Stories that sound like jokes, but aren’t

Every year on April 1 reporters test our wits by mixing in a few joke stories with the real ones. But then there are also the stories that are real, but sound like jokes. These stories challenge us to keep our skepticism under control. This year, the biggest example of that was Google's Gmail announcement that had many people swearing it must be a joke. Then we also had an article released by the British National Archives describing a bizarre WWII plan to place chickens inside of nuclear bombs (to keep the bombs warm). Apparently true. Finally, there's this story about Canadian plans to annex a group of Caribbean islands, thereby transforming Canada into an expansionist, imperialist power. This reminded me of the Canadian World Domination site, which is now unfortunately defunct.

April Fools Day Journalism

Posted on Fri Apr 02, 2004


Comments

GMail is definately a joke. The link http://gmail.google.com admits it.
Posted by Daryl Holland  on  Sun Apr 04, 2004  at  10:32 PM
Canadian World Domination is here:

http://cwd.ptbcanadian.com/index2.html
Posted by Tom  on  Tue Apr 06, 2004  at  07:10 PM
I am delighted to see that the CWD webpage is not defunct. I love the new logo, but I do miss the rather peevish looking beaver. Noting the permission language included in your disclaimer, I used the beaver on my fax cover sheets during the U.S.-Canada softwood lumber negotiations. I won't tell you which side of the issue I was on except to note that I was not popular in Quebec, despite speaking better French than the average denizen of "la Belle Province."
Posted by Barbary Pirate  on  Wed Apr 07, 2004  at  11:01 PM
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