Nope, we’re not fooling you today folks. Instead we’re bringing you the top three most original and ridiculous April Fools Day pranks ever conceived. The bucket of water on the door trap can consider itself retired. The “newspapering a door frame” trick can hang its head in shame. It’s time for an alternative approach to April Fools Day. At number #3 – The Left-Handed Whopper. Believe it or not, on April 1st 1998 fast food giants Burger King published a full-page advert in USA Today stating that they were going to release a “Left-handed Whopper”. The reasoning behind this was so that they could satisfy the needs of those poor left-handed customers who just couldn’t get along with the regular, presumably right-handed version. A great many people went to Burger King to purchase a left-handed Whopper (because they thought the prank was so funny, we hope) and they were told that the key difference between the two savoury snacks lay in the arrangement of the condiments. In the left-handed burger, the condiments had been rotated 180 degrees so that the burger would be easy to consume by the hungry lefty. We’re not sure how many people were duped by this particular piece of japery, but the idea itself was certainly far wackier than most April Fools Day gags – significantly wackier.
Left-handed or right-handed? Any takers?
At number #2 – A matter of Gravity. It’s April 1st 1976, and renowned British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore is being interviewed on BBC Radio 2. He suddenly reveals to his flabbergasted interviewer that an event of astronomical proportions is about to occur. A extremely rare celestial phenomenon is about to take place – Pluto will move behind Jupiter for the briefest of moments, and both planets will align with Earth. The combined gravitational forces of these two heavenly bodies will exert more pull on the tidal fluctuations of Earth and temporarily suspend gravity, allowing people to float in mid-air for a few seconds. Moore even gave this bizarre concept a name – the Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect. At precisely 9:47am Moore cried “Jump now!” to the thousands of people listening in, and within minutes the studio had heard that people across Europe had experienced the gravity drop. According to anecdotal evidence, a Dutch lady rang in and exclaimed that she and her husband had floated around the sitting room for a moment or two. Another, slightly aggravated man rang in to say that he’d ascended so fast that he’d hit his head on the ceiling and demanded compensation.
“Jump now!”
In our top spot at number #1 – The bounty of the spaghetti trees. You may have heard of this one before – it is very famous prank – but just in case you haven’t, here is AltLinc’s top pick for the zaniest, most outlandish alternative April Fools Day prank ever. Way back in 1957, on this very day, viewers of British television programme Panorama will have watched a short piece about a particularly bountiful spaghetti harvest in Switzerland. The news broadcast, delivered to the masses by the highly respected Richard Dimbleby, explained that Switzerland had gathered a bumper crop of spaghetti due to the mild winter and (if you can believe it) the sudden disappearance of the notorious spaghetti weevil. Shortly after the broadcast ended, masses of people rang in to find out how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. The broadcast was so convincing that it even showed labourers picking bits of pasta off the tree limbs that they had been draped on. Absolutely priceless.
Can’t beat home-grown spaghetti.