie of 1997, which I actually remember. I remember opening the comics and thinking, "These comics look different," until I finally figured out what was going on. All the major comic strip writers wrote each other's comics strips for that day. You can see examples of it here. I seriously wish they would do this every year, but Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott who orchestrated the switcheroonie found out it was way too much work to organize and so haven't tried it again.

When I was in college I remember two acquaintances pulling the most unusual prank I think I've heard of. These two guys went to a pet store and they bought about fifty small fish. Then they took these fish and put them in water in fifty small plastic cups in this girl's room. And just to add to it, they individually named each and every fish. The girls spent like the next week or so trying to find homes for all these fish. How does one even come up with such an off the wall prank like that?

Pogue at the New York Times has a summary of some of the pranks today.

The Museum of Hoaxes wrote a few years ago their Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes, and it's quite a treasure if you haven't read it yet. Some of my favorite are the 1976 hoax by British astronomer Patrick Moore announced that a special alignment with Pluto would temporarily reduce the earth's gravity and that if you were to jump at just the right moment, you would experience a strange floating sensation. Unsurprisingly, people reported that they did feel this sensation. Amazing the type of things you can convince people that they can perceive.

Or there's the 1933 report that the Wisconsin State Capitol building had collapsed due to a series of internal explosions; these explosions were caused by the voluminous amount of hot air being spewed by politicians.

Then there was the great comic strip switcheroonie of 1997, which I actually remember. I remember opening the comics and thinking, "These comics look different," until I finally figured out what was going on. All the major comic strip writers wrote each other's comics strips for that day. You can see examples of it here. I seriously wish they would do this every year, but Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott who orchestrated the switcheroonie found out it was way too much work to organize and so haven't tried it again.

When I was in college I remember two acquaintances pulling the most unusual prank I think I've heard of. These two guys went to a pet store and they bought about fifty small fish. Then they took these fish and put them in water in fifty small plastic cups in this girl's room. And just to add to it, they individually named each and every fish. The girls spent like the next week or so trying to find homes for all these fish. How does one even come up with such an off the wall prank like that?

Pogue at the New York Times has a summary of some of the pranks today.

April Fools Pranks