April 1, 2006

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

April 1, 2006 was an April Fool's Day falling on a Saturday.

1 On television
2 On the radio
3 In newspapers, magazines & websites
4 April Fool's Day Pranks gone awry
5 Events mistaken as April Fool's Day hoaxes

[edit] On television

Maya Karin of Channel VI International announced during [V]-Rated Weekend that the channel had taken a change of direction; instead of music, there would be World News, followed by a round-table discussion on the Merits of Literary Fiction on Civic Consciousness, and then some classical music.

NBC ran some Public service announcements in the style of the "The More You Know" campaign, done by cast members of "The Office", while in character. An example by Dwight Schrute: "Black bears weigh between 2 and 500 pounds. Brown bears weigh between 300 and over a thousand pounds. Black bears run away from you. Brown bears run at you. When attacked by a bear, simply lie still on the ground and cover your face and head with your hands. When the bear's finished batting you around and mauling you, contact the U.S. Forest Service." More of these PSAs are posted on NBC's web site.

On Newsround, a BBC news program for children, presenter Jake Humphrey announced that David Beckham will not be playing in the 2006 World Cup as his parents are Scottish.

Veronica, a Dutch TV station, said it would air Mission Impossible 3. It turned out to be a trailer.

[edit] On the radio

On 2-Ten FM in the United Kingdom, station claims that an elephant is causing traffic problems on the M4.

On 702 ABC Sydney in Australia, weekend presenter Simon Marnie conducted the last hour of the show from a Collins class submarine in Sydney Harbour that departed from the Australian National Maritime Museum. The submarine docked to pick up passengers including fellow presenter Tony Eastley and a lucky 702 Sydney listener. The program ended when the submarine was submerged and attacked by a sea monster.

BBC Radio 4's Today Programme announces that the UK Theme (which has really been scheduled for scrapping) is to be replaced with a European Union Theme.

On Quirks and Quarks on CBC Radio, Bob McDonald interviewed a zoologist who had discovered a Vietnamese dog-like animal whose metabolism could cure global warming, and then ate the sole specimen because he was hungry.

The Edge radio station in New Zealand claimed that cellphones had been banned by New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark to people under 16.

Heart 106.2, in London, runs a "Time Tunnel" feature in the mornings, playing songs from the same year and inviting listeners to call in and guess the year. On April 1st, the DJ played songs from different years, causing confusion amongst listeners phoning in.

Magic 105.4, in London, played Christmas songs all morning.

Michael Cahill on his show on 2FM announced that the government were to introduce tolls on Northbound on O'Connell Street in Dublin and on Patrick Street in Cork.

The US public radio program All Things Considered on NPR broadcast a piece about the "Positive Opera Company" on Cape Cod. Its impresario wants to rewrite the world's great tragic operas in order to give them all a happy ending.

On QMR.fm, James Freir started his show by pretending to be fellow presenter Adam Croft, with whom he has a long-running on-air 'rivalry'.

On Radio Sport in New Zealand, show host Phil Gifford and Doug Golightly claimed that rugby league star Stacey Jones was going to play rugby union for Northland upon the expiry of his French rugby league contract. They added that he had also received a special dispensation from Les Catalans to join the Auckland Blues squad for the last six matches of the Super 14 season. This was perpetuated by Jones' close friend Peter Leitch appearing on the show 'furious' about his personal conversation with the hosts being put on air.

On Rock 101.1FM WROQ in Greenville, SC Anitra Lively said that smoking was banned in cars.

On Triple J Radio in Australia, morning hosts were claiming that, to celebrate 'Urban month' the station was going to be changing the entire month's play list to only feature hip hop, much to the complaint of many listeners calling in. Triple J played non-stop hip hop until noon and had many promos already set up to play for the upcoming month, increasing the joke's credibility.

On March 29th, 2006, 95.5 WBRU, an alternative rock station in Providence, Rhode Island, announced that they were being bought out, and would cease operations by 5 p.m. on Friday, March 31st. Soon after WBRU went off the air, Buddy FM, a parody of the Jack FM radio format, began broadcasting random pop and techno music along with occasional pre-recorded station bumps until a mock takeover was staged by WBRU DJs at 12:16 p.m. on April 1st. The prank continued in some form until roughly 4:09 p.m., April 1st.

Big Daddy 103.9 in Sudbury, Ontario ran commercials stating that the government of Ontario was switching to Double Daylight Savings Time in order to keep up with new American regulations.

Munich-based radio station M94.5 changed name to Shit FM for a two-hour period, replacing its usual alternative rock format with hits from artists such as the Vengaboys and Spice Girls.

[edit] In newspapers, magazines & websites

Many alternative cartoonists, including Matt Bors, Ted Rall, and Stephanie McMillian, supported George W. Bush and his policies on April 1st.

Buckeye Sports Bulletin, a magazine dedicated to Ohio State University athletics, reported in its April 1, 2006, edition that Ohio Stadium was being expanded to 125,000 seats just five years after its most-recent expansion. The 25,000 new seats would make "The Horseshoe" the second-biggest football/soccer stadium in the world.

The Daily Mail announced that the door at Number 10 Downing Street that had been black for 270 years had been painted red by Tony Blair.

Plant Rugby revealed that the British and Irish Lions rugby union team will be renamed the "European Lions" and will allow Italian and French players into the side for their 2009 tour of South Africa. This came after the side's poor 2005 tour of New Zealand where the All Blacks won the 3 match series 3 - 0.[1]

The Daily Pennsylvanian released an April Fools edition on April 4, 2006. Top stories include a claim that Penn President Amy Gutmann announced her resignation in favor of becoming Harvard president.

The Economist claimed that a company called GeneDupe, owned by a Paolo Fril, plans to genetically engineer pet dragons as well as Gryphons and various other mythological creatures. [2]. This story actually leaked out on March 31, 2006, due to the need to issue press releases on the day before publication. Five years earlier, the Economist published a story about the same company allegedly genetically engineering fish with real gold in their skin.

Electronic Gaming Monthly claimed that the new iGame, an Apple portable gaming device, is being released. It also claimed that iTunes was to have an iGame section for buying games for the new device.

A member of The Castlevania Dungeon Forums posts a fake GamePro magazine cover with info of a new Castlevania game called "Dual Moons" to fool his friends. This info gets leaked across the Internet in a few hours and is reported on as fact by hundreds of reputable gaming news sites across the globe. link

In a story by Olaf Priol, The Guardian discovers that Coldplay's front man Chris Martin plans to do what he can to get people to vote for David Cameron's Conservative Party [3].

The Independent explored Sylvia Plath's forgotten affair with Chuck Berry, along with various other unlikely celebrity pairings. [4]

The Jackson Hole Daily Newspaper in Wyoming ran a fake front page which claimed they were going to replace the tram, which is set to retire at the end of the year, with bucking horses. A picture revealed these horses to appear as the same ponies that would be in a merry go round. The paper also had a couple other fake articles such as gun club reaches annual fundraising goal of 26,000 dollars, which is followed by an article stating that a club of masked men and women robbed the Jackson Hole bank and stole 26,000 dollars.

The Justice at Brandeis University released an April Fool's edition on April 4. The editorial condemned University President Jehuda Reinharz for telling The Aristocrats joke to the university's board of trustees. Top news stories included a claim that leading donor Carl Shapiro was not a Jew and was in fact from Cossack and Gypsy stock.

New Zealand's Otago Daily Times claimed that a sponsorship and advertising deal had been done between the Mitre 10 chain of hardware stores and the New Zealand Department of Conservation over the Otago Royal Albatross colony [5]. The DoC would get funds to protect the birds, and in return the adult birds would be dyed in the chain's corporate colour, orange.

PC Gameplay announced a movie based on the game Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II to be directed by Uwe Boll. (Source: PC gameplay edition April 2006 page 42.)

Science News found a new work by Euclid. [6]

The Straits Times in Singapore published an article with the headline "Visitors going ape over Zoo's new primate exhibit", claiming that Singapore Zoo is set to extend its primate family with "a pair of the highly intelligent apes Simia mina - close relatives of gorillas and chimpanzees which have been documented communicating vocally, using tools and even walking upright". However, this is "stirring up a controversy" as the "Simia mina are in an enclosure not much bigger than the bedroom of an HDB flat, and will be kept there till April 31".

The Sun published an article about a penguin found on the River Thames. The article had a comment from Lil Faroop, an anagram of April Fool.

The Taipei Times in Taiwan claims to have blown the cover of a secret weapons program utilizing betel nut extract, employing "an aerosol-dispersal device to shower enemy positions with red betel-nut juice, leaving enemy personnel feeling slightly ill, while possessing them with an uncontrollable desire to sing at a KTV." [7]

The online retailer ThinkGeek offered for sale various fake products such as a grow your own 1-up mushroom kit, a caffeine inhaler, wireless extension cords, the iZilla Media Monster, and a USB desktop tanning center. One product, the Screened Sphorb, included a full paragraph of inscrutable descriptive text, plus a photo that only showed "Loading Quicktime 360° view". (ThinkGeek's tagline: "Stuff for the Smart Masses" has the "M" crossed out to say, "Stuff for the Smart Asses".)

[edit] April Fool's Day Pranks gone awry

5 teenage girls, aged between 16-17, created 17 question mark boxes from Super Mario Brothers with info gleaned from website Qwantz.com and placed them in public places around the town of Ravenna, Ohio as a joke. One box was noticed by a concerned citizen, who reported the "suspicious package" to local authorities. Haz-mat Units and a Bomb Squad were called out to investigate, but were cleared of not having anything dangerous in them. One of the girls turned herself in. Authorities plan to press criminal charges, which some have viewed as too harsh.[8]

[edit] Events mistaken as April Fool's Day hoaxes

Genuine events that had been interpreted as April Fool's Day hoaxes included:

Anime News Network staff cites in a forum posting that the site has refrained from making April Fools articles, citing the possibility that such articles by the site would do more harm than good.[9]

Bob Ross Inc. announced a Bob Ross video game here: [10][11][12].

De Telegraaf, a newspaper in The Netherlands, opens with a shocking headline: Loads of the Queen Beatrix's private correspondence got lost and has been published on Limewire, a popular file-sharing program. Later it was revealed that this was not a hoax, but a real leak in the Dutch Ministry of Defence.

Ogrish reports a bizarre baby born in Nepal (note: these links contain images of the child's body) [13] The baby, who appeared to have anencephaly, died shortly after birth. This was reported on a major Nepal news site on March 29th.

Radio 538 awarded a select group of listeners who would come with their bags packed to a train station in Rotterdam, a major city in the Netherlands, with a weekend trip to a yet-to-be-revealed destination. Only three people showed up at the event.

In the United Kingdom, people will not be able to renew their television licence from the Post Office, as the BBC has given the contract from the Royal Mail to PayPoint. Plus, television licence savings stamps will be scrapped. (Statement was given on the 31 March, but some may have heard on the 1 April)

Several UK newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph [14], reported on the Dorset Naga, a chilli pepper grown in Dorset, England and claimed to be the world's hottest at 876,000 Scoville units.

The Simpsons Movie was confirmed today in many newsites and papers. Also the trailer was paired with Ice Age: The Meltdown. For a summary of the trailer, see: [15]