April Fools Day’s history and fun

Originally the first paragraph of this column, the first to appear in April, was different than what you are now reading. The initial version announced that a coalition of local historians had formed a corporation and purchased the Express.

All employees of the paper, with the exception of the lady in accounting who sends me an occasional check, had been served notice. We would retain only those who wholeheartedly supported our concept of returning the paper to black and white, eliminating photographs, and printing all text in Swedish.   

I liked the paragraph. I decided, though, it was too risky.

People don’t do April Fools jokes the way they used to.

Our editor would not have been happy had subscribers scanned the first few lines and canceled. What would I say if staff members reacted by enrolling in a Swedish class? Or to certain local historians wanting to know why they weren’t cut in on the deal?  

The discarded paragraph was to have been a lead-in for examples of other April hoaxes.

One of my favorites took place in 1982. A reporter went public with a story claiming brassieres were interfering with mass communication. Several thousand bras, he said, had been manufactured with support wire made of material intended for use in fire-alarms.

When this wire came in contact with nylon and body heat an electronic signal was emitted, a signal which distorted television and radio broadcasts.

A good many people began blaming brassieres for fuzzy TV reception. Some still do.

Another was perpetrated by a sportswriter named George Plimpton, who published an article saying the New York Mets had signed a pitching phenomenon who threw a fast ball at 168 miles per hour. This was about 65 mph more than was humanly possible.

The pitcher, Sidd Finch, reportedly learned “the art of the pitch” through spiritual meditation at a Tibetan monastery.

The article began with the words “He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding about yoga…” The first letters of these words spell out “Happy April Fools Day,” but few noticed.   

I like one that had to do with the Swiss spaghetti harvest. A clever reporter, back in 1957, informed the public that due to an exceptionally mild winter, along with the eradication of the dreaded “spaghetti weevil,” Swiss farmers were harvesting a bumper crop of spaghetti. Swiss peasants were actually pictured picking lengthy strands of spaghetti from tree branches.

(If you don’t quite get this one, don’t feel bad. Neither did my aunt Madge, who couldn’t understand why the price of pasta didn’t go down.)

For the April 1 edition of 1933, the Madison Capital-Times doctored a photograph of the Wisconsin state capital, making it appear the dome had done a Humpty Dumpty. The accompanying article said a series of blasts, generated by an accumulation of hot air, had toppled the massive dome, showering passers-by with debris.

Miraculously, there were no injuries.

A few years ago a British supermarket chain, Tesco, did an April 1st advertisement announcing that their produce section included the remarkable “whistling carrot.” The item went on to say a strain of carrots had been genetically modified to grow with strategically located holes. Because of the holes these carrots, placed in boiling water, made a whistling sound when fully cooked.

And so on. I think the guy who did the article on fire-alarm wire in brassieres was the same who later issued an urgent bulletin on man-made global warming. Or was that Al Gore?  

Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.