HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY!

From our friend Mona Lisa:

April Fool's Day began in the 1500s when the Gregorian calendar took over from the Julian. Those who forgot the change and attempted to celebrate New Year's (previously celebrated on April 1st) on the wrong date were teased as "April fools".

It has become tradition on the first of April to pull jokes of the harmless variety on those near and dear to us. We plot and we scheme, so beware of anyone on this day.

A few of the top pranks of the old days are:

1. The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

1957: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were fooled. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

2. Sidd Finch

1985: Sports Illustrated published a story about a rookie pitcher who planned to play for the Mets. His name was Sidd Finch, and reportedly, he could throw a baseball at 168 MPH with pinpoint accuracy. This was 65 MPH faster than the previous record. Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the "art of the pitch" in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the "great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa." Mets fans celebrated the amazing luck of the team's having found such a gifted player, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more information. In reality this legendary player only existed in the imagination of the author of the article, George Plimpton.

3. The Taco Liberty Bell

1996: The Taco Bell Corporation announced that it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell was housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed, a few hours later, that it was all a practical joke. The best line of the day came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale. Thinking on his feet, he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold. It would now be known, he said, as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

4. The Left-Handed Whopper

In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" especially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new Whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."