APRIL FOOLS' DAY

10

FUNNY PRANKS...TRUE or FALSE?

April Fools' Day is on the first of April every year. It is a day when people can play tricks, jokes and hoaxes on each other. No one really knows the exact origin of this day. In some countries, you have until noon to play your jokes. If you play a trick on someone after midday, you are the April Fool. In other countries, April Fools' Day lasts the whole day. On this day, you never know what or who to believe. Even newspapers and television stations play April Fools' jokes on their readers and viewers. Sometimes people actually think the real news is an April Fools' joke.

In 1957, the BBC showed a documentary of people in Switzerland cutting spaghetti from spaghetti trees. Lots of people contacted the BBC asking how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

FALSE!

Burger King advertised the “left-handed burger” in 1998. They said all of the juice would drip out of the right hand side of the burger. Many customers asked the Burger King staff for the traditional right-handed burger.

FALSE!

In 1976, the British astronomer and radio presenter Patrick Moore announced over the BBC that a rare alignment of the planets Pluto and Jupiter would occur at exactly 9:47 a.m. and would temporarily counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Everyone on earth would feel weightless for a brief moment. Dozens of people called in to report that the experiment had worked!

FALSE!

In the night of March 31st 1989, hundreds of Londoners phoned the police to report an alien spacecraft they had seen in the sky.

FALSE! In fact, it was a hoax and it was a hot air balloon that looked like a spacecraft.

In 1949, a radio presenter in New Zealand told listeners that there were millions of wasps coming to invade. He told viewers to wear their socks over their trousers and to put honey on their doors.

FALSE! Millions of listeners believed him...

Ikea announced that the shop had launched a dog highchair (highchairs are usually for babies) named 'HUNDSTOL' (Swedish for dog chair).

FALSE!

The free London newspaper, Metro, came up with a novel idea to deal with the problem of litter on the underground. They said that the newspaper was now edible – ‘the only paper that you can eat after reading’.

FALSE!

In 1962, SVT (Sveriges Television) was the only television channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white. The station announced that their "technical expert," Kjell Stensson, was going to describe a process that would allow people to view color images on their existing black-and-white TVs. The broadcast cut to Stensson sitting in front of a television set in the studio. He began to explain how the process worked. His discussion was highly technical. He explained that all viewers had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen.

FALSE!

In 2008, the BBC announced that camera crews filming near the Antarctic for its natural history series Miracles of Evolution had captured Adélie penguins flying. Presenter Terry Jones explained that, instead of huddling together to endure the Antarctic winter, these penguins took to the air and flew thousands of miles to the rainforests of South America where they "spend the winter basking in the tropical sun."

FALSE!

In 2017, Google introduced their new gaming apps, not towards humans, but for pets. The brand pulled on our heart strings, pointing out how lonely pets are when we’re away. The new addition includes interactive pet games as well as training apps.

FALSE!

How many did you guess? Be careful on the 1st of April...