The April Fool's Day Archive
A catalog of April Fool's Day hoaxes, pranks, and related events throughout history, categorized by year and theme.

April Fool's Day Archive, Contents:

The French newspaper L'Ardennais reported that two giant helicopters were going to remove the Meuse River bridge at Montey-Notre-Dame and replace it with a new one. A crowd of over 2000 people assembled to witness the event. Eventually a loudspeaker announced that the bridge-removal operation had been delayed until April 1, 1968.

This is the sight Richard Carlson of Palatine, Illinois was greeted by when he came home. The car was sideways in the garage with the sign "April Fool!" hanging on it. His wife was the culprit. She told him it was payback for teasing her about being too afraid of the garage's center post when she pulled the car in. She proved she wasn't.

An hour-long Swiss Radio broadcast announced that U.S. astronauts had just landed on the moon.

The broadcast (which aired on all German-language Swiss radio stations) began with a news flash interrupting the regularly scheduled show. Listeners heard reports from Swiss radio correspondents in cities around the world, as well as interviews with experts and men in the street. The broadcast also included (prestaged) "technical faults," such as slamming doors and the sound of newscasters running in with late-breaking bulletins.

The announcement generated enormous excitement. Telephone exchanges became jammed as people tried to phone friends to share the news. Even U.S. authorities in Switzerland initially weren't sure if the news was true or false. Americans vacationing in the resort of Klosters staged a huge celebration.

The broadcast concluded with the report that the moonship would take off from the moon at 7 p.m. Listeners were urged to climb to a high vantage point, away from the city lights, to watch it return to Earth. As a result, there was a huge rush of people who tried to leave Zurich and get to the top of Mt. Uetliberg, overlooking the city. The railroad up the mountain had to add additional trains to handle the number of passengers.

The hoax broadcast was directed by newscaster Hans Menge of Radio Zurich.

U.S. astronauts landed on the moon for real approximately two years later (July 20, 1969).

Illinois Shriners launched a UFO balloon from the roof of the Illinois Athletic Club to advertise an upcoming convention.

At the University of Chicago, a cast of 40 took part in a "musical spoof" featuring the sounds of the 72-bell carillon atop the Rockefeller Chapel. The musicians, who stood in the huge gutter along the chapel's roof, were accompanied by the cymbaling of Mrs. Loraine Percy of Kenilworth, wife of GOP Senate candidate Charles Percy. The climax of the performance was John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever."

When Mrs. Rhoda Bell, a teacher at the Wilder Elementary School in Louisville, Ky., walked into her sixth-grade classroom, she discovered that all her students had broken their arms.

Printed leaflets were distributed throughout Stockholm informing people that the water company was soon going to cut off the water. Housewives were urged to fill the bathtub and whatever containers they had with water while "certain adjustments" were made to the water system. The water company, after receiving hundreds of calls, eventually issued an official denial, blaming the leaflets on an unknown prankster. [Appleton Post-Crescent, Apr 1, 1965.]

Seventeen-year-old Dave Devine of Indianapolis posed for this shot while waiting for the bus home from school. The legs belonged to Craig Decker, a classmate. The masonry was part of the Indiana statehouse.

The Kokomo Tribune, based in Kokomo, Indiana, reported that city officials planned to increase local property taxes in order to fund construction of "a modern and handsomely furnished health and social club for local public officials." The article pointed out that "our public officials are hard-working individuals who deserve a convenient place for recreation." It went on to quote a local official who said, "We believe the idea will be well received by our citizens. It will mean an increase in taxes, but this is well accepted by people when they realize that it is for a good thing."

Politiken, a Copenhagen newspaper, reported that the Danish parliament had passed a new law requiring all dogs to be painted white. The purpose of this, it explained, was to increase road safety by allowing dogs to be seen more easily at night. [Appleton Post-Crescent, Apr 1, 1965.]

BBC TV interviewed a professor from London University who had perfected a technology he called "smellovision." It allowed viewers to smell aromas produced in the television studio in their homes. The professor explained that his machine broke scents down into their component molecules which could then be transmitted through the screen.

The professor offered a demonstration by placing first some coffee beans and then onions into the smellovision machine. He asked viewers to report by noon whether they were able to smell anything, instructing them that "for best results stand six feet away from your set and sniff." Viewers called in from across the country to confirm that they distinctly experienced these scents as if they were there in the studio with him. Some claimed the onions made their eyes water.

The Smellovision experiment was repeated on June 12, 1977 by Bristol University psychology lecturer Michael O'Mahony, who was interested in exploring the effect of the power of suggestion on smell. O'Mahony told viewers of Reports Extra, a late-night news show that aired in the Manchester region, that a new technology called Ramen spectroscopy would allow the station to transmit smells over the airwaves. He told them he was going to transmit "a pleasant country smell, not manure" over their TV sets, and he asked people to report what they smelled. Within the next 24 hours the station received 172 responses. The highest number came from people who reported smelling hay or grass. Others reported their living rooms filling with the scent of flowers, lavender, apple blossom, fruits, potatoes, and even homemade bread. Two people complained that the transmission brought on a severe bout of hay fever.

Bob Grove lost his head for April Fool's Day, and wandered the streets of Salinas, California in this condition.

As East Haven Fire Chief Thomas J. Hayes was watching a ventriloquism show at the New Haven Arena, the ventriloquist announced that there was a message for Hayes: the Edgewater Beach Club was on fire. Hayes laughed as the ventriloquist repeated the message.

Finally a receptionist was sent to alert Hayes that the message was true and that he needed to join his men. The fire department, at a loss about how to locate Hayes in the audience, had asked the ventriloquist to deliver the message. Hayes, however, interpreted the message as a prank on him.

The unoccupied beach club burned to the ground. [Meriden Record - Apr 2, 1963]

The Yale Literary Magazine announced that pugilist Cassius Clay, aka the "Louisville Lip" (later known as Muhammad Ali), had been awarded the Ephraim Barnard Gates Award, given to the person "who has done the most to revitalize poetry during the last year."

The award committee cited "his mockery of the loose trochee, culminating in shocking spondees in the penultimate lines, and the final heavy line in irregular iambics" which produced "stanzas almost perfectly orchestrated."

The Literary Magazine explained that the Ephraim Barnard Gates Award was a little-known prize, presentation of which had been discontinued after the Civil War but which had been revived in honor of Clay.