A good April Fool’s Day prank needn’t be elaborate or expensive in order to delight your co-workers, terrify a boyfriend or gross-out a room mate in oh-so-many ways! The latter will respond in a rewarding manner to ‘The Poopy Toilet of Doom.’ Moving on, imagine a sleepy co-worker’s surprise when his computer purrs responses in a seductive female voice. The Cadbury Egg Trick borders on the sadistic, especially if your victim is a passionate chocolate lover.
Mentions of April Fool’s Day go back thousands of years. However, in relatively ‘recent’ history, several hoaxes have become legendary. In 1998 Burger King announced the roll out of its “Left-Handed Whopper” allegedly designed so that condiments would drip from the right side of the burger rather than the left. Taco Bell ran a full-page ad in the New York Times announcing it had purchased the Liberty Bell and would rename it the “Taco Liberty Bell.”
In a recurring hoax which began in 1996, it was announced that every computer connected to the World Wide Web must be turned off for Internet Cleaning Day, a 24-hour period during which useless “flotsam and jetsam” are flushed from the system. I can testify that nothing was flushed from my computer.
The BBC perpetrated one of the greatest media hoaxes of all time. On April 1, 1957. It was reported that Switzerland was experiencing a bumper spaghetti harvest, thanks to good weather and the elimination of the dread “spaghetti weevil.” Staged video footage showing happy peasants plucking strands of pasta from tall trees was so convincing that many viewers actually called the network to ask how they could grow their own.