Pasta trees and paper towels with one hand? These 5 most outrageous April Fools’ hoaxes ever.
Every year, April Fools’ Day is welcomed with both groans and giggles. Whoopee cushions during board meetings and fake spiders in the Easter casserole are hardly the only examples of practical jokes. Jokes intended for whole groups of people have been the subject of some of the most famous hoaxes in history. As it happens, there are a lot of such in history.
These are five well-known, past April Fools’ Day hoaxes:
Toilet paper used with the left hand
Cottonelle tweeted in 2015 to reveal that they will be releasing left-handed toilet paper.
The company captioned a picture of its upcoming “invention” with the words “America has spoken,” along with uplifting statements from phony groups.
On the announcement, a fictitious Mike H from Lefties for the Ethical Treatment of Lefties remarked, “It cleans just like right-hand toilet paper, only now it’s made for me.”
It’s spaghetti season!
A almost three-minute presentation proclaiming the “spaghetti harvest” was shown in 1957 to a rapt British audience on “Panorama,” the BBC’s premier current affairs program. The section stated that Switzerland had seen “an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop” as a result of the mild winter of that year.
The anchor of the program, Richard Dimbleby, had established himself as a distinguished war correspondent and was among the country’s most regarded reporters. That day, Dimbleby talked about how the better weather had been a godsend to the rustic Swiss spaghetti growers, projecting the typical narrative authority in his voice. Naturally, their crop would never be as abundant as the enormous spaghetti “plantations” in southern Italy.
In the broadcast, lengthy shots showed “farmers” laboriously collecting cooked spaghetti strand by strand from towering vines.
At the conclusion of the show, Dimbleby remarked, “There is nothing like real home-grown spaghetti.”
Many British people were duped by their episode, which led to a media frenzy in the hours and days that followed.
Years later, Michael Peacock, the program’s editor, told the BBC in a retrospective that chaos had broken out. “We were all quite happy with who we were.”
toothpaste with a hamburger flavor
Burger King announced in a 60-second ad the official debut of their Whopper-flavored toothpaste just in time for April 1, 2017, maybe borrowing a page from Cottonelle’s trick book.
In the advertisement, the speaker claims, “Our flame-grilled Whopper is so good that some people will do anything to keep the taste in their mouth.”
Claiming to have “ultra-fresh advanced Whopper technology” and the ability to whiten teeth, a “dentist” markets the toothpaste as a remedy for anyone who is reluctant to clean their teeth after consuming a Whopper because they enjoy the flavor so much.
I haven’t washed my teeth in two weeks because I want to retain the flavor of Whopper in my mouth. Early in the advertisement, a dejected guy says, “It really works, but my wife dumped me.”
The depressed man is joyful at the conclusion of the commercial because he used Burger King’s Whopper-flavored toothpaste to improve his habits.
With baggage in tow, his wife comes back. Smelling the air, she screams, “Mmmm! It smells like Whopper—did you brush your teeth?”
Nixon’s presidential bid in 1992
In 1992, following the Watergate crisis and eighteen years after Richard Nixon resigned, National Public Radio chose to sow a little chaos. The publication said on April 1st that he was reentering the presidential race.
Grunge claims that comedian Rich Little was hired by “Talk of the Nation,” a call-in news show, to provide an accurate portrayal of the outgoing president.
Little pretended to be Nixon on the radio, saying, “I didn’t do anything wrong and I won’t do it again.”
The news was not just accepted by the audience; they were incensed as well and deluged the show with calls. The former president was still the target of much resentment.
Pasta trees and paper towels with one hand? These 5 most outrageous April Fools’ hoaxes ever.
The fact that he had previously served two terms as president caused more misunderstanding. Serving more than two terms as president is prohibited under the Constitution. However, was it possible for a president who had served two terms and resigned to aspire for office again? People were unaware. There had never been anything like this before.
The program revealed shortly afterward that everything had been a hoax.
Gravity, what happened to it?
As if the BBC’s spaghetti parody from 1957 wasn’t enough, they repeated the joke on April Fools’ Day 1976.
Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore informed the audience during his morning show that Pluto and Jupiter will align at 9:47 a.m., reducing Earth’s gravitational pull.
Time magazine claims that at precisely 9:47 a.m., a great number of enthusiastic viewers sprang into the air in response to Moore’s pronouncement. Callers to the show who claimed to have felt like they were floating began to flood the lines around 9:48.