April 1 is pretty much universally the day to play practical jokes and a certain degree of foolishness and the US is no difference. I personally have never experienced much foolishness or practical joke playing but that might just be me. In my son’s 1st grade class everybody ha to tell a joke this week (and I can tell you, there aren’t many even halfway funny or cute jokes for 6-year olds).
So I thought about writing about the origin of April Fool’s day but when I looked it up it was another one of those long stories that starts something like that: “in 1381 xyz was translating the works of ABC and was believed to have made a mistake ….” to be followed by “in 1563 the King of …..” I don’t know about you but at this point I don’t even want to know anymore, and realize full well that I won’t remember anything anyway.
So here just a short list of pranks that have been played over the years (courtesy wiki)
Spaghetti harvest in Switzerland. April Fool's Day! pic: blog.mtnspirit.org
The BBC television program Panorama ran a famous hoax in 1957, showing 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.
In 2005, a news story was posted on the official NASA website show pictures of water on Mars. The picture actually was just a picture of a glass of water on a Mars candy bar.
April 1, 1983: it's cold in Sydney, pic: atuladoice.hi5.com
And one last courtesy of our friends down under: In 1983, Australian millionaire businessman Dick Smith claimed to have towed an iceberg from Antarctica to Sydney Harbor. He used a barge covered with white plastic and fire extinguisher foam to convince witnesses.
American Culture Explained 