• 2600: The Hacker Quarterly changed their biannual conference (H.O.P.E.) website to look identical to Presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign site but "hacked'.
• ActBlue 2008 ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising hub, announces on its blog that it will begin collecting funds for US candidates in Euros, due to the decline of the dollar.
• Polar Bear Conservancy 2008 Grist reports a Seattle-based nonprofit is preparing to relocate polar bears to Antarctica to protect them from climate change.
• StreetPrices 2008 released its entire product guide on paper, delivered every half hour.
• Kremvax: In 1984, in one of the earliest on-line hoaxes, a message was circulated that Usenet had been opened to users in the Soviet Union.^[27]
• April Fools' Day RFC
• Google's hoaxes
• Dead fairy hoax: In 2007, an illusion designer for magicians posted on his website some images illustrating the corpse of an unknown eight-inch creation, which was claimed to be the mummified remains of a fairy. He later sold the fairy on eBay for £280.^[28]
• RISKS Digest publishes a special April 1st issue.
• Slashdot unveiled a new pink "OMG PONIES" theme in 2006. [2]
• NationStates runs an annual hoax on April 1st. In 2004, the hoax was that there was a population bug and all nations' populations would be reset to 5 million people. In 2005, there was a message (supposedly from the Department of Homeworld Security) that NationStates was illegal by US law. In 2006, 'NationDates' was created. It used a quiz similar to the one taken at the sign-up page, and matched that nation with a random country in the same region. In 2007, many users received "Regional moderator" icons with the promise that they would be able to "wield their awesome power" over other users. For April Fools' Day 2008, NationStates has created a new "World Assembly" in the place of the United Nations, which "has spectacularly imploded in a colossal fireball of extra-dimensional inanity".^[29] This was later revealed to be a non-hoax, and that the inspiration to use it as an April Fools joke came from the assumption it was too unbelievable ^[30]
• Neopets has performed numerous April Fools' jokes, including releasing 50 new pets, abolishing Neopoints completely, and charging Neopoints to use the site.
• Water on Mars: In 2005 a news story was posted on the official NASA website purporting to have pictures of water on Mars. The picture actually was just a picture of a glass of water on a Mars Candy Bar.^[31]
• Homestar Runner creators, The Brothers Chaps, now regularly put up April Fools' jokes, such as the most recent one in which the entire site was flipped upside-down.
• Microsoft Research Reclaims Value of Pi: In 2008, an executive with the Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments posted on his personal blog an updated spoof of the 1998 Aprils Fool hoax claiming Alabama's state legislature had rounded the value of pi to the "Biblical value of 3." The 2008 hoax claimed that Microsoft Research had determined the true-up value of pi to be a definitive 3.141999, or as expressed in company literature, “Three easy payments of 1.047333.”^[32]
• Assassination of Bill Gates: In 2003, many Chinese and South Korean websites claimed that CNN reported Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, was assassinated, resulting in a 1.5% drop in the Korean stock market.^[33]
• Throughout production of the 2005 remake of King Kong, director Peter Jackson produced behind-the-scenes featurettes for the Internet providing updates on the project. On April 1, 2005, Jackson (aided by cast members, crew members, and even a studio representative) announced that King Kong would be followed by a sequel, Son of Kong, which would see Kong's offspring battling Nazis after being equipped with shoulder mounted machine guns. Jackson went so far as to have faux production drawings and computer animation test footage created for the film. The joke report was later included on the Peter Jackson's Production Diaries DVD set but was not identified as an April Fools' joke; it is incumbent upon the viewer to notice the date of the installment.
• Rock band Tool publishes an April Fools' joke every year on their website [3]. For example, in 2005 Tool announced that their singer Maynard James Keenan had found religion and quit the music business. Also in 1997, a serious tour bus crash was reported to have taken place.
• Andrew Carlssin was a hoax created by the Weekly World News about a time-traveling man, that was later printed on Yahoo News as an April Fools' Joke.
• Maddox once pulled an infamous April Fools' Day joke on April 1, 2004, on his site, The Best Page In The Universe. The site had a completely different design, including imagery that represents everything he usually is against, and also misspelling several words and using chat-based acronyms such as "LOL" all throughout. However, each page's address featured an 'af' in it somewhere, indicating it was an April Fools' joke. Despite this small but obvious clue, several fans fell for the joke, some even claiming they will never visit the site again. Four days later on April 5, Maddox posted an article titled "How do you dumbasses manage to breathe?" The original April Fools' page can be seen here. The rebuttal article can be viewed here.

• SARS Infects Hong Kong: In 2003 during the time when Hong Kong was seriously hit by SARS, it was rumored that many people in Hong Kong had become infected with SARS and become uncontrolled, that all immigration ports would be closed to quarantine the region, and that Tung Chee Hwa, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong at that time, had resigned. Hong Kong supermarkets were immediately overwhelmed by panicked shoppers. The Hong Kong government held a press conference to deny the rumor. The rumor, which was intended as an April Fools' prank, was started by a student by imitating the design of Ming Pao newspaper website. He was charged for this incident.^[34]
• Online Retailer ThinkGeek usually replace their main page with a page containing "Featured Items" that are a joke. The page looks, feels and functions just like their real one, however the items featured are hoax and do not exist. Such items have included "Inhalable Caffeine Sticks", a USB pregnancy test kit, and an alarm clock which wirelessly connects to your PC to log into your internet banking, and send funds to a charity. Adding any of these items to your shopping cart takes you to a page stating that the item is a hoax. However, due to extremely high demand for one of their latest hoaxes, they decided to develop and market the Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt that they announced for April Fools 2008.
• Facebook and the News-Feed: On April 1, 2007, Facebook posted fake updates on the News-feed page reading [4]:
  • "Introducing LivePoke! Facebook will dispatch a real live person today to poke a friend of your choice. (offer good for only the first 100 pokers in each network)"
  • "Harry and Voldemort have set their relationship status to 'Mortal Enemies.'"
  • "You are on Facebook, reading your News Feed."
  • "Meredith and McDreamy have changed their relationship status to 'It's Complicated' ... oh wait ... 'In a Relationship' ... oh wait ... 'It's Complicated' again."
  • "Two of your oxen drowned when you tried to ford the river."
  • "Bracket Buster: Ohio State and Florida have mutually agreed on a tie and will not play the championship game."
  • Changing the copyrights from "a Mark Zuckerberg production" to a random Facebook employees' name or the user's own.
• In 2007, wordpress.com set up their main page so that when logged in, your latest post would appear as 'Blog Of The Minute'. This raised several questions on their support forums.
• www.howstuffworks.com does an annual bogus article. In 2006, it was "How Animated Tattoos Work"; in 2007 "How Phone Cell Implants Work"; in 2008 "How the Air Force One Hybrid Works"..^[35]
• Motoshi Sakriboto: In 2007, the Square Enix fansite Square Haven reported that game music composers Motoi Sakuraba and Hitoshi Sakimoto had announced a merger. The resulting amalgamated life form was named Motoshi Sakriboto. The hoax played off the fact that when rival role-playing game developers Square and Enix merged on April 1, 2003, many believed the news to be an April Fools' joke.^[36]
• Club Penguin's April Fool's Day parties have always changed almost all of Club Penguin. In the 2008 one, the iceberg looked like a cup of ice water, and the dock was changed to a super fast ice rink, as well as the forest going completely upside down and the cove having various effects. Also, several buildings' graphics looked as if they had been drawn with crayons, pencils, or as if they had been rapidly made with Microsoft paint.
• In 2008, YouTube pranked unsuspecting viewers by hyperlinking all featured videos to a Rickroll posted by the username YTRickRollsYou. ThinkGeek added a double measure when his front page feature all prank items that could not be purchased, as well as when a user clicked on the Beta Max to HD-dvd converter, the video instruction rick-rolled its viewers after fourteen seconds of play.
• Popular online webcomics xkcd, Questionable Content, and qwantz exchanged their URLs, meaning that http://www.xkcd.com/ led to QC, http://www.questionablecontent.net/ led to qwantz, and http://qwantz.com/ led to xkcd. XKCD's alternate URL, http://cu.nniling.us/, also led to QC.
• In 2008, Australian video gaming website company MyMedia, released information and previews on MyMedia: The Movie, the supposed upcoming movie was to be animated and produced by the Australian Film Commission, it was confirmed fake a few days after.^[37]
• ScoringSessions.com announced that composer John Williams was replaced by Danny Elfman on the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - and provided photos from the scoring sessions.^[38]
• In 2008, Boeing announced that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner project was being cancelled because of difficulties with foreign suppliers. An alternate was given, a new Boeing 767 dubbed the 'Miserliner.' An in-depth explanation was given, citing multiple reasons why it would be wise to cancel the 787, even though a prototype had already been built months ago.

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Lists of April Fool hoaxes

• April 1, 1999
• April 1, 2000
• April 1, 2002
• April 1, 2003
• April 1, 2004
• April 1, 2005
• April 1, 2006
• April 1, 2007
• April 1, 2008

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Real news on April Fools' Day

The frequency of April Fools' hoaxes sometimes makes people doubt real news stories released on 1 April.

• The 1 April 1946 Aleutian Island earthquake tsunami that killed 165 people in Hawaii and Alaska resulted in the creation of a tsunami warning system (specifically the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre), established in 1949 for Pacific Ocean countries. The tsunami in question is known in Hawaii as the "April Fools' Day Tsunami" due to people drowning because of the assumptions that the warnings were an April Fools' prank.

• The death of King George II of Greece on 1 April 1947.

• The AMC Gremlin was first introduced on April 1, 1970.^[39]

• On April 1, 1993, NASCAR Winston Cup Series Champion Alan Kulwicki was killed in a plane crash involving Hooters of America executives in Blountville, Tennessee near the Tri-Cities Airport. The party was traveling to the Food City 500 qualifying scheduled for the next day.

• The 2005 death of comedian Mitch Hedberg was originally dismissed as an April Fools' joke. The comedian's March 29, 2005 death was announced on March 31, but many newspapers didn't carry the story until April 1, 2005.

• Gmail's April 2004 launch was widely believed to be a prank, as Google traditionally perpetrates April Fool's Day hoaxes each April 1 (see Google's hoaxes.) Another Google-related event that turned out not to be a hoax occurred on April 1, 2007, when employees at Google's New York City office were alerted that a ball python kept in an engineer's cubicle had escaped and was on the loose. An internal e-mail acknowledged that "the timing…could not be more awkward" but that the snake's escape was in fact an actual occurrence and not a prank.^[40]

• The merger of Square and its rival company, Enix, took place on April 1, 2003, and was originally thought to be a joke.

• The announcement of the anime version of the Powerpuff Girls, Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z, was on April Fools Day causing many to think it was a joke.

• The game Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games was announced only a couple days before April Fools Day. Forums were flooded because so many thought that the two rivals since the 90's, Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog, appearing together in a video game as an official 2008 Olympics game was a joke.

• British sprinter Dwain Chambers joined English rugby league team Castleford Tigers shortly before 1st April 2008. The athlete was attempting a return to top flight athletics at the time following a high profile drugs ban, and his apparent unfamiliarity with rugby led many people to assume this was an April Fools' Day prank.

• UEFA requires the Swedish hamburger chain Max to close their restaurant near the arena in Borås during the European Under-21 Football Championship. The reason is a requirement from the main sponsor McDonalds. This was published on April 1st 2008, but was a real requirement, not a joke. There is an agreement between UEFA and the city with a clause saying that the sponsors shall have monopoly around the arena.

• On April 1, 1984, singer Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father. Originally, people assumed that it was a fake news story, especially considering the bizarre aspect of the father being the murderer.

[

Other prank days in the world

In Iran, people play jokes on each other on the 13th day of the Persian calendar new year (Norouz), which falls on April 1 or April 2. This day is called Sizdah Bedar and is considered to be the oldest prank-tradition in the world still alive today, which has led many to believe that the origins of the April Fools Day goes back to this tradition which is believed to have been celebrated by Persians as far back as 536 BC.

The April 1 tradition in France and French-speaking Canada includes poisson d'avril (literally "April's fish"), attempting to attach a paper fish to the victim's back without being noticed. This is also widespread in other nations, such as Italy (where the term pesce d'aprile (literally "April's fish") is also used to refer to any jokes done during the day).

In Spanish-speaking countries, similar pranks are practiced on December 28, the Day of the Holy Innocents. This custom also exists in certain areas of Belgium, including the province of Antwerp. The Flemish tradition is for children to lock out their parents or teachers, only letting them in if they promise to bring treats the same evening or the next day.

In Poland, "prima aprilis" ("April 1" in Latin) is a day full of jokes - various hoaxes are prepared by people, media (which sometimes cooperate to make the 'information' more credible) and even public institutions. Serious activities are usually avoided. This conviction is so strong that the anti-Turkish alliance with Leopold I signed on April 1, 1683, was backdated to March 31.

In some countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Zimbabwe and New Zealand, the April 1 tradition requires jokes to be played before midday: if somebody pulls an April Fools' Trick after midday, then the person pulling the trick is actually considered the fool. The following rhymes may be chanted:

April Fool's has come and gone.
Who's the fool that carried on?

or

April Fool's has been and passed,
And you're the biggest fool at last.

In Scotland April Fool's Day is traditionally called Hunt-the-Gowk Day ("gowk" is Scots for a cuckoo or a foolish person), although this name has fallen into disuse. The traditional prank is to ask someone to deliver a sealed message requesting help of some sort. In fact, the message reads "Dinna laugh, dinna smile. Hunt the gowk another mile". The recipient, upon reading it, will explain he can only help if he first contacts another person, and sends the victim to this person with an identical message, with the same result.

In Denmark the 1st of May is known as "Maj-kat", meaning quite simply "May-cat", and is identical to April Fools' day, though Danes also celebrate April Fools' day ("aprilsnar").

Some Jewish communities have a traditional event called a Purim spiel, which is similar in many ways to April Fools' Day. Fake newspaper articles are common.

[

April Fools' Day in media

• The 1986 horror film April Fool's Day is themed around the holiday (akin to Halloween).
• In the film The French Connection, the opening scenes take place on April 1 and show children in Marseille running around pinning poissons d'Avril (April fish) on each other.
• The birthday of the mischievous twins, Fred and George Weasley from the Harry Potter series is April 1st.
• O. Stock, C. Strapparava & A. Nijholt (eds.) The April Fools' Day Workshop on Computational Humour. Proc. Twente Workshop on Language Technology 20 (TWLT20), ISSN 0929-0672, ITC-IRST, Trento, Italy, April 2002, 146 pp

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Quotes about April Fools' Day

“	April 1st: This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three-hundred and sixty-four.	”
	— Mark Twain

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See also

• April Fool is the codename for a spy and double agent who allegedly played a key role in the downfall of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
• Feast of the Holy Innocents (Spanish: Día de los Santos Inocentes) celebrated in Spain and Latin American countries on 28 December
• Pigasus Award, a tongue-in-cheek honor presented on April 1, given in the field of "Paranormal fraud".
• Sizdah Bedar, the last day of two-week springtime celebrations for the Persian New Year is a day of pranks, just like April Fools' Day.
• April 1

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References

[

Notes

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[

External links

• Museum of Hoaxes: Top 100 April Fool's Day hoaxes of all time
• April Fools' Day On The Web: A long list of supposed April Fools from 2004 until the present

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