In the spirit of the day, I recommend to you the April Fool’s Day Database, a compendium of splendid hoaxes throughout history. Here are some of my favorites:
1940: The Association for the Prevention of April Fool Jokes (AFPOAFJ) issues guidelines to help people avoid becoming the victims of April Fool jokes.
1960: The national news in the Netherlands reports that the Tower of Pisa has fallen over.
1962: Sweden’s National TV explains that, thanks to the prismatic nature of light, viewers can instantly convert their black-and-white TV sets into color TVs. All they have to do is pull a nylon stocking over the screen.
1975: BBC reports about a controversy involving the Island of Foley, located off the Kent coast. The island was the cause of numerous shipwrecks; therefore, authorities had decided to destroy it. However, because this was protested by conservationists, authorities have decided instead to tow the island out to sea.
1986: The Parisien reports that the Eiffel Tower will be dismantled and reassembled at the new Euro Disney theme park east of Paris.
1994: Discover magazine reveals that an archaeologist digging in Jerusalem has discovered the Holy Grail.
2008: The BBC announces that camera crews filming near the Antarctic for its natural history series Miracles of Evolution have captured the first-ever footage of flying penguins. Instead of huddling together to endure the Antarctic winter, these Adélie penguins take to the air and migrate thousands of miles to the rainforests of South America where they “spend the winter basking in the tropical sun.” (A follow-up video explained how the BBC created the special effects of the flying penguins.)