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 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.

In the week before April 1st, the New York Telephone company announced that it planned to use a new transistorized device called a "Glossoresonator" to intercept prank calls to the Bronx zoo. It noted that on the last April 1, 929 prank calls had been made to the zoo. However, it declined to explain exactly how the glossoresonator worked.

But when April 1st arrived, the company admitted that no such device existed. Nor had its announcement done anything to deter pranksters from calling the zoo. 755 hoax calls were intercepted by operators.

A 14-year-old Connecticut schoolboy walked into a bank during lunch and handed the teller a napkin, on which was written a demand for money. The teller handed him $600. The boy began to leave the bank, then turned around and handed the money back. Police later arrested him and sent him to a New Haven juvenile detention center. [Chicago Tribune - Apr 2, 1963]

VIEW magazine revealed the existence of the Yenom Tree, a "rare perennial" owned by Mrs. Loo Flirpa of Appleton, Wisconsin. This tree, "intensively bred to resemble the Pelf Pines and Gelt Gardenias of an earlier day," sprouted "bright, green American one-dollar bills with uniformly high serial numbers."

In an unusual mutation, this year the Yenom Tree had also sprouted a "flawless five-dollar bill."

It was further revealed that Mrs. Flirpa had entered into "an exclusive arrangement with the U.S. Mint to sell Yenom tree seedlings through a system of greenhouses to be operated through local offices of the Federal Reserve System."

The Titusville Herald ran a headline across the top of its sports page declaring that the Pittsburgh Pirates Major League Baseball team was moving to the small town of Titusville, Pennsylvania (population 5000). The team reportedly was making the move because it was "tired of battling the city fathers for a new stadium on Pittsburgh's North Side."

Pirates team members were said to be happy with the move, although reliefer Roy Face asked, "Where's Titusville?"

The April Fool's Day announcement caused the first sellout of the Titusville Herald in many years, as people bought copies for their scrapbooks.

"Boss Wally Gerdes must have thought it was Mothers Day when 14 of his employees in the installation department at Western Electric Co.'s Montebellow, Calif., plant showed up Monday in maternity smocks well filled out. But it was just the girls' pregnant (pillows) idea of an April Fool's Day joke. Five of them aren't married."

The Appleton Post-Crescent reported that a bizarre "half-animal half-reptile" creature had been discovered by a local resident, Lester E. Grube:


The next day, the Post-Crescent noted that Lester Grube (who was a real Post-Crescent employee) had received calls all day from people wanting to see the creature.

Sveriges Television, Sweden's National TV broadcaster, announced that it would be conducting an experiment that would allow its viewers to receive color reception on their black-and-white sets. The station's technical expert, Kjell Stensson, explained thanks to a new technology that took advantage of the prismatic nature of light and the phenomenon of “double slit interference," viewers could convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen. Stensson proceeded to demonstrate the process. Thousands of people were taken in. Regular color broadcasts only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970. (For more details, see the article Instant Color TV in the Hoaxipedia.)