When I was a little girl my father used to devise wicked April Fool's Day jokes and laugh for hours when we fell for them. As we got older the jokes became more spontaneous and were still mean and funny. One time he turned our horses loose knowing they would just wander across the road to the alfalfa field. He then ran into the house tell Shan (my sister) and I that we needed to go get them. When we headed through the field after them dad ran and hid behind a large patch of undergrowth. After we had caught the horses and were bringing them back dad made some Gawdawful noises like a large angry bear and began shaking the underbrush like the bear was coming our way. Needless to say the horses ran off and Shan and I were so terrified we ran all the way home. Actually, Shan fell behind a fallen tree and I ran home. She felt that the bear would chase me since I was running and it would not realize she had fallen down. I figured the bear would get her since she had fallen. Dad laughed for a week!
Anyway, I came across this website and you absolutely have to check out the April Fools that people have done to others.Here are some of the fun ones that made me laugh.
The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest In 1957 the respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied that they should "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."
The Left-Handed Whopper In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."
The Case of the Interfering Brassieres In 1982 the Daily Mail reported that a local manufacturer had sold 10,000 "rogue bras" that were causing a unique and unprecedented problem, not to the wearers but to the public at large. Apparently the support wire in these bras had been made out of a kind of copper originally designed for use in fire alarms. When this copper came into contact with nylon and body heat, it produced static electricity which, in turn, was interfering with local television and radio broadcasts. The chief engineer of British Telecom, upon reading the article, immediately ordered that all his female laboratory employees disclose what type of bra they were wearing.
Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.
I used to love Murphy Brown and her jokes and I have to admit that Lucille Ball was one of my favorite actresses. So here is to all of us fools who love to laugh and don't mind to much if the laughing is at us one time a year!
April Fools Day on Whidbey Island.
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