April Fools

A day for hoaxes and tricks, here we have brought you some funny incidents that happened on April Fools Day. The events that have been documented here are real and have caused false alarms in the victims. Funny April Fool warnings can make people run for life or hide under their desks and here you can read how: In 1949, Phil Shone perpetrated a prank on April Fools' Day that forced the New Zealand Broadcasting Service to send out a memo before this day each year to new Zealand radio stations to report 'only' the truth in keeping with the rules of broadcasting. Shone was a New Zealand deejay for radio station 1ZB and the hoax that put his name in history was about a mile-wide wasp swarm that he announced to be headed towards Auckland. He even advised them about some safety measures such as wearing their socks over their trousers when going outside and leaving honey-smeared traps outside their doors. Hundreds of his listeners were taken in and followed the directions dutifully until he finally admitted it to be just a joke! Porky Bickar created a widespread panic and alarm in the residents of Sitka, Alaska in 1974 by flowing hundreds of old tires into the neighboring but long-dormant volcano Mount Edgecumbe and lit them up to release black smoke leading people to think that volcano was becoming active again and erupt anytime soon. The terror caused by his prank got so imprinted on everyone's mind that when Mount St. Helens erupted six years later, a resident of Sitka wrote to Bickar stating in an angry tone that he had crossed his limits this time. A government agency called Arizona Pest Removal Information Line (For Outside Operations Listings) (first letters of every word spells 'APRIL FOOL') announced on 1st of April, 1994 to the residents of Glendale and Peoria, Arizona that everybody has to remain indoors from 9 am to 2:30 pm as a widespread aerial spraying was scheduled for the day under 'Operation Killer Bees' to eradicate a killer bee population in the area. The yellow fliers in the neighborhoods caused quite a furor and people kept looking out of the windows for pest-control planes and tried calling the phone numbers of local television and radio stations that were provided for more enquiry.