The 12 Greatest APRIL FOOL's Pranks Of All Time

in today's video we're going to look at the 12 greatest april fool's day pranks in history let's get started hill president nixon folks woke up on april 1st 1992 to an announcement to the effect that richard nixon was once again running for president this was revealed during a national public radio talk of the nation broadcast which stated that nixon's new campaign motto was i didn't do anything wrong and i won't do it again following up this announcement was an audio clip of nixon making a candidacy speech with a couple of analysts showing up to state what they believe nix's chances might be well the announcement of nixon's candidacy didn't go over well at all with listeners calling in huge numbers to say how shocked and disgusted they were the second half of the show was when the host opted to reveal that the whole thing was actually just an elaborate prank and the voice many believed was nixon was that of comedian rich little who was perhaps too good at his job a pie for your thoughts the value of pie is impossibly long and one of the hardest things to remember which is why one physicist decided to use it as a joke of sorts on april 1st 1998 news surfaced that the state of alabama was set to pass a law that would change the value of pi and make it reflect the biblical value of exactly three this disturbed folks who then started writing letters to complain to the alabama state department we don't think most of those letters got mailed because it was soon revealed that the whole situation was a prank conceived and executed by mark boslow a physicist with a potent sense of humor magnificent sid for the mets in april 1985 sports illustrated decided to fool their readers a little bit the month's edition of the iconic publication stated that the new york mets now had a wonderkid on their role this was sid finch a pitcher who threw very accurate pitches at the speed of 168 miles an hour which was much faster than anyone else sid had never before been on a baseball diamond apparently only getting as good as he was while cloistered a tibetan monastery and had a varied personal idiosyncrasies plus phenomenal speed and power he was also undecided as to whether to play french horn professionally or make a career at a baseball that would announce his decision on the first of april this was sweet news to the ears of mets fans and they were soon calling the sports illustrated switchboard by the hundreds seeking more information on their new idol what they never imagined was that sid fitch was as fake as a three dollar bill and was created out of whole cloth by george plimpton the guy was good enough to leave a big size clue as the whole situation of things in the sid fitch article subheading where he had this to say about met's supposed new picture he's a pitcher part yogi and part recluse impressively liberated from our opulent lifestyle sid's deciding about yoga and his future in baseball well take all the first letters of all of these together and what you get is happy april fools the sid fitch story turned out to be one of the most popular in si history on april 8th they announced that sid was now unable to join the met since he had tragically lost the accuracy needed to make him an exceptional player on april 15th they came clean and announced the entire story was the hoax that it was richard branson and the ufo sighted in london on march 31 1989 what appeared to be a ufo was witnessed by thousands floating in the skies over london drivers were so puzzled and scared by what they were seeing that they pulled over though were unsure if they were scared enough to be muttering their final prayers the ufo in question was apparently descending and soon came to rest on a field just outside london with residents speedily dialing the cops when the police arrived one of them went near the now stationary flying saucer armed with a truncheon a door in the strange craft opened and a [ __ ] dressed in silver metallic substances was seen the police became so scared at the sight of this that they fled as if the hounds of hell were after them eventually it was revealed that the ufo in question was actually a hot air balloon that sir richard branson had specifically built for his needs sir richard is a very successful businessman and an avowed prankster to boot who planned to land his strange craft in hyde park on the 1st of april and thereby give london residents quite a shock unfortunately he failed to reckon with the wind which blew him in the wrong direction and he had to land earlier than he wanted and in the wrong place nude critters be gone on april 1st 2016 national geographic announced via twitter that it would no longer show images of nude animals as that degrades anyone who clicked on the story would get an april fool's greeting plus images of the cutest and adorably dressed animals imaginable that were taken in the first half of the last century weightless for a day april 1st 1976 was the occasion of a rather creative prank very early on that day the noted british astronomer patrick moore announced during an interview on bbc radio 2 that at precisely 9 47 am a very rare astronomical phenomenon would happen according to him pluto would total between jupiter with this somehow working to temporarily decrease the amount of gravity present on earth moore said his listeners could take advantage of this rare planetary alignment by jumping into the air and would assuredly go through a floating sensation unlike anything else they had ever previously experienced many believed him and at the appointed hour and minute the bbc received calls of plenty from folks all over britain claiming that the gravity had indeed temporarily lost its hold on them one caller reported floating around her room with her friends in tow another said his ascent had been so rabid that his skull had impacted on the ceiling and he desired some compensation for that unpleasant experience well this came to be one of the most famous hoaxes in april fool's jokes of the last century incidentally murray contrived the hoax to show the ludicrousness of a fanciful astronomical theory that was discussed in a book titled the jupiter effect this theory stated that an unusual planetary alignment could trigger global earthquakes and the obliteration of los angeles as we know it in 1982 stockings for instant color tv as of april 1st 1962 the svt sterage's television was the national public television broadcaster in sweden and it maintained a monopoly and broadcast in black and white only on april fool's day 1962 a technical expert by the name of cajell stenson appeared on an svt show this fellow went on to inform the viewing public that due to an advancement of technology owners of black and white televisions could easily and very cheaply transform these into color televisions all they had to do was cover the screen of their tv with a nylon stocking with the mesh bending light adding color to the images this so-called expert went on to demonstrate what he was saying and swedes and their thousands were fooled and later reported frantically searching all over the house for nylon meshes that they could cover their tv screens with taco buys the liberty bell on april 1st 1996 the taco bell corporation went on a decidedly unusual route they paid for full-page ads in six of the biggest newspapers in the states these ads announced their purchase of the liberty ballot to reduce the national debt plus their intent to renaming it the taco liberty bell such an unusual announcement triggered an avalanche of calls to the national history park in philadelphia which played host to this iconic bell as well as taco bell's headquarters things might have gotten out of hand if taco bell hadn't opted to reveal hours later that the whole thing was actually a hoax the most bountiful spaghetti harvest on april 1st 1957 viewers of bbc panorama got more than they might have bargained for they were informed that swiss spaghetti farmers were enjoying a rather successful spaghetti harvest mainly because the winter in switzerland had been unusually mild and the spaghetti weevil had been eliminated as threat the decidedly saucy announcement was followed by a video of what appeared to be farmers in switzerland standing on ladders while harvesting spaghetti from trees the show was so convincing that lots of viewers were successfully fooled and many of them called in demanding to be told how to plant their own spaghetti crust to this the bbc told them to place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato and hope for the best the panorama broadcast has done so well that even the bbc director general was taken in and confessed to checking out encyclopedia to see if spaghetti really grew on trees with such information not being available for obvious reasons in iceberg and sydney on the morning of april 1st 1978 sydney harbour played host to a barge towing a rather large iceberg behind it then yes it was an expected occurrence a guy named dick smith who was an adventurer and with quite a bit of money had long been making plans to tow icebergs from antarctica to sydney and was known for excitedly telling people of this to anyone who would listen i was known for excitedly telling of this to anyone who would listen seeing the barge and its icy cargo in the harbor residents of the city came to the obvious conclusion that smith had finally succeeded in this goal smith was quite ready to milk his apparent achievement for all it was worth though he announced plans to cut up the iceberg into ice cubes which anyone could buy at 10 cents a piece these cubes formed from the purest water in antarctica would seemingly give a special flavor to any drink they were part of all seemed to be going great and smith was the man of the moment the attention of all was on him and the local stations were even so good as to make sure the public was aware of every inch that the barge and its precious cargo of eyes traveled as they made their way into sydney harbor as the barge and its cargo were well within the sight of folks gathered on the docks avidly viewing the spectacle mother nature decided to bring matherans to a close and it began raining the rain washed away a lot of things including the shaving cream and fire fighting foam that the iceberg had been formed from mount edge come blows the date was april 1st in 1974 and the location was stika alaska that morning folks in stika arose from the slumber to behold a rather frightful sight thick smoke rising from the crater of mount edgecombe the usual peaceful volcano that was almost within spinning distance of their town town residents rushed out of their beds aghast on the thought of the long dormant volcano was about to erupt and cause damage aplenty but their fears were soon to prove unfounded as this was all something of an april fool's prank it turned out that a local with the improbable name of porky bicker was also known for his love of practical jokes and had airlifted many old tires into the crater of the volcano and set those on fire all to scare stucco residents into thinking the volcano had awoken from its long slumber and was about to vomit flames and fire did they beat porky half to death for scare them like that when they got their hands on them well we have no idea but we do know that the common talk is that six years later when mount st helens blew up a sitka resident wrote the poor porky accusing him of being behind this very destructive volcanic eruption and warning him that he'd gone too far sorry parker the sans-serif case on april 1 1977 readers of the guardian were stunned to find a seven-page supplement in their favorite newspaper it was a focus piece on the republic of san serif said to be a group of islands shaped like semicolons which are ostensibly located somewhere in the indian ocean covered where the culture and geography of these islands and the two biggest named uppercase and lowercase at schools offering pearl diving as a course of study madone was the capital city and leading the whole thing was a guy called general pica as to be expected such news aroused a great deal of interest from readers and they kept phones at the guardian busy for quite a while comparatively few readers noticed that the names used for sans serif and its cities matched all too perfectly with terms used by the printers this was one of the most successful pranks of all time and it's said to have kick-started the obsession that tabloids in britain had in pranking their readers every april fool's day click on the video at the left to watch the funniest presidential moments got on camera we'll see you there

Channel: CuriousReads

Views: 356

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: april fools, april fools pranks, greatest april fools jokes, history's greatest april fools pranks, april fools day, april fools day pranks, curiousreads

Id: F0u1JJQNOD0

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021