![]() Not only did people believe it, they were outraged. National Public Radio’s piece on Nixon’s 1992 presidential run is one of its most famous April Fools’ Day pranks. But the man speaking wasn’t Nixon, and the news segment that aired the announcement wasn’t real. "I never did anything wrong, and I won't do it again," said former President Richard Nixon, announcing that he would run for president in 1992. Some viewers were upset-but some called to ask where they could find a spaghetti bush. The BBC showed footage of spaghetti harvesters diligently picking noodles from trees. On April 1, 1957, the British Broadcasting Corporation told viewers that there had been an “exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop” in Switzerland that year, due in part to “the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.” This shift, which led to the Swiss spaghetti harvest, had its roots in early 20th-century German newspaper pranks like the treasury heist. “It was only in the mid-20th century that April Fools’ Day shifted to be a media event,” says Boese. It was huge news-or would have been, if true. The story was quickly picked up by papers throughout Europe and the United States. Federal Treasury and stolen all of its silver and gold. In 1905, the Berliner Tageblatt, a German newspaper, reported that thieves had tunneled underneath the U.S. “Hundreds or thousands of people would show up,” only to realize they’d been tricked. “By the mid-19th century, pranksters had printed up fake tickets,” he says. The street prank worked so well that people kept pulling it year after year, targeting mostly out-of-towners. “They showed up at the Tower of London, but”-alas-“there was no annual lion-washing ceremony.” “People in London were told to go see the annual ceremony of the washing of the lions at the Tower of London,” he says. The earliest April Fools’ Day hoax on record was in 1698, says Alex Boese, curator of the Museum of Hoaxes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |