category
1959

A radio station in Hawaii announced that Congress had authorized an amendment to the recently passed Hawaii Statehood Bill (admitting Hawaii to the union as the 50th state). According to this amendment, all the income taxes that Hawaiians paid during the previous year would be refunded to them. Thousands of people called up the station to find out how to claim their refund.

The Light of San Antonio, Texas published a story about a huge army missile that had accidentally escaped from Kelly Air Force Base during testing, "screamed over San Antonio," and crashed into a water tank near Trinity University. An accompanying picture showed the missile embedded in the ground as water from the tank poured over it. An Airforce Colonel was quoted as saying, "We're spending a great deal of money and much of this nation's international diplomacy is based on the armed strength this and other units like it achieve. So I hope you'll understand why I have no more time for this damned April Fool gag."

A prankster painted a trail of white footprints along the main street of Wellingborough, England. At the end of the trail were the words, "I must fly." [Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr 2, 1959.]

An April Fool's joke by an amateur American astronomer was apparently taken seriously by a highly regarded Soviet scientist. Walter Scott Houston, professor of English at Kansas State College and editor of the Great Plains Observer, the monthly newsletter of the Great Plains Astronomical Society, included an article in the April edition that made the following claim:


Houston later explained that he chose the story because it was "so ludicrous it would not need to be labeled a gag." Both Dr. Hayall and the University of the Sierras were fictitious.

But soon after, the same theory was advanced by a Soviet scientist, Dr. Iosip Shklovsky, in an interview with Komsomol Pravda, a Communist youth league publication. American scientists were baffled by Shklovsky's assertion since there was no indication he was joking. Dr. Gerald Kuiper of the Yerkes Observatory was quoted as saying, "He is much too brilliant to believe such nonsense." [Jefferson City Post-Tribune, May 4, 1959.]

The New York Times reported that "The Bronx Botanical and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens are awaiting, wearily, their usual calls for Messrs Astor, Bush and Flower, and the Planetarium the usual requests for Mr. McCloud or Mr. Starr." However, the employees of the Bronx Zoo and the Coney Island Aquarium were given secret numbers to use, so that all calls to the regular numbers could be intercepted by the telephone company, "and the joke victims told the hard truth." The telephone company estimated that it intercepted well over 5000 prank calls. [New York Times, Apr 1, 1959.]

The Lebanon Daily News published on its front page a photograph of local resident Gail Speicher taking her "French poodle 'Domino'" for a walk. The caption added: "But wait a minute... that's no poodle! Seems like anything can happen today. It's April Fool."

A photographer for the Great Bend Tribune placed a fake snake on the pavement in downtown Great Bend and then hid in a car to capture people's candid reactions:

The Chicago Daily Defender interviewed Otto Ebar, the man responsible for answering the phones at the Cook County Morgue on April 1st, the day when numerous calls are received for Mr. Stiff, Mr. K. Dever, Mr. Casket, Mr. Graves, Mr. Rigor, or Mr. Mortis. Ebar said, "he has to brace himself for when business executives and general office girls discover they have been tricked by some of their associates, some let their venom out on him. 'But the vast majority are terribly nice about it.'"

[The Chicago Defender, Apr 2, 1959.]

At London's St. James' Club, on April 1, four perfect bridge hands (a full suit) were dealt at the same table. The odds of this happening were estimated to be 53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000 to 1. The players had to convince other club members that the perfect hands were not a hoax. The duke of Marlborough, with 13 spades, held the winning hand. [Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr 3, 1959.]

Residents of St. Joseph, Missouri who received a notice on April 1st informing them they had been selected for jury duty thought the notices were a joke and none of them showed up. Deputy sheriffs had to make a special trip to their homes to inform them that the summons were real. The Sheriff's Department later made a special plea to the circuit judges: "Please don't draw a panel of jurors on April Fool's Day again." [The Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune, Apr 3, 1959.]

An advertisement ran in the London Financial Times offering the highly respectable Francis Holland School for Girls for sale. Several dozen interested buyers phoned the school. A school spokesman later explained that the advertisement was a joke placed by a student "who'd got into trouble, trying to get back at the school." [Journal-Tribune, Apr 2, 1959.]

Wire services reported a variety of April Fool's Day hoaxes perpetrated by Polish papers. One newspaper reported that a herd of thirty bison was marching on Warsaw and that Buckingham Palace sentries were to be allowed to lick ice cream cones on duty. Another Communist paper reported that gasoline stations were being converted into underground milk tanks in order to ensure a supply of cold milk during the summer.

The Kokomo Tribune, a paper based in Kokomo, Indiana, announced that the city police had devised a plan to cut costs and save money. According to this plan, the police station would close each night from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. An answering machine would record all calls made to the station during this time, and these calls would be screened by an officer in the morning. The police reportedly anticipated that the screening process would save the city a great deal of money, since many of the calls would be old by the morning and would not need to be answered. A spokesman for the police admitted, "there will be a problem on what to do in the case of a woman who calls in and says her husband has threatened to shoot her or some member of the family." But in such a situation, the spokesman explained, "We will check the hospitals and the coroner, and if they don't have any record of any trouble, then we will know that nothing happened."