With another April Fools’ Day upon us, many of us will be gingerly walking around in the hopes of avoiding the office prankster. However, corporations have also had their share of great April Fools’ Day jokes over the years. In chronological order, here are 20 of my all time favorites:

1955 – Contra-Polar Energy (Popular Electronics): Popular Electronics ran an article about a new type of energy, called contra-polar, that would cause electrical devices to produce the opposite effect of what they normally would do. For instance, if applied to a typical lamp, the bulb would cast darkness instead of light. Similarly, if applied to a soldering iron or stove, the devices would grow freezing cold. Contra-polar energy technology was said to have been developed during World War II, but had recently been declassified because of its potential use to the general public.

1957 – Swiss Spaghetti Harvest (British Broadcasting Company): The BBC announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. They also showed footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Large numbers of viewers were fooled. When many called the company wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree, BBC supposedly replied, “place a piece of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”

1962 – Instant Color TV (Sveriges Television): Sweden’s Sveriges Television announced that a new technology would allow viewers to convert their existing black and white sets to color. This was groundbreaking news, since there were no color TV broadcasts in Sweden at the time. Viewers were told that all they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their TV screen, and the mesh would cause the light to bend in such a way that it would appear as if the image was in color. Thousands of people were fooled and tried out the new technique.

1965 – Smell-o-vision (British Broadcasting Company): The BBC broadcast an interview with a professor who supposedly developed an amazing new technology, called “Smell-o-vision”, that allowed the transmission of smells over the airwaves. Viewers would now be able to smell aromas produced in the television studio in their own homes because the machine broke scents down into their component molecules which were then transmitted through the screen. He then demonstrated the technology by placing some coffee beans and onions into the Smell-o-vision machine. He asked viewers to report whether they had smelled anything. As would be expected, several viewers called in from across the country to confirm that they had distinctly experienced these scents. Some even claimed that the onions made their eyes water.

1973 – Write-Only Memory (Signetics Corporation): The Signetics corporation announced the invention of a revolutionary new electronic memory that promised to “improve the quality of life for billions of people who are affected by computer data.” As opposed to the common “write-and-read” or “read-only” memories (ROM), they had perfected Fully-Encoded Write-Only Memory (aka WOM). Data could be written to the device, but never read back, thus ensuring Eternally Inaccessible Storage (EIS).

1980 – A Digital “Big Ben” (British Broadcasting Company): The BBC reported that the iconic clock, Big Ben, was going to be upgraded to be given a digital readout. The report included people’s nostalgic reminiscences about the world’s most famous clock, such as anecdotes about the day it stopped and when it chimed 13 times instead of 12. Finally, the service announced that the clock hands, being no longer needed, would be given away to the first four listeners to contact them.

In 1980, Londoners were worried that the iconic clock, Big Ben, would be upgraded with a digital readout to “keep up with the times”. (Image source: AP Photo/A. Grant)


1983 – Rain-Deflecting Open Top Car (BMW): BMW announced that one of its engineers, Herr Blöhn, had designed a sunroof that could be kept open even in the rain, thanks to jets of air that blasted the water away from the top of the car. The amazing new system worked completely automatically, even with the roof fully open in a car wash.


1985 – The Great Sidd Finch (Sports Illustrated): George Plimpton famously told the story of Sidd Finch, a mysterious Mets pitching prospect. Finch, a British orphan, purportedly “learned the art of the pitch” from Tibetan monks, throwing 168 miles per hour with uncanny accuracy. Plimpton dropped a few clues into the story, including a sub-headline that spelled out “Happy April Fools’ Day” and a quote from the commissioner proclaiming, “I’ll have to see it to believe it!”

1992 – Welcome To Chicago (Los Angeles Airport): Los Angeles airport executives created a 85-foot-long yellow banner on the ground that spelled out, in 20-foot-high red letters, “Welcome to Chicago.” It was raised above the Hollywood Park race track, which lay directly along the flight path for arriving planes, about three miles from the airport. Anyone arriving into the airport would have probably felt a feeling of panic as they looked out the window and thought they were in the wrong city.
Culled from http://www.forbes.com/home_usa/

Lolz... Some are funny though but can cause a serious heart attack to victims.

so it is ooooohhhh