April Fools Day is here again, and I’ve been looking for historical pranks that fit the theme of this blog. You’d think that conspiracy stories would provide endless fodder. Here are five, I thought particularly interesting.
1 April 1960 – Paul Krassner, a man whose name comes up so often on this blog that I have to check my bank statements to make sure I’m not his publicist, enlisted the support of his Realist readers to pull a massive culture jam on broadcast television in general, and CBS in particular. Earlier that year, a southern viewer watching a show on the local CBS affiliate called corporate offices in New York to complain. He had just witnessed a scene in which he saw an African American man kissing a white woman. As Paul chronicled the incident in a 16 March 1960 article titled “A Stereophonic Hoax”:
He went on to report that the sponsor had to make the trip to see the defective kinescope for himself. The affiliate simply replaced the machine, and the sponsor was satisfied with the explanation.
Enraged that the network would bend over backward to appease a lone racist, Krassner asked his readers to call CBS to complain that the 1 April 1960 episode of The Masquerade Party was grossly offensive, and were now going to boycott its sponsor, Hazel-Bishop. Krassner and his co-conspirators were elusive and vague about what specifically irked their ire. So CBS and the sponsor pored over every microbe of that broadcast to determine what was so offensive to over one hundred viewers around the nation.
The Saturday Review wrote about the prank after Krassner revealed the jam. While somewhat childish, this action exposed the vulnerability of mainstream media and entertainment to manipulation by external political forces, and the skittishness of culture industries to offend or challenge the sensibilities of its favorite demographics of consumers.
1 April 1967 – Swiss radio journalists covered live the landing of two US astronauts on the moon. Stations across the country broke in with mock Mission Control interviews, and updates on the astronauts’ actions. American diplomats assigned to Switzerland were initially confused, but eventually took the report at face value, and celebrated the event alongside their Swiss hosts.
According to the Swiss press, the astronauts would begin the return voyage at 7:00pm local time. Moreover, their flight home would be visible to the naked eye if one stood on a high enough setting away from city lights. In Zurich, thousands of people took a train to nearby Mt. Uetliberg. The local transit authority couldn't understand why so many people wanted to go there all of a sudden, but nevertheless provided extra trains to accommodate the traffic.
1 April 1989 – Thousands of Londoners witnessed a red and white flying saucer making its merry olde way across the sky. They flooded Metropol with hundreds of calls. The police investigated, found the object, and tracked it to a field just outside the city. A hatch opened, and a man stepped out.
Some reports claim that the bobbies on the scene fled. I don’t know whether or not I believe that, but one thing remains clear. The man inside the craft was none than Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic. Branson remained in the craft to watch an associate, fitted in a metallic suit, caused havoc with the local police.
Figure 1. Branson’s UFO
![]()
Branson has pulled off a slew of April Fools gags over the years, among them an 2011 announcement that he just purchased Pluto so that he could use his wealth and power to have it reclassified a planet.
1 April 1992 –Talk of the Nation, a venerable National Public Radio news show, flatly announced that Richard Nixon had decided to run for president. In an interview, Tricky Dick felt confident he could unseat George HW Bush, at the time an unpopular incumbent. He vowed to TotN host John Hockenberry, “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.”
As you might expect, loyal NPR listeners called in to express their shock, horror and outrage at the thought of a third Nixon term. But of course, this was April Fools Day. The interview subject turned out to be famed impersonator Rich Little. Nixon, it would seem, had no intention to return to the Oval Office.
In large part because of it’s dry, quasi-academic style, NPR has been somewhat masterful over the years in pulling off April fools jokes using the same flat delivery so prevalent in their serious in-depth coverage of the news. One year, they reported that President Ronald Reagan had traded Arizona to Canada for Saskatchewan. In 2008, they declared that Queen Elizabeth had opened up Buckingham Palace as a hotel.
1 April 1998 – In the NMSR Reports, the official newsletter of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason, Mark Boslough announced that the state legislature of Alabama voted into law a bill changing the value of π from 3.14 to 3.
Despite the ridiculousness of the hoax, many took it seriously at the time for reasons not difficult to understand. Boslough himself had witnessed some of the attempts within his own state school boards and legislatures to declare evolutionary theory invalid, and to establish creationism as scientifically correct. Numerous right-wing and fundamentalist assaults on science and mathematics over the past century and a half made this claim sound quite plausible.
NMSR revealed the hoax in short order, but some still circulate this story as true around the Internet. Given the way the country is politically centered at this moment, it’s probably most accurate to say that the tale isn't true....yet.
_____________
*Indeed, about a half-hour drive from where I’m sitting, we have the Creation Museum, an attempt to put a scientific veneer on religious dogma.
1 April 1960 – Paul Krassner, a man whose name comes up so often on this blog that I have to check my bank statements to make sure I’m not his publicist, enlisted the support of his Realist readers to pull a massive culture jam on broadcast television in general, and CBS in particular. Earlier that year, a southern viewer watching a show on the local CBS affiliate called corporate offices in New York to complain. He had just witnessed a scene in which he saw an African American man kissing a white woman. As Paul chronicled the incident in a 16 March 1960 article titled “A Stereophonic Hoax”:
There was this TV viewer down South, see, and he thought he saw a Negro man kissing a Caucasian woman on his 21-inch screen. So he wrote a nasty letter, threatening never to buy the sponsor’s product again. Actually, the kinescope that had run on his local station was defective, and the leading man appeared to be colored. In truth, like so many leading men, he was colorless.
He went on to report that the sponsor had to make the trip to see the defective kinescope for himself. The affiliate simply replaced the machine, and the sponsor was satisfied with the explanation.
Enraged that the network would bend over backward to appease a lone racist, Krassner asked his readers to call CBS to complain that the 1 April 1960 episode of The Masquerade Party was grossly offensive, and were now going to boycott its sponsor, Hazel-Bishop. Krassner and his co-conspirators were elusive and vague about what specifically irked their ire. So CBS and the sponsor pored over every microbe of that broadcast to determine what was so offensive to over one hundred viewers around the nation.
The Saturday Review wrote about the prank after Krassner revealed the jam. While somewhat childish, this action exposed the vulnerability of mainstream media and entertainment to manipulation by external political forces, and the skittishness of culture industries to offend or challenge the sensibilities of its favorite demographics of consumers.
1 April 1967 – Swiss radio journalists covered live the landing of two US astronauts on the moon. Stations across the country broke in with mock Mission Control interviews, and updates on the astronauts’ actions. American diplomats assigned to Switzerland were initially confused, but eventually took the report at face value, and celebrated the event alongside their Swiss hosts.
According to the Swiss press, the astronauts would begin the return voyage at 7:00pm local time. Moreover, their flight home would be visible to the naked eye if one stood on a high enough setting away from city lights. In Zurich, thousands of people took a train to nearby Mt. Uetliberg. The local transit authority couldn't understand why so many people wanted to go there all of a sudden, but nevertheless provided extra trains to accommodate the traffic.
1 April 1989 – Thousands of Londoners witnessed a red and white flying saucer making its merry olde way across the sky. They flooded Metropol with hundreds of calls. The police investigated, found the object, and tracked it to a field just outside the city. A hatch opened, and a man stepped out.
Some reports claim that the bobbies on the scene fled. I don’t know whether or not I believe that, but one thing remains clear. The man inside the craft was none than Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic. Branson remained in the craft to watch an associate, fitted in a metallic suit, caused havoc with the local police.
Figure 1. Branson’s UFO
Branson has pulled off a slew of April Fools gags over the years, among them an 2011 announcement that he just purchased Pluto so that he could use his wealth and power to have it reclassified a planet.
1 April 1992 –Talk of the Nation, a venerable National Public Radio news show, flatly announced that Richard Nixon had decided to run for president. In an interview, Tricky Dick felt confident he could unseat George HW Bush, at the time an unpopular incumbent. He vowed to TotN host John Hockenberry, “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.”
As you might expect, loyal NPR listeners called in to express their shock, horror and outrage at the thought of a third Nixon term. But of course, this was April Fools Day. The interview subject turned out to be famed impersonator Rich Little. Nixon, it would seem, had no intention to return to the Oval Office.
In large part because of it’s dry, quasi-academic style, NPR has been somewhat masterful over the years in pulling off April fools jokes using the same flat delivery so prevalent in their serious in-depth coverage of the news. One year, they reported that President Ronald Reagan had traded Arizona to Canada for Saskatchewan. In 2008, they declared that Queen Elizabeth had opened up Buckingham Palace as a hotel.
1 April 1998 – In the NMSR Reports, the official newsletter of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason, Mark Boslough announced that the state legislature of Alabama voted into law a bill changing the value of π from 3.14 to 3.
Despite the ridiculousness of the hoax, many took it seriously at the time for reasons not difficult to understand. Boslough himself had witnessed some of the attempts within his own state school boards and legislatures to declare evolutionary theory invalid, and to establish creationism as scientifically correct. Numerous right-wing and fundamentalist assaults on science and mathematics over the past century and a half made this claim sound quite plausible.
NMSR revealed the hoax in short order, but some still circulate this story as true around the Internet. Given the way the country is politically centered at this moment, it’s probably most accurate to say that the tale isn't true....yet.
_____________
*Indeed, about a half-hour drive from where I’m sitting, we have the Creation Museum, an attempt to put a scientific veneer on religious dogma.