April Fool's Day Radio Hoaxes

German police officers demonstrated the new radio receivers they would be equipped with, to help them stay in touch with headquarters and receive reports about riots, demonstrations, and crime. The photos appear to have been produced as part of a humorous public relations effort by the German police. More…

On March 31, 1940 the Franklin Institute issued a press release warning that the world would end the next day. The release was picked up by radio station KYW which announced, "Scientists predict that the world will end at 3 P.M. Eastern Standard Time tomorrow. This is no April Fool joke. Confirmation can be obtained from Wagner Schlesinger, director of the Fels Planetarium of this city."

The public reaction was immediate. Local authorities were flooded with frantic phone calls. The panic only subsided after the Franklin Institute assured people that it had made no such prediction. The prankster responsible for the press release turned out to be William Castellini, the Institute's press agent. He had intended to use the fake release to publicize an April 1st lecture at the institute titled "How Will the World End?" Soon afterwards, the Institute dismissed Castellini. More…

Radio comedian Don McNeill staged experiments in the lobby of Chicago's Merchandise Mart to test whether people would still fall for some of the oldest April fool gags. He discovered that 20 of the first 25 people who saw a bill fold lying on the floor stooped to pick it up, only to have it yanked away. In addition, McNeill set up an aquarium with a sign "Invisible Peruvian fish." He asked spectators to estimate the length of the fish. Fifty-six of the spectators turned in written estimates. (For more about the "invisible fish" prank, see Brazilian Invisible Fish.) [The Galveston Daily News, Apr 2, 1940.] More…

Phil Shone, a New Zealand deejay for radio station 1ZB, told his listeners that a mile-wide wasp swarm was headed towards Auckland and urged them to take a variety of steps to protect themselves and their homes from the winged menace. He suggested that they wear their socks over their trousers when they left for work, and that they leave honey-smeared traps outside their doors. Hundreds of people dutifully heeded his advice, until he finally admitted that it had all been a joke. The New Zealand Broadcasting Service was not amused by Shone's prank. Its director, Professor James Shelley, denounced the hoax on the grounds that it undermined the rules of proper broadcasting. From then on, a memo was sent out each year before April Fool's Day reminding New Zealand radio stations of their obligation to report the truth, and nothing but the truth. More…

Hawaiian disc jockey Hal Lewis (better known as "J. Aukhead Pupule" or "Crazy Fishhead") announced on KPOA that the Senate had repealed islanders' income taxes and provided for return of 1953 taxes. The announcement elicited a huge reaction. Radio stations, newspapers, and the Internal Revenue Bureau were all flooded with calls. Many believed the announcement because, less than a month before, Hawaiian congressman Joseph Farrington had demanded that islanders be given a refund of all federal taxes if Hawaii was not granted full statehood. (It was made a state in 1959.)

An IRS agent subsequently called the station and asked it to leave his office out of any further pranks. He said his agents were busy enough processing 1953 returns, without having to deal with calls from people seeking a refund. More…

The national news in the Netherlands reported that the Tower of Pisa had fallen over. The announcement caused widepread shock and mourning. More…

The BBC promised radio listeners that they wouldn't want to miss the concert of the "distinguished continental pianist" Lirpa Loof. But when the scheduled time arrived, there was no concert. "Actually, of course, Lirpa Loof is April Fool spelled backward," an announcer explained.

An hour-long Swiss Radio broadcast announced that U.S. astronauts had just landed on the moon. The announcement generated enormous excitement. Telephone exchanges became jammed as people tried to phone friends to share the news. Even U.S. authorities in Switzerland initially weren't sure if the news was true or false.

The broadcast concluded with the report that the moonship would take off from the moon at 7 p.m. Listeners were urged to climb to a high vantage point, away from the city lights, to watch it return to Earth. As a result, there was a huge rush of people who tried to leave Zurich and get to the top of Mt. Uetliberg, overlooking the city. The railroad up the mountain had to add additional trains to handle the number of passengers. More…

A Vienna, Austria radio station reported that the city had decided to reduce parking permit fees, and that car drivers would be able to buy permits in tobacco shops and hand them to police officers in case of need. One police officer called the radio station to ask, "Could you please give me more details on the new order as I have not heard from my superiors yet." [The Washington Post, Apr 2, 1970.] More…

BBC radio honored Gerald Burley, winner of the "Ettore Savini Memorial Prize." The program included taped tributes to the anthropologist and philanthropist from well-known persons, including violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the Bishop of Southwark. However, Gerald Burley was entirely nonexistent. A BBC spokesman reported that they later received a call from a woman claiming to be Gerald Burley's mistress demanding to know, "Why wasn't I asked to appear?"

French state-run radio announced that European motorists would soon be required to drive on the left side of the road, in order to help British drivers when they joined the Common Market. Almost immediately the radio station began receiving hundreds of phone calls from enraged French motorists. As a result, the station quickly confessed that the story was a hoax.

BBC Radio 3's In Parenthesis program were treated to a roundtable discussion of a few cutting-edge new works of social anthropology and musicology. First up was a discussion of La Fornication Comme Une Acte Culturelle by Henri Mensonge (translated as Henry Lie). This book argued that "we live in an age of metaphorical rape" in which "confrontation, assault, intrusion, and exposure are becoming validated transactions, the rites of democracy, of mass society." This sparked a blisteringly incomprehensible debate, which eventually segued into an exploration of the question "Is 'Is' Is?" Finally, the audience heard a rousing deconstruction of the 'arch form' of the sonata's first motif. Listeners seemed to accept the program's discussion as a legitimate exploration of new trends in the arts. However, it was a parody. More…

A Dutch radio program announced that the government planned to distribute its budget surplus equally among tax-payers. The announcement received an excited response from listeners eager for their share. More…

BBC Radio interviewed a "Dr. Clothier" about the government's efforts to stop the spread of Dutch Elm Disease. Dr. Clothier described some recent discoveries, such as the research of Dr. Emily Lang who had found that exposure to Dutch Elm Disease immunized people to the common cold.

Unfortunately, there was a side effect. Exposure to the disease also caused red hair to turn yellow. This was attributed to a similarity between the blood count of redheads and the soil conditions in which affected trees grew. Therefore, redheads were advised to stay away from forests for the foreseeable future. Dr. Clothier was actually the comedian Spike Milligan disguising his voice.

BBC Radio 4’s Today Show also reported about a controversy involving the Island of Foley, located between Sheppey and the Kent Coast. Apparently the island was the cause of numerous shipwrecks. Therefore, authorities had decided to destroy it. However, because this decision had been protested by conservationists, authorities had decided to tow it somewhere safer instead. Towing islands has been a source of jokes as far back as 1824, when a hoaxer supposedly had the residents of Manhattan believing that their island was going to be towed out to sea.

The naturalist David Attenborough gave a report on BBC Radio 3 about a group of islands in the Pacific known as the Sheba Islands. He played sound recordings of the island’s fauna, including a recording of a night-singing, yodelling tree mouse called the Musendrophilus. He also described a web-footed species whose webs were prized by inhabitants of the island as reeds for musical instruments.

BBC Radio 4’s Today Show announced that as part of the centenary celebrations for Edgar Wallace’s Sanders of the River, Major John Blashford Snell had just completed a secret journey into the African interior in search of a rare tribe mentioned in that book. The heads of the members of this tribe supposedly grew beneath their shoulders, giving them a stooped appearance. It was also reported that the chief of this tribe had once been a lift attendant.

During an interview on BBC Radio 2, astronomer Patrick Moore revealed that at exactly 9:47 a.m. Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, and that this alignment would result in a stronger gravitational pull from Jupiter, counteracting the Earth's own gravity and making people momentarily weigh less. He told listeners that if they jumped up and down while this was happening, they would experience a strange floating sensation.

When 9:47 a.m. arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of calls from listeners who claimed to have felt the sensation. One woman insisted that she and her friends had floated around the room. Another caller complained that he ascended so rapidly that he hit his head on the ceiling. More…

Radio Carlisle reported that Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage had been sold to an American and was being shipped to Arizona brick by brick. More…

Radio Leeds reported that the city government had approved a plan to demolish the City Square and ship the Black Prince’s statue to an Arab buyer. In return, local citizens would receive a bargain price for gasoline—30 pence a gallon. More…

Radio Merseyside in Britain reported about a ‘bionic’ horse. The broken leg of this horse had been replaced with a plastic leg that gave the horse more spring in its step. As a result, the horse was said to be favored to win the Grand National. More…

London's Capital Radio station announced that Operation Parallax would soon go into effect. This was a government plan to resynchronize the British calendar with the rest of the world. Ever since 1945, the station explained, Britain had gradually become 48 hours ahead of all other countries because of the constant switching back and forth from British Summer Time. To remedy this situation, the British government had decided to cancel April 5 and 12 that year. Capital Radio received numerous calls as a result of this announcement. One employer wanted to know if she had to pay her employees for the missing days. Another woman was curious about what would happen to her birthday, which fell on one of the cancelled days. More…

CBC Radio interviewed a Mrs. Fiona Curtis of Willowdale, Ontario who operated a wholesale food business from the basement of her house, supplying high-end gastronomical shops with frozen budgerigars. Before freezing them, she stuffed them with a mixture of chestnut, squid, onion, and bread, and then cooked them. She noted that one ate the entire budgie, including the bones, and insisted they were "quite delicious," although she conceded they needed "a lot of spice."

She hoped eventually to expand her business to include gerbils as well. [listen to the broadcast] More…

An announcement was made in Berne, Switzerland that a protest was being held outside of the parliament buildings. The protestors were said to be topless women who were demonstrating in support of nude beaches. The announcement caused hundreds of men to descend upon the parliament buildings. Unfortunately for them, they found no women there. More…

An Ipswich radio station reported there were plans for the construction of a tunnel under the North Sea, connecting Felixstowe in England with Zeebrugge, Belgium. The station claimed that 800 Felixstowe homes would have to be bulldozed to make way for a terminal and that digging would begin on April 1, 1981. Listeners jammed the switchboard. "We were amazed that so many people were taken in," the station admitted later. More…

The BBC's overseas service reported that Big Ben was going to be given a digital readout. The news elicited a huge response from listeners shocked and angry about the change. "Surprisingly, few people thought it was funny," admitted Tony Lightley of the overseas service.

The same news report also claimed that the clock hands would be given away to the first four listeners to contact the station. One Japanese seaman in the mid-Atlantic immediately radioed in, hoping to be among the lucky callers.

Greece's state-controlled National Radio Network issued a warning that pollution had reached emergency levels in downtown Athens, and that the city would have to be immediately evacuated. All schools were called upon to close immediately, and the children to be sent home. Furthermore, anyone driving a car was asked to abandon it and flee to open ground.

Many people took the broadcast seriously and attempted to leave the city, since pollution was (and is) a serious problem in Athens. Within three hours the Radio Network had retracted the broadcast, revealing it to be a joke, but by then the damage had been done. One man sued the network for $820,000, claiming the prank had caused him mental distress. The director of the network submitted his resignation over the incident, and the originator of the hoax was fired. More…

NPR's All Things Considered ran a segment about the threat of extinction facing the Vince Lombardi Fondue Springs, the "last surviving spring of natural fondue cheese in the United States," located in the fondue country of northern Wisconsin.

For years the fondue springs had been a "point of pilgrimage for cheese communicants." But now, the Cheese Watch Society warned, the Fondue Pocket was reducing. The society recommended "a highly trained force of cheese rangers to control visitors to the fondue pocket using sniffer dogs." If steps weren't taken, the society warned, the cheese would soon be gone. More…

Charlie Bee, a disc jockey at country music station WAPG-AM in Arcadia, Florida, locked himself in the station's studio while repeatedly broadcasting Johnny Paycheck's "Take This Job and Shove It." He explained to listeners that he was "fed up" with not receiving an adequate salary and would play the song until his employers agreed to give him a raise. Police eventually arrived and escorted him out of the building. The next disc jockey in the studio, Bill Madison, dedicated the song to Bee and played it one last time. However, the entire incident turned out to have been a staged prank with which the police were cooperating. More…

Radio station KIOT in Barstow, California announced that a parade was to be held through the city, and that President Reagan would participate in it as the grand marshal. A few people showed up and waited in the heat for the parade (which had never been scheduled). More…

Carolyn Fox, a disc jockey for WHJY in Providence, Rhode Island, announced that the 'Providence Labor Action Relations Board Committee' had decided to close the city for the day. She gave out a number for listeners to call for more information. The number was that of a rival station, WPRO-AM. Hundreds of people called WPRO, as well as City Hall and the police. Even more called into their offices to see if they had to go into work. WHJY management later admitted that it had never imagined its joke would have such a dramatic impact on the city. More…

LA disc jockey Steve Morris announced on KRTH-FM that freeways in Los Angeles and Orange counties would be closed for major repairs from April 8 to May 1 so that road crews could work nonstop. Morris discussed the news throughout his morning show, from 6:30 to 9:30 a.m., until finally he announced, "April Fool!"

The radio station, Caltrans, and the California Highway Patrol all received hundreds of calls in response to the announcement. KRTH later admitted that it was stunned by the reaction to the hoax and revealed that it had received a call from Caltrans "telling us that they didn't think it was very funny." More…

WAQY-FM morning disc jockey David Lee warned his listeners of an "electrostatic power surge" that would happen between 7:30 and 7:45 AM. He told them to protect themselves by unplugging appliances and taping up wall sockets with electrical tape. The local utility company received over 50 calls from people seeking to verify the warning, provoking it to send a letter of complaint to WAQY, calling the prank "beyond the bounds of having fun on April Fool's Day." It noted that one person had disconnected life-sustaining equipment "in order to avoid the consequences your announcer warned of." No charges were brought against the station because the FCC determined that it had broken no federal law. More…

KISW, a Seattle Rock radio station, changed its format to what it called 'classical rock' for a day, playing a selection of classical music and rock. It advertised itself as "Seattle's best mix of the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s and today." It also promised a no-repeat Monday, saying that "you won't hear the same sonata twice." More…

Alison St. John, a radio reporter for KPBS, the San Diego affiliate of NPR, warned that San Diego would be pelted by hail "the size of duck eggs." Terry Boyd of Metro Traffic followed up this announcement by warning that all drivers "must wear a helmet." More…

Rush Limbaugh, a radio talk-show host famous for his support of conservative issues, declared his belief that the U.S. government should raise taxes for the poor because "they're the wealthiest poor in the world." Many of his listeners called in to applaud his belief. Later Limbaugh confessed that he does not actually support such a belief and chastised his listeners for being "too quick to believe anything that hits a hot button." More…

Chicago radio station WXRT-FM announced it was turning into a digital, commercial-free "pay-per-hear" station. Its signal would be scrambled and divided into five different program formats that listeners would have to pay to listen to. The five formats would be "'XRT Basic," "'XRT Live," "'XRT Gold," "'XRT Espanol" and "sports-rock." The station announced the format change all day and then switched to a scrambled signal for several minutes. Hundreds of listeners called in to protest the change. One listener even showed up with a picket sign outside the station. More…

NPR's "Talk of the Nation" reported that former-President Richard Nixon had declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Accompanying the announcement were audio clips of Nixon delivering his candidacy speech and declaring "I never did anything wrong, and I won't do it again."

Listeners reacted emotionally to the announcement, flooding NPR with calls expressing shock and outrage. Only during the second half of the program did host John Hockenberry reveal that the announcement was an April Fool's Day joke. Comedian Rich Little had impersonated Nixon's voice. More…

Dave Rickards, a deejay at San Diego's KGB-FM, announced that the space shuttle Discovery had been diverted from Edwards Air Force Base and would land instead at Montgomery Field just outside the city at 8:30 am. Thousands of commuters immediately headed there, causing enormous traffic jams that lasted for almost an hour.

Of course, the shuttle never landed. Montgomery Field is far too small for the shuttle to have even considered landing there, and there wasn't a shuttle in orbit at the time. The police weren't amused. They announced they would be billing the radio station for the cost of forcing officers to direct the traffic. In its defense, the radio station said, "It was a joke... We're just trying to have some fun." More…

Cologne radio station Westdeutsche Rundfunk announced that city officals had decreed that joggers could only run at a maximum speed of six miles per hour through the city's parks. Any faster, it was said, and they would inconvenience the squirrels who were in the middle of their mating season. More…

National Public Radio's All Things Considered program reported that companies such as Pepsi were sponsoring teenagers to tattoo themselves with corporate logos. In return, the teenagers would receive a lifetime 10% discount on that company's products. Teenagers were said to be responding enthusiastically to the deal. More…

NPR's All Things Considered interviewed Reed Summers, winner of a "Mouth Sounds" competition in Belleville, Illinois.

Summers explained that "mouth sounders" use their mouth, tongue, teeth, lips, and vocal chords to create a variety of sounds, such as the sound of an angry cockatoo, a goose, a train, and Bach's Toccata — all of which he demonstrated in the studio.

As the interview with Summers progressed, the sounds he made grew increasingly elaborate and realistic, causing host Robert Siegel eventually to declare, "If I hadn't seen you doing that in front of me just now, I would have assumed that was a recording."

Summers attributed his mouth-sounding skill to the fact that he didn't speak until he reached the age of 10, but instead spent his childhood listening to the sounds around him. More…

The Today program on BBC Radio 4 announced that the British National anthem ("God Save the Queen") was to be replaced by a Euro Anthem sung in German. The new anthem, which Today played for their listeners, used extracts from Beethoven's music and was sung by pupils of a German school in London. Reportedly, Prince Charles's office telephoned Radio 4 to ask them for a copy of the new anthem. St. James Palace later insisted that it had been playing along with the prank and had not been taken in by it.

Rick Sanborn, a deejay for KLOU-FM in St. Louis, revealed to his listeners that a $24 million trust fund had recently been discovered that would be distributed to local residents. The trust fund had supposedly been established by the builder of the local sports Arena in 1929. He had left instructions to distribute the money to locals should the Arena ever be torn down. Since it was torn down in 1999, his order would go into effect. The money would be paid to anyone who held a St. Louis birth certificate issued after 1929. They would receive $1000 for every year of their age. Sanborn included fake reports and interviews along with his announcement. As a result of the prank, the St. Louis Citizens Service Bureau received over 75 calls before Sanborn revealed that the story was a hoax. More…

NPR's All Things Considered revealed that a California-based company, LunarCorp, had developed a laser powerful enough to project images on to the surface of the moon. It planned to use this to beam advertisements onto the moon, turning the earth's satellite into a giant billboard. More…

Radio Russia reported that the Russian parliament was considering a proposal to declare April 1st a public holiday: "Telephone jokes, absurd tasks for managers, warnings that the power, light or heat is to be cut off and other practical jokes are much more extravagant then than on other days. As a result, expert analysis shows, industrial efficiency in Russia falls," the report explained. By declaring the day a national holiday, efficiency would be maintained. More…

Southern FM radio in Brighton announced that a full-size replica of the Titanic (constructed by the AFD Construction company) would be visible from the cliffs at Beachy Head as it sailed along the Sussex Coast. Hundreds of people braved the windy, treacherous cliffs to catch a glimpse of the sight. Many drove from as far as 30 or 40 miles away. So many people showed up that the cliffs developed a crack from their weight and a few days later collapsed into the water. (Though by that time everyone was gone.) The radio station later apologised to those who had been deceived. More…

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Liverpool DJ Kev Seed announced that the first 50 girls to pose in a bikini in the city centre would win racing tickets. Three bikini-clad young women braved the cold weather and appeared at the designated spot, but all for nothing. The contest was an April Fools joke. More…

NPR's All Things Considered ran a segment about the efforts by preservationists to transfer audio recordings to a durable medium that would last far into the future. The medium they had decided upon was shellac — the material Edison had used when he first invented recording technology back in the nineteenth century. Archivists had identified this as "the one rock-solid format... that works every time."

Works such as Vanilla Ice's debut CD were being painstakingly transferred onto shellac. The report concluded: "If funding levels can be maintained, experts estimate the archiving project can catch up with recordings made before 2003 by April 1, 2089." More…

NPR's All Things Considered reported that the U.S. Post Office was introducing a new portable zip codes program that would allow individuals to take their zip code with them when they moved. The program was inspired by a recent FCC ruling that allowed people to retain the same phone number wherever they moved or whatever service they switched to.

Supporters of the program noted, "A modern, mobile society… can no longer afford to remain grounded in locale-specific zip codes… a zip code is a badge of honor, an emblem symbolizing a citizen's place in the demographic, rather than geographic, landscape." More…

Fans of "shock jock" Howard Stern were dismayed to tune in to his morning show and discover that Infinity Broadcasting had replaced him with two DJs who promised "all the fun without the filth." Stern had recently been publicly arguing with the FCC because it had applied an "indecency" standard to his show. But after an hour Stern and his sidekick Robin Quivers returned to the air. “We are back for anybody who was stupid enough to fall for that,” Stern said. “Check your calendar people,” Quivers added. More…

NPR also ran a story about the growing use of performance-enhancing drugs (steroids) in the world of music. It stated that: "Something is happening in the world of music. Musicians are playing faster, louder, and stronger than they ever have before… Rumors have been circulating for some time that just like in the world of sports performance enhancing drugs may be the cause." More…

NPR's All Things Considered ran a segment on a drop in maple syrup consumption, triggered by the low-carb craze, which supposedly was causing a serious problem for New England's maple-tree industry: exploding maple trees. The announcer reported: "An untapped tree is a time bomb ready to go off… The trees explode like gushers, causing injuries and sometimes death. If untended, quiet stands of Nature's sweeteners can turn into spindly demons of destruction. The Vermont Health Board reports 87 fatalities, 140 maimings, and a dozen decapitations, caused by sap-build-up explosions this year." More…

National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday reported that New York City Democratic councilman David Yassky had called for a ban on obnoxious ring tones. The councilman claimed that objectionable ring tones were costing the economy upwards of $1.2 billion and were the cause of numerous fights induced by "ring-tone rage." As of April 1, 2008, NPR reported, cell phone users would be restricted to four city-approved ring tones. More…

DJs from North Dakota's Y94 radio station created a website called tattooyourtoddler.com that claimed to represent "the first tattoo studio for kids, with the trendiest body-art designed specifically for youths ages 2 through 17!" Parents who wanted to tattoo their child were promised that "Our patented needle-free system only causes slight discomfort and ensures a vibrant tattoo, guaranteed not to fade for at least 10 years!" The FAQ section of the site included the question: "Is this legal?" To which the reply was: "This is still America, isn't it?" A similar April Fool's Day hoax had been perpetrated in 2003 by DJs at at Channel 933 KHTS-FM radio in San Diego who created a site called BabyInk.com, which claimed to be a tattoo parlor catering to infants and children. More…