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Extraterrestrial Life-Themed April Fool's Day Hoaxes

The internet-based service America Online grew rapidly throughout the 1990s, demonstrating the power of the internet to serve as a new basis for mass communication. By 1996 it had gained five million subscribers, all of whom were greeted with a news flash that read, "Government source reveals signs of life on Jupiter," when they logged onto the service on April 1. This headline was backed up by statements from a planetary biologist and an assertion by Ted Leonsis, AOL's president, that his company was in possession of documents that proved the government was hiding the existence of life on the massive planet. The story quickly generated over 1300 messages on AOL, and hundreds of people called the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California trying to obtain more details about the discovery. When it turned out to be a prank, many questioned whether the service had risked losing its credibility by perpetrating such a stunt, but AOL dismissed these concerns. A spokeswoman for the company later explained that the hoax had been intended as a tribute to Orson Welles' 1938 halloween broadcast of the "War of the Worlds."

On March 31, astonished British policemen were sent to investigate a glowing flying saucer that had settled down in a field in Surrey. As the policemen approached the craft with their truncheons held out before them, a door opened in the bottom of the ship and a small figure wearing a silver space suit walked out. The policemen immediately took off in the opposite direction. The alien turned out to be a midget, and the flying saucer was a hot air balloon that had been specially built to look like a UFO by Richard Branson, the 36-year-old chairman of Virgin Records. Branson had taken off in the balloon the day before, planning to land in London's Hyde Park on April 1. However, a wind change had blown him down a day early in the Surrey field. The police reported that they received a flood of phonecalls from scared motorists using roadside emergency phones as the balloon passed over the highway. One lady reportedly called a radio station to describe the UFO that she was looking at, not realizing that she was standing in front of her window stark naked. One of the policemen who had to approach the craft later admitted that, "I have never been so scared in 20 years of being a policeman."

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 Progress (Clearfield, Pennsylvania) published a picture of a flying saucer, supposedly hovering over the business section of Clearfield. The text accompanying the picture read, "Scoring an unquestioned scoop on the other newspapers of the nation, Life, and Look magazines and other pictorial publications, The Progress proudly presents today the first published picture of a 'flying saucer' in the air."

Several German newspapers reported sightings of UFOs on April 1st. The Cologne Neue Illustrierte published a picture of "a tiny, aluminum-covered man" who had supposedly been rescued from a saucer that had crash landed. The report stated that the saucer had been shot down by American anti-aircraft guns. A newspaper in Frankfurt quoted the "American Aeronautical Institute" to report that flying saucers had been found aground in the United States. [The Charleston Daily Mail, Apr 6, 1950.]

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin published a picture and article about a flying saucer that had supposedly crashed into a mountain on the island of Hawaii. The joke unintentionally took in victims thousands of miles away when a local ham radio operator, believing the news report to be real, broadcast a description of the flying-saucer crash. An amateur radioman in Michigan heard the broadcast and reported it to his local paper, the Herald-Press. The Herald-Press only realized the report was an April Fool's Day joke after it queried the AP, who in turn queried their office in Hawaii. [The Herald-Press (St. Joseph, Michigan), Apr 4, 1950.]