Thursday, April 03, 2014

Just for Fun - Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes

An entertaining article from Matt Hamilton at +IBM for Midsize Business. We love this stuff; happy we could help, Matt!



The subject line in the April 1 email from United Computer Group - an IBM Business Partner - caught our attention: Urgent News: IBM Discontinues Support for All Tape Drives Effective Immediately!

We should have looked at the date on the message. It was a playful little April Fools' Day joke that UCG used to remind people that up to 70% of tapes can fail each year.

But the experience did remind us to look up some memorable April Fools' Day pranks. Unquestionably, the best list is "Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time" on MuseumOfHoaxes.com. Alex Boese has lovingly tended this site since 1997, documenting everything from 19th century circus hucksters to present-day politicians. Museum of Hoaxes isn't one of those slapped-together photo blogs. The site actually originated as a research project for Boese's doctoral dissertation, and the content is thoroughly researched and carefully written.

In Boese's opinion, The greatest April Fools' Day hoax of all time was the 1957 Swiss Spaghetti Harvest (right), which fooled so many people that the respected BBC news show Panorama, which dreamed up the prank, was flooded with calls from people wondering where they could get their own spaghetti tree. There's also The Left-Handed Whopper, The collapse of the Wisconsin State Capitol building, the digital makeover of Big Ben and 96 others.


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