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Scottish April Fool's Day Hoaxes

A fake news article, supposedly from a Scottish paper, circulated online, claiming that a crocodile had been sighted in Loch Ness. The article read, in part:

The Inverness Courier reported on opposition to a plan to build a six-foot high fence around parts of Loch Ness in order to protect the public from Nessie. The paper wrote:

Alex McLeish, manager of the Scotish football club Rangers, announced that he had signed Yardis Alpolfo, a seventeen-year-old Turkish player, to a £5 million deal. Many news organizations, including Reuters, reported the story. Yardis Alpolfo was an anagram of "April Fool's Day."

The Glasgow Herald described the recent arrival in Britain of a new energy-saving miracle: heat-generating plants. These plants, known by the scientific name Solar Complexus Americanus, were imports from Venezuela. One plant alone, fed by nothing more than three pints of water a day, generated as much heat as a 2kw electric fire. A few of these horticultural wonders placed around a house could entirely eliminate the need for a central-heating system, and when submerged in water, the plants created a constant supply of hot water. The Scandinavian botanist responsible for discovering these hot-air producers was Professor Olaf Lipro.

The famous naturalist David Bellamy announced the discovery of gigantic footprints on the shore of Loch Ness, and declared that it had now been proven that the famous monster was a dinosaur. The announcement appeared on numerous children's TV shows and on the front page of the Daily Record. It turned out that the announcement was a public relations campaign orchestrated by Handel Communications to promote a new chocolate biscuit called Dinosaurs.

On the day before April Fool's Day, a team of British zoologists from the Flamingo Park Zoo found a mysterious carcass floating in Loch Ness. Initial reports claimed it weighed a ton and a half and was 15 ½ feet long. The Associated Press offered this account of the discovery:


The zoologists placed the body in a van and began to transport it to the Flamingo Park Zoo. However, the police chased down the truck and stopped it under a 1933 act of Parliament prohibiting the removal of "unidentified creatures" from Loch Ness. The body was then taken to nearby Dunfermline for examination.

The discovery of the carcass received worldwide media attention. The British press dubbed it "Son of Nessie." But upon examination, Edinburgh scientists identified it as a bull elephant seal from the South Atlantic.

The next day John Shields, Flamingo Park's education officer, confessed he had been responsible for the body. The bull elephant seal had died the week before at Dudley Zoo. He had shaved off its whiskers, padded its cheeks with stones, and kept it frozen for a week, before dumping it in the Loch and then phoning in a tip to make sure his colleagues found it. He had meant to prank his colleagues who were searching for Nessie, but admitted the joke got out of hand when the police chased down their van. [The Modesto Bee, Apr 2, 1972.]