April 1 marks the day when pranksters come out of the woodwork for an annual joke fest. Young and old join in the fun, coming up with pranks to fool or embarrass their friends, family, and colleagues. Some Aprils Fools’ jokes have become a bit stale; others miss the mark. Some have even been known to land the pranksters in hot water.

However, even prominent and media organizations enjoy a good April Fools’ joke. Wealthy businessmen have also partaken in a little hilarity and reaped the publicity that followed. Probably because of the high standing of the pranksters, many people fell for their jokes. Some of them were so silly, though, that it is hard to understand how anyone believed them.

10 Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

Does spaghetti really grow on trees? A BBC “documentary” in 1957 actually managed to fool some viewers into believing it actually did in an April Fools’ Day spoof. The respected UK broadcaster aired footage of a Swiss family harvesting their “spaghetti crop” from trees during a segment in a popular documentary series. The video showed the women carefully plucking strands of spaghetti from the “spaghetti trees” and then carefully laying them in the sun to dry. From here, they would be carefully packaged and sent out to supermarkets around the world.

The commentator then went on to explain the years of research and cultivation which had gone into ensuring that each strand of spaghetti grew to exactly the same length. Frost was apparently a major threat to European spaghetti farmers, as it could “impair” the spaghetti’s flavor.

The current affairs segment received mixed reactions. More serious viewers were annoyed at an obvious prank airing on a respected show. Others, however, were taken in by the joke, wanting to know where they could purchase their own spaghetti plant.^[1]

9 The Aliens Have Landed

Virgin Group boss Richard Branson initially fooled even the police, who were called to investigate his 1989 April Fools’ prank.

The billionaire prankster collaborated with a hot-air balloon manufacturer to construct a balloon resembling a UFO. Early-morning London highway traffic stopped to witness the “UFO” flying overhead with lights flashing every ten seconds. Emergency services, the army, and national media were alerted to an impending alien invasion.

Landing in a Surrey field, the occupants alighted wearing elaborate space costumes. This reportedly frightened a policeman into a hasty retreat before he realized that he (and many others) had been the unwitting victims of an elaborate April Fools’ Day prank.^[2]

8 Floating An Iceberg From Antarctica

An Australian entrepreneur staged an elaborate April Fools’ prank in 1978 which initially sent the local media into a frenzy. Early-morning commuters were astounded to see a massive iceberg floating across Sydney Harbor. Crowds gathered to watch the spectacle, both on and off the water, while radio listeners tuned in to hear the drama unfold.

Young electronics entrepreneur Dick Smith had been briefing media in the lead-up to his stunt, ostensibly a scheme to aid drought-stricken farmers by floating an iceberg from Antarctica. Using fire-retardant foam and shaving cream sprayed over a white sheet, Smith floated the drought-saving “iceberg” through Sydney Harbor to much fanfare on April Fools’ Day.

The hoax was revealed when rain “melted” the iceberg.^[3]

7 A Colorful TV Hoax

Color television was a long way off for Swedes in 1962. In fact, at the time, Sweden had only one black-and-white television station. However, on April Fools’ Day, a “technician” from the local TV station had viewers rushing for the lingerie drawer in a bid to watch their favorite programs in living color.

The broadcaster showed how simply placing a pair of ladies’ stockings over the TV screen would unlock the technology to magically turn the black-and-white TV sets into color. Once the pantyhose were in place, you needed only to move your head from side to side to make the color appear.

His use of elaborate technical jargon obviously fooled many, who were reportedly taken in by the simple yet funny April Fools’ hoax. It would be eight years before Sweden could actually enjoy real color TV technology.^[4]

6 San Seriffe Islands

We are always on the lookout for new vacation destinations. So in 1977, when the UK’s Guardian newspaper ran a story on the islands of San Seriffe, their phones rang hot with readers wanting to know more about this exotic travel destination.

A seven-page supplement detailed the islands in the Indian Ocean. Maps showed the two islands of “Upper Caisse” and “Lower Caisse.” The article described the capital city “Bodoni,” home of the leader “General Pica.” Of course, anyone with any printing knowledge should have smelled a rat, as every single name in the elaborate hoax was a printing term. The islands were also shaped like a semicolon.^[5]

5 ‘Nessie’ Found Dead

In 1972, newspapers around the world reported that the dead body of the Loch Ness Monster had been found. A team of scientists from a Yorkshire zoo had been on a research expedition when they came across the tragic find. However, it turned out to be an elaborate prank pulled by one of their colleagues, which gained a lot more attention than he had initially planned.

A large bull elephant seal had died at the zoo some weeks earlier. The zookeeper had seen the opportunity for a prank, shaving the seal’s whiskers and padding its mouth to make it look more “Nessie-like.”

The animal was then frozen and smuggled up to Loch Ness, to be thrown into the loch for his colleagues to find. The prank gained more attention than the joker intended when police chased down the English team’s truck so that they could retrieve Nessie’s body.^[6]

4 Left-Handed Whopper

There are many items which left-handers struggle to use on a daily basis—scissors, can openers, and fountain pens, to name a few. But hamburgers? A well-known US fast food chain managed to dupe many burger-lovers in 1998 with their new “Left-Handed Whopper,” which would be much easier for left-handed patrons to eat.

Burger King placed a full-page newspaper add, showing how while the main ingredients of their popular burger remained the same, the condiments were placed on the other side of the burger to make it easier to eat left-handed. The joke seems so silly that it’s surprising how many patrons actually went into the restaurants asking for the new left-handed burger.^[7]

3 Flying Penguins

In 2008, the BBC once again pranked their viewers with video footage showing a new evolution of penguins. Supposedly filmed on King George’s Island, the Adelie penguins were shown flying.

Presenters explained that the bitterly cold Antarctic conditions had caused the penguins to evolve. Rather than hibernating, they were now able to fly north to more tropical climates to enjoy winter in the sun.

A video clip of the “flying penguins” fooled many Internet viewers, who failed to discern the special effects used in the video. The British tabloid press seized upon the flying penguin story before the April Fools’ prank was revealed.^[8]

2 Smellovision

Another great April Fools’ joke which drew on the public’s general lack of understanding of television technology is “Smellovision.”

In 1965, the BBC interviewed a university professor who had reportedly made a breakthrough in TV technology which would provide viewers with a more interactive experience: By simply placing coffee beans and onions in his machine, the chemical reaction with the electronics would enable viewers to smell the aromas on their televisions at home.

This prank was incredibly far-fetched. Nevertheless, many viewers called the station to report that they had successfully smelled the scents on their TV sets.

1 Bringing Back The Woolly Mammoth

Readers of the MIT Technology Review in 1984 were sucked in by reports that scientists had brought a prehistoric animal back from extinction.

In “Retrobreeding the Woolly Mammoth,” the publication outlined Soviet scientists working with frozen mammoth DNA and elephant cells. The experiment was able to yield live mammoths, which gestated in elephant surrogate mothers.^[10]

Several news organizations failed to identify the joke, going into great detail on the research facilities, future research plans, and the history of the prehistoric creatures.

A mammoth fact-checking error.

Lesley Connor is a retired Australian newspaper editor who now provides travel articles for online publications and her own blog.

Another April Fools’ Day has come and gone. Like every other year, we saw people and corporations come up with elaborate April Fools’ pranks. Some were so well-thought out that many actually fell for them.

Some of these successful ruses were even unveiled before April Fools’ Day to make them look more truthful. Other pranks weren’t so good and reeked of April foolery from afar. Here are ten interesting April Fools’ Day pranks we saw this year.

10 Tinder Height Verification

April Fools’ Day jokes issued before April 1 are often more difficult to detect, so it’s little wonder that so many people fell for Tinder’s height verification hoax.

On March 29, Tinder published a blog post in which it informed users about its plan to introduce a Height Verification Badge (HVB) to end what it called “height fishing.” It said male users often claimed they were taller than they really were. The HVB would stop that.

Tinder said male users would input their height into the app and take a picture of themselves standing beside a commercial building. Then Tinder would use some undisclosed method to verify their real height. Users get the height verification badge if they are telling the truth.

Tinder said the update was targeted at people shorter than 183 centimeters (6′), since they were the most likely to overreport their height. It added that only 14.5 percent of American men are over 183 centimeters, so it expected an 80-percent reduction in the number of users claiming to be over 183 centimeters.^[1]

Several male users condemned the badge. One man even requested for a weight verification badge to identify women who used old pictures and lied about their weights. Another man tweeted that the badge was an attack on men and unacceptable. This continued until April Fools’ Day, when Tinder revealed the whole thing was a prank.

It is surprising that a lot of users fell for the prank, even though the blog post ended with, “Tinder’s HVB is coming soon to a phone near you.” This was probably because the post was published three days before April Fools’ Day. Tinder also went all out for the prank and even created a video tutorial explaining how the new height verification tool worked.

9 Roku Pet Remote

Roku also pulled an elaborate April Fools’ Day prank. Like Tinder, it also published a blog post three days before April 1.

On March 29, Roku introduced a new product it called the Roku Press Paws Remote for dogs. Roku said it created the product after a study revealed that users sometimes left their televisions on to entertain their dogs while they were away.

However, the dogs often got bored with watching whatever their owners forced them to watch. They could not switch channels because they cannot use the human remote. So Roku came up with a special dog remote with paw-shaped buttons. It has shortcut buttons that switch to preprogrammed channels like Animal Planet.

Roku also claimed the remote has a Bark Assistant Technology that allows dogs to pause, play, or mute the television. A third feature was a built-in Sub-WOOFer that produces high-frequency sounds for the dog. Roku mentioned the remote would go on sale on April 1, 2019, for “$€£19.99.”^[2]

8 Google Tulip Allows People Talk To Their Plants

On April Fools’ Day, Google revealed it would be adding a program it calls Google Tulip to Google Assistant. The new program would allow users talk to their plants, especially tulips, through the Google Assistant. The program also allows humans to understand whatever their tulips are saying. Google said Google Tulip was jointly developed by its engineers and a team from Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands.

Google claimed to have created the program after observing that tulips listened to human conversations and talked to other tulips and even humans. Google said the tulip plants often asked humans for sunlight and water. However, humans do not hear because we do not understand the tulips’ language, which Google calls Tulipish.^[3]

7 LEGO Find My Brick App

The LEGO Group is one company that has been creating April Fools’ pranks people wish were real. Last year, we mentioned that they claimed to have created the VacuSort, a vacuum cleaner that picks up LEGO bricks scattered on the floor. Many people fell for the prank but later asked LEGO to really create the vacuum when they realized it was a hoax.

This year, LEGO said it had created a Find My Brick app that allows users to find LEGO bricks by color. Users must open the app, click on any color of brick they want to find, and aim their phone’s camera at a pile of LEGO bricks. The app highlights every brick of the selected color in the pile.

People fell for the app, just as they did with VacuSort. Yet again, they asked the LEGO Group to create the app for real when it was revealed to be a hoax. An augmented reality (AR) engineer even offered to help build the app.^[4]

6 Google Maps Snake Game

Google added a Snake game to Google Maps for April Fools’ Day this year. Interestingly, it can actually be played. The game is available on the Google Maps app or on a standalone website Google set up for that purpose.

Players are required to navigate a snake through popular cities like London, Sydney, and Tokyo, without running outside the map. They can also pick up passengers to earn more points. The game has been available since the end of March, and Google says it will be available for a week.^[5]

5 Ant Financial’s Fraud-Busting Phone

Ant Financial is an affiliate of the Chinese Alibaba Group. It handles payments for the group and used to be called Alipay. It joined the April Fools’ Day fad this year when it announced the launching of the “Fraud-Busting intelli-Phone” (FBi-Phone). The initialism is clearly a pun on the FBI.

Ant Financial said the FBi-Phone allows users to identify scammers and counterfeit products. It claimed the phone could detect counterfeit products, including cooking oil, wine, and Swiss watches, using its infrared and smell sensors.

It also claimed that the phone could identify human and robot scammers using artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, cognitive computing, pattern recognition, and several other unnamed technologies. If the caller is a robot, a female Ant Financial robot will engage the offending robot in conversation while calling the police.

To remove doubts that the announcement was an April Fools’ Day prank, Ant Financial mentioned that it had created a real product while other companies were coming up with elaborate pranks for April Fools’ Day. However, it subtly indicated that it was a joke when it mentioned that the phone would be available for sale “someday.”^[6]

4 Google’s Screen Cleaner Update

Google had lots of April Fools’ Day pranks lined up for us this year. On April 1, it announced its plan to release an update called Screen Cleaner to its file manager app, Files by Google. The Screen Cleaner would allow users clean the physical screen of their phone with just the click of a button.

Google claimed the Screen Cleaner works by creating “haptic micromovement pulses” to displace grease, smudges, and dirt on phone screens. Thereafter, the app creates a magnetic field around the phone to prevent dust from gathering on its surface. It also has a pleasurable smell.^[7]

3 Adobe Smell Allows Users To Smell Your Logo

Adobe joined the April Fools’ Day bandwagon this year when it revealed that users of Adobe Capture could use the app to capture scents that could be added to logos. Just imagine smelling McDonald’s fries when you see the McDonald’s logo on your phone.

In a blog post published on April 1, Adobe claimed it had uploaded thousands of scents on the Adobe Capture app, using its Adobe Scent-sei technology. Users could mix these scents to create a unique smell for their logo.

Users willing to create a new scent are required to open the Adobe Capture app and click on Smells. Then they take a picture of the product containing the scent. They adjust a slider to control the intensity of the smell and click on the capture button when they were satisfied.

The app creates the smell by finding or mixing, if necessary, the scents preloaded by Adobe. Users can preview the scent by smelling their phone’s charging port. Adobe added that the scent could then be used in apps that supported scents.^[8]

2 T-Mobile BoothE

On April 1, T-Mobile published a blog post to introduce the T-Mobile BoothE, a soundproof phone booth exclusive to T-Mobile users. The phone booth allows users make calls in private and in total quiet. It also has charging facilities complete with charging cords for people wanting to juice up their batteries.

T-Mobile added that the booths also have a trademarked screen that can be connected to the phone. The screen can be used for browsing or video calling. It also has pictures of different locations that can be used as backgrounds for selfies.

The prank was promoted by John Legere, the CEO of T-Mobile US, who tweeted that T-Mobile will be rolling out sample booths soon. He added that AT&T and Verizon customers could try the sample booths even though it was supposed to be exclusive to T-Mobile users.

Many people fell for the elaborate prank. It was so successful that T-Mobile later mentioned it would also release the Mobile EditionE, a mobile portable version that could be worn over the head.^[9]

1 OnePlus Electric Car

OnePlus is a Chinese phone maker trying to break into the US phone market. So it’s no surprise that they joined the April Fools’ Day fun.

On March 29, OnePlus announced it was working on an electric car it called the Warp Car. It said the automobile could travel all day with just 20 minutes of charging. It was also 3-D printed, and users could print the whole car or just make parts with their 3-D printer.

OnePlus added that the car lacks any internal or external lights. Instead, users will switch on their phone’s flashlight and put it inside the phone holder, where several tunnels and mirrors will reflect the light inside and outside the vehicle.

OnePlus added that the steering can be replaced with a smartphone, and users will only need to swipe to control their car. The steering wheel also has a button that allows the driver to take selfies on the move.

OnePlus did not release full pictures of the car, just black, silhouette-like images that only showed its supposed curves. Some readers realized it was a prank after OnePlus recommended that the car only be used by people between 168 centimeters (5’6″) and 173 centimeters (5’8″) tall. It said the limitation was caused by the “positioning of the pedals.”^[10]

April Fool’s day is the one day of the year that serious minded people can go crazy without criticism. Over the years there have been many great hoaxes that have occurred on or around this day of the year. The Museum of Hoaxes put together a list of 100, this is the top 15.

15 The Case of the Interfering Brassieres

In 1982 the Daily Mail reported that a local manufacturer had sold 10,000 “rogue bras” that were causing a unique and unprecedented problem, not to the wearers but to the public at large. Apparently the support wire in these bras had been made out of a kind of copper originally designed for use in fire alarms. When this copper came into contact with nylon and body heat, it produced static electricity which, in turn, was interfering with local television and radio broadcasts. The chief engineer of British Telecom, upon reading the article, immediately ordered that all his female laboratory employees disclose what type of bra they were wearing.

14 The Eruption of Mount Edgecumbe

In 1974 residents of Sitka, Alaska were alarmed when the long-dormant volcano neighboring them, Mount Edgecumbe, suddenly began to belch out billows of black smoke. People spilled out of their homes onto the streets to gaze up at the volcano, terrified that it was active again and might soon erupt. Luckily it turned out that man, not nature, was responsible for the smoke. A local practical joker named Porky Bickar had flown hundreds of old tires into the volcano’s crater and then lit them on fire, all in a (successful) attempt to fool the city dwellers into believing that the volcano was stirring to life. According to local legend, when Mount St. Helens erupted six years later, a Sitka resident wrote to Bickar to tell him, “This time you’ve gone too far!”

13 The Predictions of Isaac Bickerstaff

In February 1708 a previously unknown London astrologer named Isaac Bickerstaff published an almanac in which he predicted the death by fever of the famous rival astrologer John Partridge. According to Bickerstaff, Partridge would die on March 29 of that year. Partridge indignantly denied the prediction, but on March 30 Bickerstaff released a pamphlet announcing that he had been correct: Partridge was dead. It took a day for the news to settle in, but soon everyone had heard of the astrologer’s demise. On April 1, April Fool’s Day, Partridge was woken by a sexton outside his window who wanted to know if there were any orders for his funeral sermon. Then, as Partridge walked down the street, people stared at him as if they were looking at a ghost or stopped to tell him that he looked exactly like someone they knew who was dead. As hard as he tried, Partridge couldn’t convince people that he wasn’t dead. Bickerstaff, it turned out, was a pseudonym for the great satirist Jonathan Swift. His prognosticatory practical joke upon Partridge worked so well that the astrologer finally was forced to stop publishing his almanacs, because he couldn’t shake his reputation as the man whose death had been foretold.

12 Kremvax

In 1984, back in the Stone Age of the internet, a message was distributed to the members of Usenet (the online messaging community that was one of the first forms the internet took) announcing that the Soviet Union was joining Usenet. This was quite a shock to many, since most assumed that cold war security concerns would have prevented such a link-up. The message purported to come from Konstantin Chernenko (from the address [email protected]) who explained that the Soviet Union wanted to join the network in order to “have a means of having an open discussion forum with the American and European people.” The message created a flood of responses. Two weeks later its true author, a European man named Piet Beertema, revealed that it was a hoax. This is believed to be the first hoax on the internet. Six years later, when Moscow really did link up to the internet, it adopted the domain name ‘kremvax’ in honor of the hoax.

11 UFO Lands in London

On March 31, 1989 thousands of motorists driving on the highway outside London looked up in the air to see a glowing flying saucer descending on their city. Many of them pulled to the side of the road to watch the bizarre craft float through the air. The saucer finally landed in a field on the outskirts of London where local residents immediately called the police to warn them of an alien invasion. Soon the police arrived on the scene, and one brave officer approached the craft with his truncheon extended before him. When a door in the craft popped open, and a small, silver-suited figure emerged, the policeman ran in the opposite direction. The saucer turned out to be a hot-air balloon that had been specially built to look like a UFO by Richard Branson, the 36-year-old chairman of Virgin Records. The stunt combined his passion for ballooning with his love of pranks. His plan was to land the craft in London’s Hyde Park on April 1. Unfortunately, the wind blew him off course, and he was forced to land a day early in the wrong location.

10 Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity

In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. 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, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

9 Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers

In its April 1995 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.

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.”

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.

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 practical joke. Nixon’s voice was impersonated by comedian Rich Little.

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.

4 The Taco Liberty Bell

In 1996 the Taco Bell Corporation announced that it had bought the Liberty Bell from the federal government and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called up the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell is housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed that it was all a practical joke a few hours later. The best line inspired by the affair came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale, and he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold, though to a different corporation, and would now be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

3 Instant Color TV

In 1962 there was only one tv channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white. The station’s technical expert, Kjell Stensson, appeared on the news to announce that thanks to a newly developed technology, all viewers could now quickly and easily convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen, and they would begin to see their favorite shows in color. Stensson then proceeded to demonstrate the process. Reportedly, hundreds of thousands of people, out of the population of seven million, were taken in. Actual color tv transmission only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970.

2 Sidd Finch

In its April 1985 edition, Sports Illustrated published a story about a new rookie pitcher who planned to play for the Mets. His name was Sidd Finch and he could reportedly throw a baseball with startling, pinpoint accuracy at 168 mph (65 mph faster than anyone else has ever been able to throw a ball). Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the “art of the pitch” in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the “great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa.” Mets fans everywhere celebrated at their teams’s amazing luck at having found such a gifted player, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more information. But in reality this legendary player only existed in the imagination of the writer of the article, George Plimpton.

1 The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

In 1957 the respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in, and many called up wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. To this question, the BBC diplomatically replied that they should “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”

For the remaining 85 on the original Museum of Hoaxes website, go here

April Fool’s Day has been observed in one form or another for hundreds of years. Some of the tricks and jokes played on the day are simple and harmless, while others can be oddly elaborate and mean spirited. In modern times, you can count on newspapers, businesses and websites to run fake stories every April Fool’s Day, making everyone a little paranoid about what can and can’t be believed that day.

As it happens, every so often, one of those pranks or jokes really strikes a chord with people. Then the joke is less that it was played at all and more that people got really excited by the possibility of it being true, which has led to more than one joke finding its way into the real world.

This is an encore of one of our previous lists, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. Read the full list!