Table of Contents

• Interview With President Carter
• Sky Becoming Less Blue
• Royalty Fees for Impersonations
• Darcey Bussell To Be Next Bond Woman
• New Aspen Law School
• Dog Trainer Contracted Foot and Mouth Disease
• Cybrary
• Kencom Limited
• First Kazakh Woman In Space
• Downloadable Money

Interview With President Carter

Michael Enright, host of the Sunday Edition of the Canadian Broadcasting Corpation’s radio program This Morning, interviewed former President Jimmy Carter on the air. The interview was about softwood lumber, since Carter had recently written an editorial piece in the New York Times criticizing Canada’s heavily subsidized lumber industry. The interview took a turn for the worse when Enright began telling Carter to speed up his answers. Then Enright asked, “I think the question on everyone’s mind is, how did a washed-up peanut farmer from Hicksville such as yourself get involved in such a sophisticated bilateral trade argument?“ Carter seemed stunned by the insult. Finally he replied, “Excuse me? A washed-up pig farmer? You’re one to talk, sir. Didn’t you used to be on the air five times a week?“ The tone of the interview did not improve from there. Carter ended up calling Enright a “rude person” before he hung up. Enright then revealed that the interview had been fake. The Toronto comedian Ray Landry had been impersonating Carter’s voice. The interview generated a number of angry calls from listeners who did not find the joke funny. But the next day the controversy reached even larger proportions when both the Globe and the Mail reported the interview as fact on their front pages. The editor of the Globe later explained that he hadn’t realized the interview was a hoax because it was “a fairly strange issue and a strange person to choose as a spoof.“

Sky Becoming Less Blue

The British Mail on Sunday announced that the sky was becoming less blue. It cited a five-year study conducted at the Koenraad University in Amsterdam which had used special digital cameras and color charts to measure subtle shifts in the sky’s color. The study’s researchers had found that the “‘coefficient of blueness’... has drastically diminished in five years from 9.3 per cent in 1996 to just 6.9 per cent this year.“ They attributed this color change to the effects of air pollution and the depleting ozone layer. The article explained that, “Particles of airborne pollution are thought to be creating a thick blanket of dirty grey.“ This blanket of pollution was preventing the ‘scattering’ of sunlight as it passed through the atmosphere, causing the sky to darken. Astronomer Patrick Moore was quoted as saying, “There’s an awful lot of pollution, making the sky turn a strange russety colour.“ The Mail on Sunday invited its readers to help the researchers in Amsterdam by taking part in a “mass observation” scheduled to occur between 10am and noon on April 1. A “Skyometer” had been printed on the right side of the page that provided a graded chart of different shades of blue. By holding this chart up to the sky, readers could determine which shade best matched the color of the sky. They were asked to mail their results to the Mail on Sunday, which would forward them to the Amsterdam researchers. The reference to astronomer Patrick Moore should have given readers a clue that the article was a hoax. Moore is famous for an April Fool’s Day prank he perpetrated on the audience of BBC Radio back in 1976 in which he claimed that a rare alignment of the planets was temporarily going to lessen the earth’s gravity.

Royalty Fees for Impersonations

The London Sunday Telegraph reported that a new European law would grant individuals the right to own their voice and distinctive mannerisms. As a consequence, comedians and impressionists would be forced to pay royalties to those they imitated. Politicians, actors, and other public figures who are frequently imitated by satirists could therefore begin to receive substantial payments in addition to their regular income. Impressionists anticipated that the ruling would present a serious challenge to their livelihood. The ruling apparently arose from a case involving a French singer, Yves Gainsbourg, who claimed that other entertainers were profiting by imitating his idiosyncratic stage manner, “described as a cross between Tom Jones and Charles Aznavour.“ The ruling would extend even to “end-of-pier shows, where journeymen comedians still make careers out of impersonating Norman Wisdom, Mick Jagger and Boy George.“ The Finnish European Commssioner, Larip Loof, was quoted as saying that the ruling was “a logical progression” from existing laws covering intellectual property rights. The ruling was scheduled to become law on April 1, 2003.

Darcey Bussell To Be Next Bond Woman

Darcey Bussell as Odette (left) and as a Bond woman (right) A newsletter posted on the official website of Darcey Bussell, the Principal Ballerina of the Royal Ballet, announced that Bussell was slated to star as the next Bond woman opposite Pierce Brosnan. Filming would begin in August, with a title sequence being shot at the Royal Opera House. During this sequence she would wear the rubber catsuit she is modelling to the right. The title for the ballet she would supposedly be dancing in while wearing this outfit had not yet been decided. Bussell is currently pregnant. However, she anticipated that she would have enough time after delivering her baby to get back into shape. This announcement was picked up by the Sun and Evening Standard and reported as fact.

New Aspen Law School

A special edition of the Denver Bar Association’s newsletter, The Docket, included a number of spoof stories. Its lead story was that a third Colorado law school would open, located in Aspen. The school would feature an all-video curriculum; its dean would be called Dean Acheson (like Eisenhower’s secretary of state); and its students would be housed in 30-story condominiums which would be the tallest buildings in Aspen. The school had also supposedly advertised in trendy publications such as Rolling Stone, Skateboarder’s World, and Ski in order to attract new students to the legal profession. 5000 applications had apparently already been received. Other articles in The Docket included one outlining a new dress code mandated by the Colorado Supreme Court. Male lawyers would be required to wear blue blazers with a Colorado state seal displayed on the pocket, while female lawyers would have to wear plaid skirts. The Docket received five calls from lawyers concerned about this new dress code.

Dog Trainer Contracted Foot and Mouth Disease

The Sunday London Times revealed that a famous British dog trainer, Barbara Woodhouse, had once contracted foot and mouth disease. Woodhouse, who died in 1988, was well-known as a TV personality. As the Times noted, “Her ringing catchphrases ‘Walkies!‘ and ‘Sit-t!‘ swept the nation.“ The article claimed that Woodhouse contracted the disease while working as a “horse whisperer” on a ranch in Argentina during the 1930s. She did not catch the disease from the horses, however, but rather from the free-roaming Hereford cows that lived in the region.

Cybrary

The British Observer revealed an exciting new idea sweeping through the internet community—a “cybrary,“ or cyber-library. The idea, dreamed up by London dot.com entrepreneur Lee Peters, was to “store, on paper, all the books availale on the net.“ Peters explained that he wanted to add a “tactile dynamic” to the internet experience. He prophesied that one day millions of people would be able to go “to a public building and handle the texts, creating for the first time a real physical interface.“ Peters admitted that storage space would be a problem, but he revealed that he was already in talks with a number of London councils which had recently closed their libraries who were willing to offer space to the venture. Peters anticipated that the first cybrary would open on April 1, 2001.

Kencom Limited

The Sunday East African Standard in Kenya printed an advertisement and a back-page story profiling a new mobile phone service provider called Kencom Limited. The new mobile phones would come with built-in scratch cards, internet service, videocams, and TV screens. What’s more, service would cost a low rate of only four shillings per minute. To make the service even more attractive, a coupon was offered with the enticement that the first 3,000 people to submit the coupon would receive free phones. By noon, over 5,000 entry forms had already been submitted to the East African Standard Town Office in Nairobi. Among the hopefuls dropping off coupons were said to be top military personnel, politicians, and businessmen.

First Kazakh Woman In Space

Novoye Pokoleniye, a Kazakh newspaper, reported on Friday, March 30 that Dariga Nazarbayeva, the daughter of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, would become the first Kazakh woman to fly into space. Accompanying her would be her one-year-old daughter who was receiving special training to become the world’s first child astronaut. Nazarbayeva was already something of a Kazakh celebrity because of her presidency of Khabar TV. Her mission in space would be to launch a new satellite TV channel, Khabar-3, which would transmit to “the most remote areas of the world where the Kazakh diaspora lives: in the USA, Mongolia, France, New Zealand and so on.“ The paper also reported that only Kazakh cuisine would be served on the flight. In addition, “The research programme also envisages making several feminine space experiments such as wet cleaning in zero-gravity conditions, cleaning of portholes in open space, nail-varnishing and hair-dyeing in a vacuum. The time of narrow specialist-orientated research is gone and the epoch of space exploration for everyday-life purposes is coming. So, who else, if not a woman and housewife, is to make laboratory experiments here?“

Downloadable Money

Abbey National, a British bank, revealed an April Fool’s Day joke that never came to fruition. It planned to offer its customers the ability to download and print money from their home computer. An Abbey National employee said, “"We were going to say that it would suit all those couch potatoes who don’t want to go to the bank to get their money out. We would make available a system where you could download money from your personal computer and print it out on paper at home.“ However, the Bank of England, citing concerns about encouraging forgery, strongly advised Abbey National not to proceed with their joke.

Categories

• April Fools Day
• Era
  • 2000-Present
    • 2001