There will definitely be some overlap in these collections of pranks and hoaxes (for example, no list would be complete without Burger King’s 1998 full page ad for the Left-handed Whopper or the BBC’s excellent 1957 Spaghetti Tree hoax), but there is a lot of different stuff, as well, at each of the links. Feel free to add more in the comments!
6 People Who Went to Great Lengths for their Pranks.
How To Easily Create A Realistic Looking Head In A Jar.
The 14 Greatest Hoaxes of All Time and Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time.
Fake death reports, disaster warnings, and hangings - The Top 10 Worst April Fool's Day Hoaxes Ever. Personal favorite:
Fake death reports, disaster warnings, and hangings - The Top 10 Worst April Fool's Day Hoaxes Ever. Personal favorite:
Saddam Hussein and his sons may have been ruthless, power-hungry dictators, but that didn't stop them from trying to give the people of Iraq a good chuckle every April Fool's Day. On April 1, 1998 the Babil newspaper, owned by Hussein's son Uday, informed its readers that President Clinton had decided to lift sanctions against Iraq, only to admit later that it was just joking. One can imagine the knee-slapping guffaws when readers realized how they'd been taken for a ride. The laughs continued in 1999 when Uday mischievously announced that the monthly food rations would be supplemented to include bananas, Pepsi, and chocolate. Again, just a joke. At this point, the Husseins appear to have run out of material, because in 2000 they recycled the sanction-lifting gag, and in 2001 trotted out the ration-supplement crowd-pleaser one more time.
April Fool, n. The March fool with another month added to his folly.
ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include the day Niagara Falls ran dry (with bonus Niagara Falls sketches done by Abbott & Costello and by The Three Stooges), how movie theater concessions got so expensive, brutalist sand sculptures, and, for Van Gogh’s birthday, his rarely-seen sketchbooks and the unexpected math behind “Starry Night”.