…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
To celebrate April Fools’ Day in New York City, SinoVision’s Cosmo Times, a lifestyle TV show available to over 10 million international viewers, featured an April Fools’ Day Parade planning committee meeting preparing for today’s festivities. Problem is, they were covering a planning meeting for a parade that doesn’t exist.
Huffington Post covered the story: Chinese News Agency SinoVision Falls For Joey Skaggs’ 30-Year-Old April Fools’ Day Prank
Happy April Fools’ Day!
From Joe King: Unfortunately the gravity shift is a hoax:
Jan. 4, 2014: “˜Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity” Allowing People to Float is an Old Hoax
by Jack Phillips
Epoch Times
December 30, 2013
A rumor from the News-Hound.net blog is claiming there”s a “zero-G day” at 9:47 a.m. on January 4, 2014, that will decrease gravity allowing people to float for five minutes due to an “extraordinary astronomical event.” But it”s not real as it was a hoax perpetrated by astronomer Sir Patrick Moore four decades ago.
“At exactly 9:47 am, the planet Pluto will pass directly behind Jupiter, in relation to the Earth. This rare alignment will mean that the combined gravitational force of the two planets would exert a stronger tidal pull, temporarily counteracting the Earth”s own gravity and making people weigh less. Moore calls this the Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect,” reads the blog that has hundreds of thousands of “likes” and shares on Facebook, saying that the “theory” was attributed to astronomer Sir Patrick Moore.
However, the whole thing was a hoax created several decades ago by Moore but websites and blogs kept passing it along every year, saying it will happen a few days after New Year”s Day.
Moore, who was the BBC Radio 2 astronomer, said the event would happen as part of an April Fools Day prank in 1976.
Submitted by Emerson Dameron:
In 1974, after 3 years of planning, a man named Oliver Bickar pulled off one of the world’s biggest (in size) April Fools’ Day pranks. He and his co-conspirators flew dozens of tires over to an extinct volcanic crater called Mount Edgecumbe on uninhabited Kruzof Island in Alaska. When he lit the tires on fire, people in Sitka, a town on the closest island, took serious note, wondering if the volcano, extinct for 4,000 years, had suddenly erupted. You can read the whole story on NowIKnow and at The Museum of Hoaxes.
From Basem’s Motorcycles Blog, Monday December 7, 2009:
Aerostich Offers Ultimate Banana Protection ($6.00)
GPS? Check. Saddlebags? Check. Banana Guard…. huh?
Aerostich are purveyors of fine touring accoutrement and equally fine April Fool’s pranks– remember their Remote Control Zipper Sliders, Krilion 2 glow-in-the-dark spray, and “Radical Cruiser” clothing line with “Insect deflecting carbon fiber conchos”?
This time, though, their “Banana Guard” adds a touch of the surreal to everyday motorcycling… at least I think it does, since I managed to add it to my shopping cart, but didn’t have the nerve to actually try buying it. If it is indeed real, however, is there anything else a potassium-deprived touring fanatic could want for the holidays?