All About April Fools' Day: Pranks, Trivia, And More!

Happy April Fool's Day!!

Here is your handy-dandy HuffPost guide to everything you need to know about April Fool's Day.

First things first, read up on your April Fool's Day history here.

Now, you can check out some of the pranks that were pulled today, like Virgle, Google and Virgin's master plan to launch a human colony on Mars. Go here to apply to be a Virgle pioneer, or here to read about their 100 Year Plan.

Virgle was a good goof, but the Museum of Hoaxes has a fantastic list of the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of all time.

Topping the list is the BBC's Swiss Spaghetti Harvest prank:
In 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 taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied that they should "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

#9 is the relatively creepy Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers:
In its April 1995 issue Discover Magazine announced that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them. After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have looked like a penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any other article in their history.

You can find the entire list of hoaxes here.

Click here for some tips for successful pranks, and here for some great prank ideas. Got any friends who are obsessed with their iPhones? Fool 'em with this great "broken screen" simulator. Download the application on to their phone, and watch as the screen of their phone "shatters". Nothing like a good tech prank!

Read about the man who's (anecdotally) considered the best prankster in the world.

Check out this HBO April Fool's Day prank from 1986.

What is your favorite hoax off the Top 100 list? What's your favorite April Fool's Day Prank? Share your stories below.

Comments

[forpeace]

11:41 PM on 04/01/2008

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Is the Bush's recent picture?!

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[sparkey]

07:50 PM on 04/01/2008

A better April fool's day joke would be for a certain site that will remain nameless to post comments in one minute instead of one day. That would be a real April fool's joke.

[foodtube]

11:02 PM on 03/31/2008

Where is the monkey?

[indyny]

10:48 AM on 04/01/2008

FYI: Orangutans are not "monkeys", they are great apes, just like you and I.

[neverbeenfooled]

09:07 PM on 03/31/2008

Could this be a picture of the young George Bush? If so, he has certainly been the king of April Fools. But the eight year joke has been on us.

[Chelsea2016]

02:04 AM on 04/01/2008

That monkey is too cute to be George.

[Chelsea2016]

02:06 AM on 04/01/2008

Although it does have that kind of stupid look on its face like dumbya.