By Brian Boone
Here at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute, we love April Fools’ Day. There’s something beautiful about a well-executed prank, particularly a large-scale one that tricks a lot of people into believing something abjectly ridiculous is true. Here then are our picks for the greatest April Fools’ Day pranks ever, right before we rebrand as Uncle John’s Big Book of Pictures of Toasters. (April Fools!)
Taco Bell Buys Bell
In 1996, Taco Bell issued a press release announcing that it had purchased the Liberty Bell, the iconic colonial American artifact in Philadelphia. The Mexican-esque fast food chain claimed it was responding to a federal government request with ways to reduce the national debt, and that the buy would result in renaming the monument the Taco Liberty Bell. National news media picked up the story and reported it as fact, and angry reporters peppered White House press secretary Mike McCurry with questions. Taco Bell had to issue a retraction the same day, and remind the world that it had announced its silly idea on April 1.
This Story is Just Plain Loonie
Canadian money involves one-dollar and two-dollar coins, respectively and commonly nickname the loonie and toonie because one contains an etching of a loon and the other is worth two dollars. On April 1, 2008, Canadian radio show As It Happens talked to a man purporting to be a representative of the Royal Canadian Mint, who revealed that the agency was planning to eliminate the Canadian paper five-dollar note with a three-dollar coin. Its name: the threenie.
National Geographic Nixes Nudity
Alluding to how it once used to document cultures remote and untouched by modernity by depicting members of those communities without clothes, National Geographic declared on April 1, 2016, that it would henceforth be banning nudity from all of its publications. Specifically, it would no longer publish photos of nude animals. If one clicked on the story on the National Geographic website, they received an “April Fools!” message and a series of pictures of animals… dressed (in funny outfits).
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Suez 2: Journalistic Boogaloo
In March 2021, the cargo ship the Ever Given ran aground and got stuck in the Suez Canal, halting traffic in the busy and important channel in the Middle East. A few days later, on April 1, 2021, The Guardian ran a joke report that the United Nations was in the midst of preparing a plan to ensure there would never be another blockage — boat traffic would be diverted to a new canal, Suez 2. It was a top story of the day in Turkey, before The Guardian admitted it was kidding.
This Tricky Dick Trick Was Too Sick
On the verge of impeachment and a likely conviction for his role in covering up the break-in of a Democratic Party office, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace in 1974. He lay low for the next two decades until he planned to mount a major political comeback in 1992. On April 1, 1992, he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. The news enraged a lot of people who heard the story on National Public Radio — which concocted the story as an April Fools’ Day prank.