April Fool's Day Archive, Contents:

The Taipei Times reported that pandemonium broke out at the Taipei Zoo when it was discovered that the zoo's two panda bears were in fact "Wenzhou brown forest bears that had been dyed to create the panda’s distinctive black-and-white appearance." Suspicions were first raised when it was observed that the bears were spending almost their full waking hours having sex. (Pandas are notorious for their low libido.) This behavior caused chaos among zoo crowds. "Children screamed and parents became irate." The pandas had been received as a gift from the Chinese government. "Some angrily compared the subterfuge to last year’s contaminated milk scandal, when melamine that had been added to watered-down milk sickened 300,000 victims across China and led to a recall of diary products in countries including Taiwan." Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang was said to have issued a statement: "We understand that our compatriots in Taiwan are very upset. We wish to assure them that we have taken steps to address their concerns. We hope that our Taiwanese friends enjoy the gift of two extremely rare Wenzhou brown forest bears."

The zoo later received a number of complaints about the prank, prompting the zoo director to urge the Taipei Times to "correct this improper story." However, the Taipei Times defended the story, stating that, "April Fools' Day jokes highlight an important aspect of the consumption of media: that readers and viewers should keep a critical mind when they read stories or watch TV."

The French Museum of Air and Space announced on its website that Concorde was scheduled to return to the air for a special two-hour flight in June. The supersonic plane had not flown since 2003, but the museum explained that one of two Concordes given to it had been kept flight-ready. The announcement was picked up by the French news agency AFP, which later had to retract it when the museum confirmed the news was a hoax. The museum explained that it perpetrated the hoax in order to publicize its hope that one day Concorde really would fly again.

Yahoo! unveiled an "ideological search engine." Users could select between the Democratic and Republican ideology. Democratic results displayed in blue. Republican in red.

The website of Cyclone Dairy appeared online in late March 2009. It purported to represent "the first dairy brand to offer great-tasting products made exclusively from cloned cows." Its tagline was "Quality. Consistency. Isn't that what your family deserves?" The smiling family featured on the site's front page included a young boy missing his front teeth.
On April 1st ice cream-maker Ben & Jerry's revealed it had created the site, hoping to raise "onsumer awareness of the government's recent approval of cloned milk and meat within the human food supply chain."

Kodak debuted a new addition to its product line: an "eye camera." The camera featured a "what you see is what you get" viewfinder, Facial Recall Assistant (handy for parties and reunions), Image Stabilizer (perfect for taking pictures after a glass of wine or two), Digital X-Ray Vision (developed in partnership with the Superman Corporation located in the Fortress of Solitude), and a SuperZoom attachment.

Candy shop A Quarter Of announced it would soon be selling the Chokle, a chocolate bar filled with helium gas.

YouTube flipped its videos upside-down. The effect displayed for visitors who opened the home page and then went to a video from there. It was also possible to activate the effect by adding the code &flip=1 to the end of a youtube URL. YouTube wrote that it had introduced the new format because, "Our internal tests have shown that modern computer monitors give a higher quality picture when flipped upside down—kind of like how it's best to rotate your mattress every six months." To see the new format, it advised viewers to either 1) Turn your monitor upside-down; 2) Tilt your head to the side; or 3) Move to Australia.

Yachting Monthly inserted a joke item in its April issue about the Ocean Youth Association, an organization that supposedly allowed children to compete in wold sailing stunts. What Yachting Monthly didn't realize is that the name of their fictitious organization was similar to the names of several real organizations, Ocean Youth Trust and the Association of Sail Training Organisations, both of which subsequently began to receive inquiries from people seeking clarification about the Yachting Monthly article.

The Japan Times profiled a new social-networking service that would provide people with instant virtual friends. The service, called TomoToday, had been created to complement sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The service claimed to "provide a short cut to a substantial social-media presence."

The virtual friends were recruited from the ranks of unemployed temp workers.

On March 31 a mannequin was found chained to the doors of a Bank of America branch in Boston. The mannequin wore a sign, "The real dummies evict people & fund climate chaos." A group calling itself Mannequins for Climate Justice took responsibility, saying it was getting a head start on Fossil Fools Day, an initiative to use April 1st as a day to mock and resist the fossil fuel industry.

Microsoft announced the release of a new game for the Xbox: Alpine Legend. It featured the tagline, "Join the Global Yodel." Players competed online by yodeling and blowing on an alpine horn:

The Daily Mail revealed that Walkers Crisps had designed noise-free crisps, to be marketed as "Ready Silent Cri-sshhp." They would allow people to "eat loud snacks in the cinema without disturbing the person next to you." The crisp was said to have "the same flavour and crunchiness, except it comes already crushed."

BMW unveiled a new feature for its cars: Magnetic Tow Technology.

Drivers were invited to email uve.vollenvorit@bmw.co.uk for further information.

Expedia.com announced it was offering flights to Mars for only $99, which it calculated to be a savings of $3 trillion for travelers. "In this economy, you can't afford NOT to go!" it declared.

An advertisement that appeared on page five of the Australian newspaper claimed that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had volunteered the use of the electorate offices as a child-minding service: "Each MP's electorate office will today be accepting newborns for a free child minding service. This is another example of Labor's commitment to working families." The advocacy group Get Up later claimed responsibility for the ad.