April Fool’s Day is not an official holiday, but it is celebrated worldwide as the one day of the year during which playful and mischievous behavior is tolerated and even encouraged.  The most important rule of April Fool’s pranks is to do no harm.  Jokes and pranks should not cause physical or emotional hurt to the recipients of those pranks.  Some of my favorite April Fool’s pranks include the following:

In 1957, the BBC News show Panorama featured a story about spaghetti trees that grew in Switzerland.  Video footage showed farmers pulling spaghetti strands off trees.  Following the program, people contacted BBC News to ask where they might purchase spaghetti trees for themselves.  Those who asked how to grow a spaghetti tree were told to put a stick of spaghetti into a can of tomato soup and hope for the best.

An early 1990s news segment on KSDK-TV in St. Louis also featured an unusual April Fool’s crop harvest.  Two of the station’s reporters were filmed picking marshmallows off trees in the Jewel Box (a display greenhouse in Forest Park).  The reporters gently squeezed the marshmallows to check for ripeness.  Miniature marshmallows were left on the trees to grow larger.

In 1997, an email message supposedly originating from the Interconnected Internet Maintenance Staff of MIT, announced that the Internet would be shut down to clean out the accumulated “flotsam and jetsam” of old emails and dead websites.  Readers were told to disconnect all devices from the Internet during the 24 hours between March 31 and April 2.  This was an updated version of the telephone-cleaning April Fool’s joke that warned users to cover the ends of their telephone receivers with plastic bags to catch dust that might be blown out during the April 1 cleaning.

In 1998, Burger King introduced the “Left-Handed Whopper,” specially designed for left-handed customers.  The bun was rotated 180 degrees “to ensure a better grip” of the sandwich.  Thousands of customers ordered the specialty, while many others requested their own right-handed version.

In 2000, Nancy, one of my co-workers at the college, was the target of a clever April Fool’s ruse.  Two of her staff members rushed to her office and breathlessly told her they’d just found out that the dance instructors had hired a helicopter to fly over the entire college service area and drop pamphlets advertising their dance classes offered through Nancy’s department.  (You’d have to know the dance instructors, but this was plausible.)  Nancy was horrified and frantically began brainstorming ways to stop this before her budget had to bear the expense of the helicopter.  Nancy was a good sport.  When she learned it was a prank, she laughed in relief and admitted her heart had nearly stopped when she heard about the helicopter.

Happy April Fool’s Day.  Have fun and do no harm.  ?