Have you ever heard of the Great Spaghetti Tree Hoax? It happened in 1957, and it wasn’t a small joke played on a few people. It was played on an audience of approximately 7 million people and by no other than the BBC. At that time, a little more than 15 million homes in Great Britain had “tellys.”
The film featured a Swiss-Italian farmer harvesting fresh spaghetti from a tree. The next day, the BBC was flooded with phone calls asking where people could buy a spaghetti tree or cultivate one of their own. Needless to say, the BBC was quick to issue a statement about the hoax.
Some must have put something in the BBC’s water cooler a couple of times because a few decades later (2008) They showed a film clip of a newly “discovered” phenomenon-flying penguins-evidence of an evolutionary step in modern times. These birds were equipped to migrate from Antarctica to the southern hemisphere for a bit of sun.
This computer-animated film was created by no other than Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, so that should have been a tip-off, but there are always the gullible amongst us.
Are you on your guard on April 1 for possible hoaxes? Do you play pranks on others or have you had others play them on you?
Quote of the Week:
“The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.”-Mark Twain
