APRIL FOOLS PRANKS… I’ve been known to pull a few, including: Saran Wrapping a door entryway, stuffing olives with toothpaste, and calling mail order companies to ask the most mundane questions about their products (okay, I was pubescent!) The origins of April Fools’ Day is a bit perplexing, but the earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness can be found in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1392).
The Museum of Hoaxes has the Top 100 April Fool Hoaxes of all time. Remember in 1996 when Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to “reduce the country’s debt” and renamed it the “Taco Liberty Bell?” That caused some quick bell-ringing outrage! But one of my personal favorites was in 2008 when the BBC announced that camera crews filming near the Antarctic for its natural history series Miracles of Evolution had captured footage of Adélie penguins taking to the air. It even offered a must watch video clip of these flying penguins. Question is: who will get us this year?
