Today is the most “dangerous” day of the year: the one when you have to pay attention to the news because the joke is just around the corner. Today is April Fool’s Day, but also April Fool’s Day or Pescado de Abril. The party dedicated to jokes is celebrated on the first day of April not only in Italy, but also in Spain, France and Great Britain, as well as the United States, Brazil and Japan. In short, fake news scares the whole world and comes from all over the world. Aside from the numerous legends that hide behind this date, the result is that today it is easy to “bite” the jokes.
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April Fool’s Day and April 1st, a day for laughter: this is how the tradition of jokes was born
April fools, here are the ones who made history
And if you stick sticky notes in the shape of a fish on your back between schoolmates on April 1st, your biggest risk is in the news. But what are the April Fools jokes that went down in history?
The aliens are coming. In 1938 they believed in it
The first April Fool’s joke dates back almost 90 years, in 1938 to be precise. Orson Welles created a topclass radio show that was broadcast on October 30th due to technical problems. The program was titled “The War of the Worlds” and told of a phantom alien invasion of Earth.
The event apparently sparked a general panic among people, and although commentary was cut off to warn that it was all fiction, the chaos did not abate.
Photo source: Internet
Spaghetti grows on trees
Then in 1957 the BBC aired a documentary about the discovery of the spaghetti tree. A threeminute film showing a Swiss family collecting spaghetti in their own garden. At the end of March, says the voice of the documentary, every year is the time to pick spaghetti from the tree that produces it. A “specialty” of the canton of Ticino. And since the winter was particularly hot that year, the documentary filmmaker explains, the collection was particularly rich. A stream of spaghetti that came down from the branches and gathered in baskets. It seems unbelievable, but according to the chronicles of the time, it seems that the BBC’s receptionists have been inundated with calls from those asking where to buy these trees and how to get seeds and transplants. Joke succeeded because spaghetti was not known in Great Britain at that time.
From now on, horses will only go for a walk with plates
In 1961, however, the newspaper La Notte made an absolute “Made in Italy” joke when it announced that a law would be passed in Milan requiring horse owners to affix a plaque to their animals to make them identifiable on the road.
Source: web
Loch Ness monster captured
Another fairly famous April Fool’s joke relates to the April 1, 1972 newspaper report of the death of the dreaded and muchcoveted Loch Ness Monster, identified by a team of zoologists who were researching the very subject…existence poor Nessie, now floating lifeless on the surface of the water. It was actually the body of an elephant seal that had been thrown into the lake for fun. But no one had noticed the joke, so much so that the carcass had even been displayed at a zoo for a few days. Until the joke’s author, park ranger John Shields, confessed that he wanted to prank his colleagues. In fact, he unknowingly did it to the whole world.
The alignment of the planets
On the morning of April 1, 1972, during an interview broadcast by BBC Radio 2, astronomer Patrick Moore announced that at 9:47 a.m. a unique astronomical event would take place that would affect the entire Earth: the planet Pluto would collide with Jupiter even affect the Earth’s gravity.
Moore warned listeners that if they attempted to jump at the precise moment of alignment, they would experience a strange sense of lightness, similar to floating in midair. After 9:47 the radio was flooded with phone calls. This time, the audience wasn’t stunned, they were enthralled: they claimed to have felt that “strange and unusual” feeling and were keen to share it with the rest of the world. Indeed of the universe.
Burger King is the lefthanded sandwich
On April 1, 1998, Burger King bought an entire USA Today ad page dedicated to the introduction of a new product on the menu: the lefthanded Whopper, designed specifically for the 32 million Americans who can get things done with their left hands Law. According to the advertisement, the sandwich would have retained the same ingredients as the standard version, but the position of all toppings would have been rotated 180 degrees to make it easier for lefthanders to eat. Thousands of customers ordered the new sandwich over the next few days. And it seems that in the wake of the fake news, many other customers have ordered the righthanded version of the Whopper instead.
So good joke. Although this was no real joke: In the kitchens of Burger King, the ingredients of the Whopper had really been rotated 180 degrees. But if the sandwich is a round shape, it’s not like it was all that difference…
L’Asola Lucio Battisti’s record is La Sola
Also in the same year in Italy we did not fail to circulate the hoaxes. On April 1, 1998, on Rockol, journalist Franco Zanetti announced the news of the forthcoming release of an album by Lucio Battisti that would be sold online and titled L’Asola. A news that of course was picked up by dozens of newspapers at lightning speed, misleading all Italians who are passionate about the songwriter’s music. But nothing was true, and according to the joke’s authors, those who fell for it could have understood it with a simple clue: the first letters of the titles of the songs, read in order, formed the word April Fool’s Day, without forgetting the title of the Album written “L’asola” but reads “La Sóla”. And again the title of one of the songs was “Do I love or not?”, a clear request not to swallow. Rich and fruitful pecsato for this joke.
Wikipedia closes
2006 also saw the launch of Wikipedia, which announced it was going to shut down, but it was obviously a hoax.
Photo source: Internet
penguins fly
Of course it was always April 1st, this time it was 2008. The protagonist was once again the BBC, which in the documentary “Miracles of Evolution” announces the surprising discovery of a group of researchers involved in an expedition. Thanks to an incredible stroke of luck, the team managed to capture the very rare Adélie penguins flying over King George Island near the Falkland Islands. A video was also released to help communication, which soon became one of the most viewed on Youtube.
“We filmed them for days without knowing what was going to happen,” said fake documentary maker Terry Jones, actually a former Monty Python. “And while the penguins migrate to the Amazon to enjoy some sun says Jones again in the promotion for the video the film shows what Darwin’s idea of natural selection was like.”
Google translates the language of animals
Google also played a leading role in the April Fool’s Day story, around 2010, when it launched an application similar to a kind of translator in Japan, capable of translating the language of animals, apparently a fake.
In short, these are just some of the most famous jokes, but now the history of April Fool’s Day has yet to be written.