The most unforgettable April Fools Day pranks

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Normally known for his realistic accounts of competing against professional athletes of various sports, writer George Plimpton took a new angle for the April 1, 1985 edition of Sports Illustrated by creating a fictional baseball player. As described in his story "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch," the titular ballplayer was a reclusive 28-year-old Harvard dropout who had been trained by Buddhist monks, was fluent in Sanskrit, and played the French horn. He also could throw a baseball at the unheard-of speed of 168 miles per hour, and as such had earned a secret tryout with the New York Mets. 

The Mets went along with the story, allowing players and coaches to be photographed with the middle school art teacher who was posing as Finch. Even though Plimpton hinted at the joke with the first letters of the words in the article's subhead — "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga" (spelling out "Happy April Fools' Day") — the well-executed deception reportedly led to other teams contacting the Mets to learn more about this mysterious pitcher.

National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" program 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." Harvard professor Laurence Tribe and Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman then came on the air to offer their analysis of Nixon's decision and its possible impact on the 1992 presidential race. A clip from Torrie Clarke, press secretary of the Bush-Quayle campaign, was also played in which she said, "We are stunned and think it's an obvious attempt by Nixon to upstage our foreign policy announcement today." 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 had been an April Fool's Day joke. Comedian Rich Little had impersonated Nixon's voice.

The Taco Liberty Bell was an April Fool's Day joke played by fast food restaurant chain Taco Bell on April 1, 1996. Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in six leading U.S. newspapers (The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, and USA Today) announcing that the company had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell". The ad was created by Jon Parkinson and Harvey Hoffenberg who worked at Bozell, the Taco Bell advertising agency at the time, and went on to win several industry awards. Thousands of people had called Taco Bell headquarters and the National Park Service before it was revealed at noon the same day that the story was a joke. White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry responded that the federal government was also "selling the Lincoln Memorial to Ford Motor Co. and renaming it the Lincoln-Mercury Memorial". 

Burger King proudly bills itself as the home of the Whopper, which makes it fitting that the fast-food chain sprung a whopper of a prank on April Fools' Day in 1998. That day, a full-page advertisement in USA Today trumpeted the launch of the "Left-Handed Whopper," with a helpful diagram showing how BK's signature sandwich was "rotated a full 180 degrees" to ensure a "better grip" and "maximum enjoyment" for lefties. The company's vice president of marketing even described how the product was only being sold in the United States for the time being, but would possibly become available in "other countries with large left-handed populations." 

Neither the publication date of the ad nor the head-scratching premise raised red flags among the masses; a follow-up release from Burger King described how thousands of customers had gone to their restaurants to request left-handed Whoppers, with others specifying that they still preferred the right-handed version.

In a 2008 April Fools' joke, YouTube made all links to videos on the site's home page end up on the "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video, a 1987 hit song performed by English singer Rick Astley. The coordinators of the prank had contacted Astley's record label, Sony BMG, which had made its music available on the website two years earlier; according to label executive Sam Gomez, Astley had liked the idea. YouTube was one of several websites to independently pull such a prank, along with Sports Illustrated and LiveJournal. On that day, the YouTube video received 6.6 million views and 43,000 comments, while the song became the 77th most popular listing on Amazon Music. April Fools' Day strongly contributed to the meme's popularity. The following week, the New York Mets baseball team asked fans on the Internet what song they should use for their seventh-inning rally song for the upcoming season. Rickrolling gained further mainstream awareness after the Mets event, with a SurveyUSA poll the same month estimating that at least 18 million US adults had been rickrolled.  Google Trends showed that the highest volume of searches about rickrolling occurred that month.  

Betcha didn’t know that DIA not only stands for Anderson's Digital Intelligence Advancement group but also for Dancing In America!  That’s right — while we’re usually advancing digital intelligence, we also want to get people dancing.  We wish everyone a very Happy April Fools’ Day!  Now let’s get dancing....click here!!