![]() ![]() On April 1, 1998, American newspaper USA Today carried an ad from Burger King that sang the praises of its most innovative fast-food product yet - a left-handed variant on its trademark Whopper burger, to sate the needs of their estimated million-plus lefty customers in the States. The left-handed Whopper: engineered specifically for southpaws The harvest was documented, and discussion had on the ideal breeding conditions for longer spaghetti strands.Ĭalls to the BBC ensued, enquiring as to the report's veracity, and the ideal planting conditions for spaghetti trees of one's own. ![]() The report went to the village of Ticino, on the Swiss/Italian border, where a mild winter, and the disappearance of the nefarious spaghetti weevil, was said to have resulted in a bountiful crop, ready for export and ceremonial consumption. Spaghetti was a relatively exotic dish for UK audiences at the time, and very few viewers of the long-running news show that evening would have been aware that the pasta favourite is comprised of flour and water, and not, as the Apedition alleged, grown on trees. The BBC spaghetti harvest report: the spaghetti weevil is today thought to be extinctĪpril Fool's Day has long been a favourite of mischievous news editors and programming directors, as we'll see here, but fake stories, intrepid Photoshop jobs and deadpan copywriting all trace their way back to a segment of BBC's Panorama programme in 1957. Opinion differs among media historians as to the level of panic generated among the general public, in the absence of historical evidence, but the broadcast serves as a year-zero event for breaking the fourth wall in mass media, with news organisations crying foul about the use of bulletins as a dramatic device. Wells' radioplay of War of the Worlds, directed and narrated by famous actor and future film-maker Orson Welles.īroadcast live in the 8pm timeslot across CBS radio in the States as a Halloween special that year, the first half of the tale of intergalactic invasion was presented in the form of dramatised news bulletins, interrupting a normal evening's proceedings.įor elements of a public still getting used to the nuances of the medium, panic apparently ensued, with people flipping stations and missing the initial content warning that the broadcast was a work of science fiction. Less a prank, and more an encounter with developing technology, but we can't talk about historical-level japes without referring to the notorious 1938 broadcast of H.G. Orson Welles (George Orson Wells) (1915 - 1985) on the set of RKO's 'Citizen Kane', which he directed, wrote and starred in. This was news to Partridge himself, of course, who was suddenly kept awake at night by mourners outside his house, subject to inquiries from funeral directors, and asked on the street how his widow has coping with the sudden loss. On or about April Fools' Day that year, Swift published a letter from 'a Revenue employee' confirming Partridge's passing. Among the bold predictions was Partridge's death, of a raging fever no less, on March 29.
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