Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time. Cont'd.
#5: San Serriffe
In 1977 the British newspaper The Guardian published a special
seven-page supplement in honor of the tenth anniversary of San Serriffe, a
small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several
semi-colon-shaped islands. 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. Few noticed that everything about
the island was named after printer's terminology. The success of this hoax is
widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that then
gripped the British tabloids in the following decades.
#6: Nixon for President
In 1992 National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program announced
that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again. His
new campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it
again." Accompanying this announcement were audio clips of Nixon delivering
his candidacy speech. Listeners responded viscerally to the announcement,
flooding the show with calls expressing shock and outrage. Only during the
second half of the show did the host John Hockenberry reveal that the
announcement was a joke. Nixon's voice was impersonated by comedian Rich
Little.
#7: Alabama Changes the Value of Pi
The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason
newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature
had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to
the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Before long the article had made its way onto the
internet, and then it rapidly made its way around the world, forwarded by
people in their email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread
when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people
protesting the legislation. The original article, which was intended as a
parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was
written by a physicist named Mark Boslough.
#8: The Left-Handed Whopper
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 Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the
condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed
customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing
that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had
gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according
to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed'
version."
#9: Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers
In its April 1985 issue Discover Magazine announced that the highly
respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had discovered a new species in
Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had
bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become
burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They
used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and
causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads
consumed them. After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads
might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted
Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have
looked like a penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover
received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any
other article in their history.
The article continues on the following pages.