| DATE | COMMENT |
| April 5, 2001 | A most excellent museum! I really enjoyed my visit there, almost more than words can describe. I've been trying to figure out the strange euphoria I've experienced while visiting there, and I think that the explanation consists of three parts: First, while visiting, I've completely (if only temporarily) forgotten all of the problems in my personal life. Second, I love perpetrating a really, really good hoax. (I've been successful on more than one occasion.) Third, I've fallen for a couple of good hoaxes myself, and now I don't feel *quite* so foolish anymore. So, anyway, thanks for a great diversion! While I was at your site, I expected to find something that discussed the origin of April Fool's Day. If it was there, I missed it. If you don't have an entry for this, you might consider doing one. |
| April 5, 2001 | I heard about your site on BBC radio 4 —on the morning of April 1 this year. |
| April 5, 2001 | Cold Fusion by Stanly Pons & Martin Feischmann in March 1989 from the University of Utah. |
| April 4, 2001 | I was posted to a new military base and my new colleagues gave me a phone number and said i should call corporal BARKER. It was the guard DOG section.. hehehe |
| April 4, 2001 | National Public Radio has a great tradition of April Fool jokes -- endangered predators on Mexic/US border, use of Star Wars technology to display logos on the moon, etc. There is also the recent book that claims to have found indecent writings by Jane Austen. |
| April 4, 2001 | I found your website in the "Doors" section of The Sunday Times on 1 April.
Quite a few years ago, on the front page of The Times on 1 April, there was
an article about an amazing discovery, whilst doing scientific experiments
on animals. It had been found, by accident, that a certain substance had
the effect of miniaturising them. This opened up the possibility that it
could also be done on humans, and in fact experiments in this direction had
already had some success. As a result, it was suggested that whole
planeloads of people could be shrunk, and then sent by rocket to, say,
Australia, in a couple of hours, with attendant benefits. Once there, they
would be re-instated to their former size. The article was strongly supported by Sir Freddie Laker, of Laker Airlines, the Chairman of British Airways, and a whole raft of well known names, together with pseudo-scientific facts and figures. It was very well done, and I hope you will be able to find it in The Times' archives (and No, this is not an April Fool's hoax!!!) |
| April 3, 2001 | I learned of this site in an article by Roland White in 'Doors', a supliment of 'The Sunday Times' |
| April 3, 2001 | I saw, with a group of friends, the Cigarette Recall advertisements played
Sunday, April 1st on Fox during prime-time. You can view the ad at www.thetruth.com They fess up at the end of the ad, and the idea of the Tobacco Industry taking that kind of responsibility is so ludicrous that it's not really a prize winner...but it had us going there for just a moment. Imagine an entire nation of Marlboro Men going through nicotine withdrawal simultaneously! Funny! Personally, I'm rather fond of the War of the Worlds hoax...I know it's perhaps the most obvious choice and maybe the most referenced hoax I've been aware of, but it's still a good 'un! Great site, thanks! |
| April 2, 2001 | new 1: The Sunday Times ran a report stating that the London Eye would run at 60rpm for an hour a day. Passengers would be advised to removbe coins etc from their pockets and to not wear/carry sharp objects. |
| April 2, 2001 | Hi! Cool site, but you're missing the greatest media hoax of the late 20th Century!!! Don't you remember the so-called "Princess Diana surveillance footage" which scandalised the world for about 24 hours? Purportedly secretly filmed by British Sceurity Services, the blurred, black-and-white footage apparently showed the late Princess Di romping with her lover, James Hewitt. British tabloid The Sun and its TV arm SKY ONE ran this story as an exclusive and it was picked up all over the world, before British film makeer Nick Hedges stepped forward to announce that he had shot the footage in the back garden of a friend's London home using "lookalike" performers. Without the climate of belief, without the tabloids desperate for Proincess Di stories and eager to believe anything ever more sensational about her, this story would have been far more rigorously checked, the footage would have been far more expertly analysed and the hoax revealed before it was run as "fact". Tabloid editors (and ultimately Rupert Murdoch) with egg on the face. Beautiful! |
| April 2, 2001 | Hey I'm in Arizona, and I got here from the Apple web site. |
| April 1, 2001 | i red v adres in a magazeen |
| April 1, 2001 | Hello. 1. Excellent site - thanks. As you will know, it was recommended in the London Sunday Times today which is how I came to find it. 2. Does the site contain reference to any of the practical jokes in, I think 1930's England by a chap called Cole? I believe these included: reviewing the British Navy fleet at Plymouth, posing as a foreign potentate; winning a bet that he couldn't lie down for half an hour at rush hour in the middle of Piccadilly Circus (at the appointed hour an old van broke down at the appointed place— the driver got out and laid underneath it for half an hour and was Mr Cole); at Cambridge University, telling a policeman that a group of undergraduates was digging up the road then telling a gang of workmen who were digging up the road that an undergraduate dressed as a policeman was coming to move them away; also at Cambridge, asking a stranger to hold one end of a bit of string to help measure a wall, going round the corner and doing exactly the same thing with the other end..... I'd love to know if these are true stories or just folklore here. You're referring to William Horace DeVere Cole, who was a very famous hoaxer and practical joker. I haven't got around to listing any of his hoaxes on my site, but I will in the near future. His first hoax that you referred to was the H.M.S. Dreadnought hoax from 1910. He dressed up as the Sultan of Zanzibar, I believe, and managed to convince the British navy to give him a tour of their new boat, the Dreadnought. He was accompanied by a group of friends (also dressed up), one of whom was Virginia Stephen (later to become Virginia Woolf). Cole also was responsible for a notorious April Fool's Day prank which I haven't listed on my site yet either. In 1919 on his honeymoon in Venice, he persuaded a gondolier to help him carry a large amount of horse manure into the city from the mainland. He then deposited small heaps of the manure around the Piazza San Marco during the night, so that on April 1st the Venetians awoke to wonder how horses could have appeared in the city, paraded around, and then disappeared, all without anyone's knowledge. |