April Fool's Day

April Fool's Day, celebrated in many countries, is one of the more light hearted days of the year. A time when pranks, hoaxes and practical jokes are not frowned upon but accepted and encouraged. Some involve such extremes as telling your partner that you are pregnant or filling a bottle of shampoo with hair dye. Where others take are a little more placid approach such as hiding ones reading glasses or car keys. Some view the holiday as a celebration of the turn of the seasons, where others believe it comes from the adoption of the new calendar. Regardless of it's origin, the 1st of April is a time of fun and mischief. Below are some famous well-known pranks pulled throughout history, some performed by television stations, and others by fast food restuarant chains. Enjoy!

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.

Change of Drinking Age: On the Gold Coast, Australia's biggest tourist destination (particularly amongst schoolies), radio station Sea FM announced the drinking age would be changed from 18 to 21. This left a huge number of under-21s angry and frustrated, and incited protests. It was later announced at the Sea FM dance party that it was a hoax.

In April 2006, the "Best Damn Sports Show Period" staged a fight between Tom Arnold and Michael Strahan. On Friday March 31st the show went off the air as Tom Arnold was wrestling NY Giant's defensive end Michael Strahan to the ground over comments Tom made in a tell-all book. Strahan pretended to be very hurt by screaming and clutching his shoulder as the cameras cut to black. It fooled cast members Rodney Peete and Rob Dibble enough to have them intervene in the fight. Rodney Peete went so far as to give Tom rabbit punches while he broke up what he thought was a real fight. It also worked enough to fool the popular internet site "deadspin.com" into reporting it as a real event.

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.

Google Hoaxes:
gDay
Google announces gDay in Australia (http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/gday/press.html), a new beta search technology that will search web pages 24 hours before they are created.

Dajare
Google launches Dajare in Japan (google.co.jp), with the mission of "organizing the world’s laughter."

Google Summer of Code Licenses
Google changed the licenses on the SoC pages to all be "WTF Public License, Version 2"

source: Wikipedia