Charlie Buttrey

April 1, 2020

For the past two weeks, most of my posts have related to COVID to one extent or another.  So, let’s take a break from that for a day, shall we?

And since it’s April 1st, I was reflecting on the best April Fool’s Day pranks that have ever been perpetrated. George Plimpton’s classic tale of Sidd Finch, the French-horn playing mystic with an 168-mile-per-hour fastball (which Sports Illustrated published on April 1, 1985) clearly belongs on any list, as does one of the very first April Fool’s Day pranks, the “Washing of the Lions.”

But I think the one for which the most people fell was probably the BBC’s television news magazine Panorama which, in 1957, did this short piece on the spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland.

For a short video about the making of that prank, click here. No, really.

 

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