Table of Contents

• Media Pranks
  • Federally Funded Health Care for Pets
  • Figment, The Safe Cigarette
  • Dodo Returns from the Dead
  • Harmony Cousins
  • Pay-for-Programming Radio Service
  • Martha Stewart’s To-Do List
  • Thailand Limits Bar-goers to Two Drinks Per Night
  • Japan Names ‘The Lion King’ An Important Cultural Asset
  • Every Kazakh Citizen to Receive 200,000 petrodollars
  • Romania Legalizes Bribes
  • The Lululemon Athletica Invitational Yoga Pose Off
  • Pet Tax
• Internet Pranks
  • Microsoft Purchases Open Directory Project
  • Canadian Finance Minister Quits Job to Breed Cows
  • You’ve Got Blogs!
  • Kuro5hin Buys Metafilter
  • Napster Buys Microsoft
• Corporate Pranks
  • Pigeonrank
  • Chicken King
  • Butterfly Advertising
  • Whistling Carrots
  • Harrod’s Floats the Company
• Others
  • New York City’s 17th Annual April Fools’ Day Parade

Media Pranks

Federally Funded Health Care for Pets

NPR’s All Things Considered reported that the Bush administration had proposed extending universal health care to pets. The measure was designed to assist all animals, including “Your dog, your cat, your iguana, your great komodo dragon.” However, the proposal was meeting with opposition: “James Cardigan, spokesman for the group People Are People Too, fears the federal government could get tangled in massive legal liability by letting nature simply take its course. For example, he told Rovner, what if a hamster covered by federal health care is eaten by a snake also covered by the federal government? ‘This is where it starts—where does it stop?’” The cost of the proposal was estimated at a mere $345-trillion.

Figment, The Safe Cigarette

An advertisement aired on network and cable TV announcing Figment, a new 100-percent safe cigarette: nicotine-free, carcinogen-free, and poison-free. The ad showed a tobacco spokeswoman walking through a laboratory and telling viewers that “tobacco industry leaders met and agreed, together, that the time had come to create cigarettes free of poisons, carcinogens and addictive nicotine. These are cigarettes that we can offer the public with confidence and with pride.” Such a cigarette would, of course, be a figment of one’s imagination. The ad was actually part of a youth-oriented anti-smoking campaign paid for by the American Legacy Foundation — an anti-smoking group formed by the tobacco industry’s 1998 settlement with 46 state attorneys general.

Dodo Returns from the Dead

The Daily Star announced that geneticists had managed to bring the Dodo bird back from extinction: “Geneticists worked their magic using DNA from a museum’s dodo skeletal remains. They did not have enough for a whole dodo so used DNA from its near relative, the turkey, to create a hybrid chick - which they have called Doris. The dodo, made at Bournemouth University, Hants, is now at New Forest Owl Sanctuary. Keeper Alf Oropil said: ‘I thought it was a joke at first.’”

Harmony Cousins

The Guardian ran an interview with a fictitious actress, Harmony Cousins. The perfect metaphor for her life, the article claimed, was a McChicken sandwich: “a piece of chicken surrounded by two pieces of bread-based material accompanied with mayonnaise and a variety of salad items.”

Pay-for-Programming Radio Service

In the week preceding April 1st, Clear Channel station WVKS-FM in Toledo advertised that it was going to be launching a “pay-for-programming” service. Those who did not pay, would no longer be able to hear the broadcasts. On April 1st, when the service was said to be commencing, listeners heard two hours of dead air. At least one journalist, Russ Lemmon of the Toledo Blade, fell for the hoax, noting the station’s new “broadcast subscription service” in his media column.

Martha Stewart’s To-Do List

Martha Stewart kicked off her show by unveiling an enormous to-do list. Items included: lecturing slacker chickens on better egg laying, cleaning the north side of the Empire State Building, sending her tax returns to a calligrapher, and replacing her clocks and VCRs when daylight-saving time arrives on Sunday. Her gardening segment included the care of a ‘bottle tree’ which grew empty budweiser bottles.

Thailand Limits Bar-goers to Two Drinks Per Night

The Bangkok Post announced that Thailand’s Interior Minister Purachai Piumsomboon had issued a directive that limited bars to selling their customers two drinks per night. Purachai was notorious in Thailand for the morality campaign which he was promoting, especially his enforcement of the 2 a.m. closing time for bars. This move appeared to be his latest effort. The Bangkok Post’s article was bylined ‘Ron Weasley’ (i.e. Harry Potter’s mischievous friend).

Japan Names ‘The Lion King’ An Important Cultural Asset

The Japan Times announced that the government had decided to adopt a series of “soft measures” to stimulate its economy. Included among these would be the naming of Disney’s “The Lion King” as an Important Cultural Asset. The paper quoted an anonymous official as saying, “The prime minister [Junichiro Koizumi] has that whole lion thing going with his hair already, so this should increase demand for all kinds of lion-related items.”

Every Kazakh Citizen to Receive 200,000 petrodollars

The Kazakh newspaper Argumenty i Fakty Kazakhstan published an article titled “Kazakhstan’s citizenship will be worth more than that of the USA” in which it announced that the Kazakh government had decided to divide equally between Kazakh’s citizens all petrodollars and dividends from future contracts to develop the region’s hydrocarbon resources. It made this decision in order to quell political opposition.

Romania Legalizes Bribes

Romania’s leading financial daily Ziarul Financiar announced that under a new taxation scheme there would be a sliding scale of taxes on “commissions and supplementary insurance payments for health and a better life.” It indicated that bribes of up to one million euros would be taxed at five percent. It also said that the government would offer incentives for bribe-payers, by allowing them to offset 50 percent of their outlay on kick-backs against tax.

The Lululemon Athletica Invitational Yoga Pose Off

A full-page ad for a “Yoga Pose Off” contest appeared in the April 2002 issue of Yoga Journal.  Yoga contestants would supposedly “pose off” against each other, competing for a cash prize of $30,000. “Watch the world’s best as they battle for prestige and cash,” the ad claimed.

Pet Tax

WIOQ, A Philadelphia radio station, announced that the city would be instituting a Pet Tax to raise money to offset the debt.  $10 for the first 10 pounds per pet and $1 for each additional pound per pet.  If the tax was not paid, the pet would be taken and put to sleep (for tax evasion).

Internet Pranks

Microsoft Purchases Open Directory Project

The Open Directory Project, a volunteer-operated internet directory, unveiled its new owner: Microsoft. It announced that henceforward the Open Directory Project (ODP) would be renamed the Gates Open Directory (GOD). The purchase of the Open Directory was part of Microsoft’s long-term strategy: “The Gates Open Directory is part of Microsoft’s vision to simplify copyright on the Internet by buying all copyrighted material. Once this goal is achieved Microsoft will be the single clearinghouse for all intellectual property, in effect streamlining the current legal bureaucracy surrounding patent and copyright suits by eliminating the need for costly lawsuits.” Anyone who believed they owned intellectual property was directed to submit it directly to Microsoft.

Canadian Finance Minister Quits Job to Breed Cows

The website Bourque.org posted an article alleging that the Canadian finance minister, Paul Martin, was quitting his job in order to breed “prize Charolais cattle and handsome Fawn Runner ducks.” Martin, it was said, would be showing his livestock at a local fair in Havelock, a tiny Quebec town boasting a population of only 811. The Bank of Canada was also said to be ready to intervene in case the news rattled the currency markets. As word of Martin’s retirement began to spread (circulated by readers of Bourque.org), the markets actually did get rattled, and the Canadian dollar promptly fell to its lowest level in a month. The currency only recovered once the minister’s office denied the rumor. Pierre Bourque, the man behind bourque.org, readily admitted the story had been a hoax. “The ducks,” he pointed out, “were the tell-tale sign.”

You’ve Got Blogs!

The Register claimed that AOL-Time Warner had inked a deal to buy two hundred of the most popular weblogs on the internet: “The media giant has acquired rights to many of the most popular blogs including Instapundit, USS Clueless, and many hitherto unheard-of sites including Hello! Katty, ScratchMyselfRedAndYellow.org, Xanax Nation, and the Scottish blood transfusion service’s samizdat news blog, Roamin’ In The Haemoglobin.” An AOL-Time Warner executive noted that, “The possibilities for vertical integration are endless… No cat will ever go ill again in America again in obscurity.”

Kuro5hin Buys Metafilter

An announcement posted on kuro5hin.org claimed that: “Kuro5hin.org, backed by development funding from a company that wishes to remain anonymous for now, has purchased Metafilter, which will henceforth be available at the URL Met4Filter.org. This announcement also kicks off the foundation of the K5 Community Network, which will seek to acquire other leading-edge sites, and become the net’s premier destination for online community.” The reality was that “no, there is no money. This is 2002. K5 and MeFi are both still poor and unmerged.”

Napster Buys Microsoft

GigaLaw.com reported that the penniless file-swapping company Napster was purchasing Microsoft for more than $328-billion. Financing for the purchase was “provided largely by a group of former dot-com pioneers who reaped sufficient rewards during the Internet’s heyday to enable the unanticipated move.” After the purchase, Napster would “file a copyright infringement lawsuit against itself under a little-known provision of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).” GigaLaw later noted that its faux report attracted a huge amount of attention, including one reader who thoughtfully emailed them to warn that their site might have been hacked.

Corporate Pranks

Pigeonrank

Google revealed the secret at the heart of its search technology: Pigeonrank. Clusters of pigeons trained to compute the relative values of web pages: “PigeonRank’s success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation… By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings. When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user’s results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.”

Chicken King

Burger King announced that it was changing its name to Chicken King: “Due to the successful introduction of our new Chicken Whopper sandwich - the only flame-broiled chicken breast fillet good enough to be called a Whopper - our name will now be Chicken King. Farewell Burger King.” The restaurant chain later issued a statement admitting the name-change was a joke: “To all those who had a beef with our chicken joke, we’re sorry for the foul. We hope no one got their feathers ruffled.”

Butterfly Advertising

Virgin Atlantic announced plans to begin advertising via genetically modified butterflies: “According to a study published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution , Dr Antonia Monteiro at SUNY Buffalo is developing a genetic modification method that would allow companies to put markings such as logos on butterflies by scanning their wings with a laser beam. Virgin is confident that butterfly advertising will become a successful and popular new medium for airlines… Virgin executives say they hope to launch the butterfly program by the spring, allowing time for final testing and lasering of the Virgin logo on the butterflies. Virgin hopes to be able to control the flight areas of the butterflies, keeping them within major park and recreational areas, but is still working out specific details.”

Whistling Carrots

The British supermarket chain Tesco published an advertisement in the Sun announcing the successful development of a genetically modified ‘whistling carrot.’ The ad explained that the carrots had been specially engineered to grow with tapered airholes in their side. When fully cooked, these airholes caused the vegetable to whistle. No more overcooked carrots! (Though there was no truth to the whistling carrots joke, by coincidence a rival chain, Sainsbury’s, announced a month later that it would soon be introducing purple carrots. Some suspected these too were a hoax, but they turned out to be quite real.)

Harrod’s Floats the Company

The upscale British department store Harrods announced on its website plans to “float” the company. At first it indicated that this would involve a “first-come, first-served share option.” Later it revised this to indicate that it was not planning to float shares on the stock exchange. Instead, it was planning to create a floating version of the store on the river Thames. The Wall Street Journal, among others, fell for this hoax, despite the clue that the contact name for the story was listed as Loof Lirpa (April Fool spelt backwards). Five days later the Wall Street Journal struck back in an article comparing Harrods to Enron and suggesting that should Harrods ever go public “investors would be wise to question its every disclosure.” Harrods didn’t appreciate this comment and two years later filed a lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, in an attempt to have the article removed from its online archive. The Journal responded that the article had been tongue in cheek.

Others

New York City’s 17th Annual April Fools’ Day Parade

Joey Skaggs announced that New York City’s annual April Fools’ Day parade would once again be held, beginning at 12 noon at 59th Street and marching down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square Park. Because of the terrorist threat, security was expected to be much tighter at this year’s parade. Floats would include the Atlanta Airport Security Float featuring Michael Lasseter running down an up escalator. There would also be a George W. Bush look-alike handing out pretzels to the crowd. Public relations for the parade were being handled by the Pentagon Propaganda Unit. Unfortunately, CNN and Fox News did not send news crews to film the parade as they did back in 2000.

Categories

• April Fools Day
• Era
  • 2000-Present
    • 2002