I Pity The Fool
- Alabama Changes the Value of Pi: The April 1998 newsletter of New Mexicans for Science and Reason contained an article written by physicist Mark Boslough claiming that the Alabama Legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi to the "Biblical value" of 3.0. This claim originally appeared as a news story in the 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.
- Spaghetti trees: The BBC television programme Panorama ran a famous hoax in 1957, showing the Swiss harvesting spaghetti from trees. They had claimed that the despised pest the spaghetti weevil had been eradicated. A large number of people contacted the BBC wanting to know how to cultivate their own spaghetti trees. It was in fact filmed in St Albans.
- Left Handed Whoppers: In 1998, Burger King ran an ad in USA Today, saying that people could get a Whopper for left-handed people whose condiments were designed to drip out of the right side. Not only did customers order the new burgers, but some specifically requested the "old", right-handed burger.
- Taco Liberty Bell: In 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell." When asked about the sale, White House press secretary Mike McCurry replied tongue-in-cheek that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would henceforth be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
- Smell-o-vision: In 1965, the BBC purported to conduct a trial of a new technology allowing the transmission of odor over the airwaves to all viewers. Many viewers reportedly contacted the BBC to report the trial's success. This hoax was also conducted by the Seven Network in Australia in 2005. In 2007, the BBC website repeated an online version of the hoax.
- CBC Radio 1 (2001): The Sunday Edition's Michael Enright conducted a telephone interview with Jimmy Carter on the topic of the United States-Canada softwood lumber dispute. At one point Enright asked Carter (who was actually being played by a Canadian actor), "How did a washed up peanut farmer from Hicksville such as yourself get involved in such a sophisticated bilateral trade argument?" The interview went downhill from there and ended with "Carter" terminating the interview and hanging up.
- Free concert: Radio station 98.1 KISS in Chattanooga, Tennessee falsely announced in 2003 that rapper Eminem would be doing a free show in a discount store parking lot. Several police were needed to deal with traffic gridlock and enraged listeners who threatened to harm the DJs responsible. Both DJs were later jailed for creating a public nuisance. Also, radio station WAAF 107.3 in Boston announced that Pearl Jam was having a free concert in a fictitious city in New Hampshire. A gas station in New Hampshire reported that several streams of car drivers stopped in asking for directions to the fictional town.
- "National Public Radio" Every year National Public Radio in the United States does an extensive news story on April 1st. These usually start off more or less reasonably, and get more and more unusual. A recent example is the story on the "iBod" a portable body control device. It also runs false sponsor mentions, such as "Support for NPR comes from the Soylent Corporation, manufacturing protein-rich food products in a variety of colors. Soylent Green is People.”
- "Michael Jackson moves to Birmingham" In 2007, West Midlands radio station 100.7 Heart FM reported that newspapers were claiming that Michael Jackson had moved to the region. A station employee posed as a caller into the radio station, claiming he'd seen Jackson walking through Birmingham, and filmed it. Presenters Ed James and Hellon Wheels directed listeners to the website to watch the video, only for it to show James doing a caricature-like impersonation of the singer. Meanwhile, angry listeners telephoned the station to register their disapproval of such a controversial figure moving to the Midlands.
- Assassination of Bill Gates: In 2003, many Chinese and South Korean websites claimed that CNN reported Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, was assassinated, resulting in a 1.5% drop in the Korean stock market.
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