You Gotta Be Kidding!

Randal C. Hill
50plus Magazine

One Monday evening in 1957, the switchboard at the London office of the BBC came ablaze with blinking lights. Overwhelmed operators frantically fielded the calls, saying no, they had no information where one could purchase a spaghetti plant.
That’s not a typo. The English current affairs program called “Panorama” — much like our “60 Minutes” — had shown a video allegedly of Swiss farmers harvesting freshly-grown spaghetti in their annual spaghetti harvest. The next day in London news broadcasts, the BBC admitted they had aired the segment as an April Fools’ Day prank.
Twenty-three years later, again on April 1, those fun-loving BBC Brits announced that Big Ben’s clock face was going digital, and that whoever called the office first would win the clock’s massive hands. It is unknown how many people fell for that one.
Playing practical jokes has been around for centuries, but it’s anybody’s guess when folks began to ritualize them. Historians have cited numerous rites and festivals as possible beginning points, but few have agreed on when April Fools’ Day became something of a holiday.
One thing is sure: many chuckle-producing events have transpired in our lifetimes here in the US. Take a look.
April 1, 1985, Sports Illustrated magazine featured rookie pitcher Sidd Finch, saying he could throw a fastball 168 miles an hour. (The current record is 106 mph.)
In 1992, NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” featured Richard Nixon (voiced by master imitator Rich Little) announcing another run for the presidency with the slogan: “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.”
Apparently, fast-food folks also enjoy a good April fools’ hoax. In 1996, Taco Bell announced it had purchased the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and would rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. Two years later, Burger King announced a coming-soon “left-handed Whopper.”
Some have fallen for the same absurdities year after year, like being sent to a hardware store for a left-handed wrench, to a pharmacy for “pigeon’s milk,” or to a bookstore for a copy of The History of Eve’s Grandmother.
While some April Fools’ Day hoaxes, pranks, and practical jokes have garnered praise for their innovation and creativity, some people — usually the victims — have described such antics as crude, insensitive, or rude. Whatever our take on this issue, we should be on guard when it comes to April 1st and what appears in the media outlets. You have been warned.
Anybody hungry for some freshly-harvested spaghetti?