April Fool's Day Quiz Results


(RETURN TO QUIZ)



ANSWERS:

1: Don't Disturb the Squirrels (April Fools!)
Perpetrated by Westdeutsche Rundfunk, a Cologne radio station, in 1993.

2: Corporate Tattoos (April Fools!)
Reported by All Things Considered, on National Public Radio, in 1994.

3: Crustless Bread (True)
This actually is a new product recently announced by Sara Lee.

4: Pet Tax (April Fools!)
Perpetrated by WIOQ, A Philadelphia radio station, in 2002. But actually this is an old prank. For instance, it was also perpetrated by WZPL, an Indianapolis radio station, in 1993.

5: Chicken Manure-Powered Electrical Plant (True)
In 1991 Mitsubishi Bank in London sought investors to back a 22 million pound loan to fund Fibropower. Because Mitsubishi Bank publicized the offer around April 1, many investors assumed they were joking.

6: Prehistoric Penguin Murals (True)
The penguin murals were found in 1991 by deep-sea divers exploring a cave 7.5 miles southeast of Marseilles.

7: Alabama Changes Value of Pi (April Fools!)
Reported in the 1998 issue of New Mexicans for Science and Reason, but before long it had spread throughout the internet. The Alabama legislature received thousands of angry calls from people who believed this story to be true.

8: Vodka Bars (April Fools!)
Reported by the Itar-Tass Russian News Agency in 1994. Oddly enough, in a case of life imitating art, a South Korean brewer announced in 2002 that it had perfected a form of chewable rice wine.

9: Bank Teller Fees (April Fools!)
Advertised in 1999 in the Journal-Inquirer by the Savings Bank of Rockville, a Connecticut-based bank. Reportedly many customers were convinced that it was true. One woman even cancelled her account to protest the fee.

10: The Tooth Telephone (True)
Invented by Jimmy Loizeau and James Auger, researchers at MIT Media Lab Europe. Not yet available for consumers.

11: Karate experts collect bus fares (True)
A strategy implemented in 1993 by the city of Chernivtsy in western Ukraine following a number of attacks on bus inspectors.

12: Operation Fake Tourist (True)
A 'guerrilla marketing' tactic adopted by Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd. in 2002 to help spread the word about its new mobile phone that doubles as a camera. Teams of actors hang around landmarks such as the Empire State Building asking passersby to snap their photo.

13: Whistling Carrots (April Fools!)
Advertised by Tesco, a British supermarket chain, in a half-page advertisement in The Sun in 2002.

14: Shark Breeding Experiment (April Fools!)
Reported by the Herald-News in Roscommon, Michigan in 1981.

15: Carrots reclassified as a fruit (True)
Bureaucrats in the European Union did classify carrots as a fruit in a 1979 directive, apparently because the Portuguese use carrots to make jam, and anything used to make jam, in their eyes, must be a fruit.

16: Purple Carrots (True)
In 2002 Sainsbury began marketing purple carrots. But carrots have actually come in purple varieties for thousands of years. The orange ones are the newcomers, bred to be that color in the 1500s by Dutch growers paying homage to their royal family, the House of Orange.