BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes

Subject: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: harpgirl
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 06:45 PM

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...no one seems to have played an April Fool's joke on me today. But I'll never forget my mom's joke when I was in grade school. Forgive me if I've told this before.

My mom made me lunch and told me to stay at schoo. This was a rare treat because I lived a block from school and came home every day. I opened my lunch box, spread out my sandwich and cookies and milk. My sandwich was in a round hamburger bun. I took a big bite and Yuck! I spit it out. It was mayonnaise spread all over a piece of paper that said April Fool's!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 06:55 PM

This was my April Fool's joke from last year. I enjoyed that one quite a lot. I didn't feel particularly inspired to do one this year.

One armed Jamie McGee, blues bagpiper

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 06:59 PM

I think my best was at a bar. I went around and got everyone to agree to walk out of the bar as soon as the band started. The band was a local and most of us knew them so about 50 people got up and walked out. The band and bartender had no idea what was going on. The only problem was once we were outside, then what! We just stood around about 5 Min.s BSing and walked back in and said, April Fools! It was a good one on them. (Only 2 people in the bar that didn't do it!)
Peace. And may you still pull a good gag or two today! Rustic

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 07:00 PM

The spaghetti harvest one is the greatest I've heard of.

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 07:03 PM

Hey good one Carol!

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 07:07 PM

In case anyone doesn't know of Richard Dimbelby's spaghetti one, here is one link.

It was before my time I'm afraid.

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Beccy
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 07:14 PM

One year my family was on vacation in Florida over April 1st. I was about 12 and I had siblings at 10,9,5,and 5 years old respectively. We were staying in a hotel room because of torrential rains (we're a camping crew...) and my Dad fell in the hotel room and started howling. He grabbed his left leg and rolled around yelling that he had broken it. When my Mom came running out of the bathroom with her pants around her ankles and all of us kids were around him (with 3 of the 5 crying) my Dad, looking much chagrined, said, "April Fool's". He was then pummelled.

Justice was swift.

We got home to snow (as there can be in Northern Michigan in April) and we were tobogganing on our back hill. Dad was steering the sled and he saw a big bump coming. He stuck his left leg out to steer. We were going REALLY fast and with 6 people in the sled (Mom was inside making lumpia) there was quite a bit of weight to shift, so when Dad's leg got caught on a piece of frozen dog poop, his leg broke. The same 3 of the 5 of us who were crying stood crying again while myself and my sister ran up the hill to get my Mom. She greeted our pronouncement of "Dad broke his leg Mom. Come quick." with, "Yeah, right. Tell your Dad that it worked once, but I'm in the middle of a big batch of lumpia." Suffice it to say that when she turned around and saw our faces she knew we weren't kidding and neither was Dad. He was in a cast for 3 months (a REALLY long time for a Camp Manager- which he was.)

Beccy

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Sorcha
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 07:40 PM

Best one I've heard of was several years ago when Max "closed" Mudcat.....whooeee, what excitment!

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 08:12 PM

That spaghetti one is great. I stole the Jamie McGee bit from the BBC. They do great practical jokes.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 10:28 PM

Check out my "Mouthy French teen....." one. Twas fun.

Rick

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: GUEST,Wesley S
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 10:51 PM

This one is evil.

I knew someone who went out early in the morning to buy a lottery ticket - and got one with the numbers that had won the night before. Then when his wife woke up he asked her to read the newspaper and check the numbers for todays ticket against the numbers that had won the previous night.

She never trusted him to buy a lottery ticket again.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: khandu
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 11:11 PM

Last year, a hospital in Jackson, MS released their monthly newsletter. The front page story was about the world's first successful gizzard transplant. It was written with great attention to detail and told how the doctors at the hospital had transplanted a turkey gizzard into a man( gave his name, age and hometown). The man had been suffering from a sluggish gizzard for years from having taken in too much gravel from the rural roads he had traveled all his life.

Since I was at the hospital because my son was being treated there, my mind was not on April Fools. I read the report and though "I must be missing something!". I re-read it and then asked my son's girlfriend if she had read it. She said she had and then she pointed to the date at the top of the page.It read "April Fool's Day 2002"!

I felt like a real doofus.

Of course, I took the paper with me and fooled several people with it. One actually searched the internet to find where a human's gizzard was located!

Ken

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 11:12 PM

i oncwe worked for a silly little local newspaper in the saanich pennisula near victoeia British Columbia. we put out an april fools issue that included'

1. a head line at the time if the marriage of dianna to prince charles

CHUCK AND DI TO HONNEYMOON IN THE PENNISULA

2. a story in a farm regiom where the potato crop was threatened by golden neimetodes--little buggs

KILLER NEIMETODES FROM AFRICA INVADE THE FARMS OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

3. finally in a era when many rural pople were afraid of mass immigrantion to canada and in an area where the agricultural farm reserve was a big issue(to try and preserve farm land from development)

SAANICH PENUSILA TO BE REZONED FOR MULTIPLE UNIT DWELLINGS TO HOUSE FIFTY THOUSAND REFUGES FROM THE WARN TORN AFFRICAN NATION OF TIMBOBWE

with a follow up that little is know about the war in timbonwe except that the countries two leaders, tim and bob have been at war for thirty years

people were outrages they didn't realiz e it was ajoke ane we got thousands of calls.

sadly the paper was a real sleazy advertiser the rest of the time

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Teribus
Date: 02 Apr 03 - 03:28 AM

Norway's NRK are well known for their April Fool's Stunts:

This year's one was a piece on their main news about the increase, and success of alco-pops amongst youngsters. They had a reporter, a representative from Tine (major milk supplier), a politician and a manager from a 7-11 in Oslo. The product they were discussing was the market launch of alco-milk, designed to capture some of the lucrative alco-pop market.

In previous years, they have informed the public that they could get a free switch into which they could plug their radios and TV sets so that the instant an accordian started playing the radio or TV set would change channel - they were inundated with people calling in to get one.

Their best one, was an announcement that due to a bottle shortage, the Vinmonopol was being forced into giving away stocks of wine held in bulk. All people had to do was to turn up at their local Vinmonopol with containers for the wine. Only one guy actually turned it, by lending truth to the story. He turned up at his local Vinmonopol with two buckets, one for red and the other for white. When he was told it was a joke, he ordered and paid for six bottles of each, opened them and poured the contents into his buckets and walked out of the place, past the huge line waiting outside the store.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 02 Apr 03 - 08:30 AM

I used to work in the library of a Government research institute & heard & read some great stories about tricks & April Fool's jokes.

Our Director & another physicist (PHD's both of them & the Director was Australia's representative on an international commission!) once wrote a spurious paper & presented it at an international conference. He said everyone was talking BS & didn't know what they were talking about so they wrote it.

New Scientist once reported an April Fools joke perpetrated by folks at British institute of some kind - a press release for a new instrument - which was really a 12" wooden ruler. The joke continued as several years/ months? later a news agency asked about the news release, so they pointed out the date it was issued.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: DMcG
Date: 02 Apr 03 - 08:39 AM

I worked for a research lab at one time and managed to get my managers to approve an order for an analog multi-frequency audio signal generator - otherwise known as a grand piano.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Apr 03 - 10:01 AM

In the Army long ago we received a memo from the Pentagon telling us to report the amount of filed material we had -- they even gave a formula for converting maps and so on into 8.5 x 11 inch paper equivalents. Naturally, I had to improve on this....

I typed a memo stating that by 0730 the next morning all filed material would have to be reported in cubic meters. To do this, you were to take all of it out of the files and pile it in the middle of the room in a neat pile and measure it. I had authentic routing lists at the top, forged the signature and name of a lieutenant in another company, and, to make it REALLY authentic, destroyed the original and used the carbon copy (which shows how long ago I did this). Then I took it to a friend in another office, after dinner and when I knew he'd be napping.

It took me and evenyone in his section to calm him down.

The Elkhart (Indiana) "Truth" newspaper reported some years ago that the US Army was buying 200,000 specially modified recreational vehicles for use on the battlefield in case of war. Since Elkhart makes a LOT of RVs, this was big news, and led to some rather impolite responses when the date of the paper was pointed out.

I also once sent a memo to my boss suggesting that we link all of the automatic flush mechanisms on the urinals in the men's rooms to the Internet so that we could measure cleanliness, water usage, and pipe thickness from anywhere in the world. The frightening thing was that I knew how to do this!

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: JenEllen
Date: 02 Apr 03 - 10:57 AM

My finest was a prank pulled on a friend a few years back. He had been remodeling his kitchen and put in a new sink and countertop. When he was out for the evening, I snuck in and used some wide clear packing tape to tape the sinksprayer wide open. My thought was that when he got up on April 1, 430am, to fill his coffeepot, he'd get an early shower. tee-hee and nothing more....

Well, I heard about it later from the wife of my friend. Everything had gone according to plan, he'd gotten drenched, but the kicker was that when his wife got out of the bath and came into the kitchen, she found him with the sink torn out. He never saw the tape, drenched himself numerous times before assuming the "f*cking sink was broken", and was now ready to take it back to the store. His wife cautiously pointed out the tape on the sprayer, then called and warned me that retribution would be swift and painful.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Amos
Date: 02 Apr 03 - 12:28 PM

THen there was the guy who inserted a listing into a high-tech parts catalogue for a new memory chip, which was listed as a "write-only memory chip". It gave some spurious technical numbers as specs, so it looked like a real chip listing.

The guy actually got some serious enquiries about the fictitious item from procurement people.

Ya gotta wonder if these guys read what they're reading!

A

(Pause and reflect on the possible uses of write-only memory, if this seems obscure to you).

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: MMario
Date: 02 Apr 03 - 12:38 PM

< a href=http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/spaghetti.html>Sphagetti Harvest

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Apr 03 - 08:37 PM

some great news!

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 03 Apr 03 - 04:07 AM

I remember the original "spaghetti harvest" news report. Another UK April Fool news item some years back concerned two WW1 airmen who were supposed to have fallen in love with the same French Lady. One was English and one was German, and they had both courted her alternately as the front line kept moving backwards and forwards over her village. After the war, they had both continued their affairs with her, but she always refused to marry either. The two elderly aviators had finally decided to have an arial duel in vintage planes to sort the matter out once and for all. They showed a brief piece of film in which one plane was seen to crash - probably from "The Blue Max". The phone lines were inundated with calls and at the end of the news, viewers were gently reminded of the date.

One of the best jokes that I've been involved in, was on a young lady who scheduled mainframe slots at a large computer centre (before the days of multitasking). Her desk had a different coloured phone for each bit of hardware. People kept ringing alternate phones with spoof queries until she was in quite a tiz. When the yellow phone suddenly rang she turned round, grabbed it, and was photographed saying "Hello" into a banana which I'd managed to place on the cradle while she was preoccupied.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: HuwG
Date: 03 Apr 03 - 07:23 AM

There are the remains of an old Roman fort (Melandra Castle) near where I live. One April 1st, the local newspaper ran a story about some children who had come across some valuable artefacts (statues, coins and so on) while playing there. These all commemorated the fort's governor, one "Aprilius Primus", who died in 55 BC.

Unfortunately, some of those nearby residents who didn't spot the April Fool (there were a lot of them; Melandra Castle backs onto a council housing estate), caused some damage to the site, using metal detectors and shovels to try and find more bits and pieces of value.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: GUEST,Mr Red (Wearing Peadantic Electronic Enginee
Date: 03 Apr 03 - 09:02 AM

Amos
Most smart cards and satellite cards are not memory readable visa (sic) vis sensitive data, though if you allow the internal embedded processor as part of the equation then I guess it is being read.
Smart crooks actually remove the plastic covering and look with a microscope (scanning or otherwise) and read the metalization or the stored charge to determine the stored data. Then clone the card/chip. Siemens have a recent patent involving soldering two chips together such that separating them destroys the data.

I once expanded a used toopaste tube and printed-up labels with "Spirit Level Bubbles" - this was in the days when home printing presses were extremely rare. It was a pre-emptive strike as I was a young apprentice at the time and was ready for them.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorable April Fool's Jokes
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 03 Apr 03 - 11:14 AM

When I was at university, posters appeared everywhere saying that on the following Thursday (they didn't quote the date) the medical faculty was prepared to pay one pound (a lot of money for an impoverished student in the sixties) per person for urine samples which they required for a research project. A note at the bottom requested that people brought the specimen with them. There was a queue of students right around the block each with a bottle clutched in their hand. Containers had been filched from anywhere - there were no empty milk bottles on doorsteps for miles around. After the joke was exposed, the bottles of "amber fluid" were left all standing along the length of the Medical Faculty wall.