Wikipedia:April Fool's Main Page/On This Day

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Please use this page for discussions surrounding the creation of "On This Day" items for April Fool's day 2007

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Contents

[edit] The Mission

This section should focus on unusual, but factual events occurring on 1 April, mostly April Fool's jokes played by other people. This would serve the dual purpose of providing fact and reminding the reader that this is April Fool's Day, which may further convince them that the Wikipedia is presenting "joke facts". Selected anniversaries can include anything that happened as described in April Fool's Day#Well-known hoaxes.

I like the idea of listing notable jokes played by other people but it means that genuinely notable events such as the end of the Spanish Civil War or Iran overthrowing the Shah will never feature in On this day. I'm unsure of the best way round this. --Cherry blossom tree 00:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
How many notable April 1 events are there? I agree that this is a prime case, along with the 'In the News' section, for having a 'serious' section linked from a humorous one. Maybe just have April Fool's Day main page every two years, and take a rest after this year, which I believe will be three years running? Carcharoth 23:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Action Items

  1. What bizarre things can we think of that happened on April 1st - preferably things that aren't April Fool's day related.
  2. Again, someone has to take the action to get these through whatever committee deals with this stuff.


[edit] Candidates

  • 1318 - Scots capture a small town from the English again. English march to get it back again.
  • 1924 - Adolf Hitler jailed for trying to start a revolution in a beer hall
  • 1974 - Berkshire gives a 374-foot horse to Oxfordshire
  •  ???? - bombing Switzerland? (Maybe a bit too serious.)
  •  ???? - Battle of the Five Forks (surely there's something in that name).
    • 1865 - General Pickett ordered to hold Five Forks, loses 2,950.
  • 1976 - Apple Computer founded (can we find out any improbable facts about this)?
  • 527 - Justinian I becomes emperor (seems to have been among the least comic of Byzantine emperors).
  • 1957 - The BBC recommends that radio listeners place a sprig of spaghetti in a can of tomato sauce and hope for the best.[1]
  • 1980 - Opening of Britain's first nudist beach in Brighton.
  • 1918 - RAF founded
  • 1974 - Iran declares itself to be an Islamic Republic.
  • 1973 - Britain introduces VAT (Value Added Tax) to replace Purchase Tax and SET.
  • 1965 - Britain announces the formation of Greater London - comprising the City of London and 32 Metropolitan Authorities.
  • 1960 - United States launches its first weather satellite.
  • 1958 - First Aldermaston march for nuclear disarmament in Britain.
  • 1948 - The blockade of Berlin begins with Soviet troops enforcing road and rail blocks between Berlin and the Allied Zone in West Germany. The Allies mount a massive airlift to keep West Berlin supplied.
  • 1947 - School leaving age in Britain raised to 15.
  • 1947 - Britain nationalises the Electricity Industry.
  • 1945 - World War II: American forces invade the island of Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean.
  • 1935 - Britain introduces Green Belt legislation to stop indiscriminate building on many areas of the countryside. (Maybe there is scope here: "Britain passes law requiring Green belts.")
  • 1924 - The first gramophone to change records automatically goes on sale.
  • 1877 - Eddison announces invention of microphone
  • 1816 - Jane Austen writes: "I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter."
  • 1970 - the Gremlin is introduced to the American market.
  • 1997 - the Comic strip switcheroo sees 46 syndicated artists swap strips for the day

[edit] Comments

(Comments that contained suggestions moved to suggestions list above)

that's a good start. but i think something like "1970: Gremlin turned loose, charges through American market" would be better. with this new sentence structuring, the status of gremlin is now vague and [i]seems[/i] monster like, while not saying anything untrue about the event. just plain ol' American hype. ;) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bierleka (talk • contribs) 11:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC).
How about looking up the total number of traffic fatalities involving the Gremlin, and saying "Gremlin released into American market. Death toll later estimated at over 50,000 (or however many)."--Joel 22:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 1967 - The United States Department of Transportation begins operation. D-Caf 23:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • On 1 April 1934, the UCI published a new definition of a racing bicycle that specified how high the bottom bracket could be above the ground, how far it could be in front of the seat and how close it could be to the front wheel. The new definition effectively banned recumbents from UCI events and guaranteed that upright bicycles would not have to compete against recumbents. For all intents and purposes, the ban is still in effect. See Recumbent bicycle. --Missmarple 18:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Short-list?

Well, time is getting short. We need at least five good ones. So far, the most likely appear to be:

  • 527 - Justinian the Great becomes emperor, a plague is later named in his honor.
  • 1924 - Adolf Hitler jailed for trying to start a revolution in a beer hall
  • 1957 - The BBC recommends that radio listeners place a sprig of spaghetti in a can of tomato sauce and hope for the best.
  • 1970 - Gremlins are introduced into America.
  • 1974 - Berkshire gives a 374-foot horse to Oxfordshire
  • 1980 - Opening of Britain's first nudist beach in Brighton. (If we wrote it as: "Nudism is encouraged on Brighton beach" might surprise Americans because they are thinking of the wrong "Brighton beach").
  • 1997 - The Comic strip switcheroo

I think we need a creative way to re-state these so that they sound incredible - but this seems to a good start.

If it matters, I particularly liked the Five Forks one. --Islomaniac 973 23:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Report on the news

e.g., "2005 - BBC News reports Zombie attacks in Cambodia.[1]" The old Daily Show trick, inverted: Real news is fake news, and fake news is real history.--Joel 22:51, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Actual Date

I think that, instead of saying it's April 1, we should say March 32, or November 152 etc. While this is not untrue, it is an April Fool's-y thing to do. Bensmith53 00:30, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

March 32 is the only possibility, as otherwise the presence/absence of February 29 screws things up as far as events that happened on leap years are concerned. --ais523 15:36, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
2007 is not affected unless we go for September One thousand and whatever. So Nov 152 could work.Bensmith53 10:01, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some late entries

  • 2002 Tesco announces the impending release of "whistling carrots".
  • 1977 The Guardian celebrates the 10th anniversary of Sans Seriffe, a small republic made up of "several semi-colon shaped islands in the Indian Ocean". (FYI the largest island was Upper Caisse and the smallest was Lower Caisse)
  • 1986 The Parisien reports the dismantling if the Eiffel Tower.
  • 1965 The BBC announces the release of their experimental technology allowing smells to be transmitted over the airwaves. (FYI several dim-witted listeners called in to say that they could smell some of the smells)
  • 1919 Piles of horse manure are found in Venice's Piazza Sam Marco. Horses that can swim are blamed, as the Piazza is surrounded entriely by canals. (It was actually Horace de Vere Cole who hired gondoliers to dump (pardon the pun) the manure in the Piazza.

All of these come from Sandra Hall's On This Day (2005, New Holland) Bensmith53 00:43, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you find articles for any of these events? —Dgiest c 22:53, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
We could easily add sections to the relevant articles if we can't make full articles (i.e. Tesco for the first one, the Guardian for the second etc.)Bensmith53 06:38, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Misdirection in chronicling hoaxes

It is my opinion that we should be a bit deliberately misleading in wording the past hoaxes by others. Specifically, it shouldn't be too obvious that we're reporting on a press hoax in the blurb — thus it's best to avoid items that can only be worded as a third-party "BBC reports that..." For example, the BBC introducing smell-o-vision is something the BBC is actually doing itself, so it's more believable. For the holiday, we might have Independence Day in San Serrife — avoiding reference to The Guardian.--Pharos 21:14, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My recent changes so far

So far, I added Berwick-upon-Tweed and Serious Organised Crime Agency because of their unusual names, along with Independence Day in San Serriffe, to the template. I also put on Richard M. Nixon signing the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act banning cigarette TV and radio ads -- just so Nixon's image can be on there (for various reasons). The problem is that Justinian I is already on April 7 and the Beer Hall Putsch was featured on November 8. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 02:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

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