Real News on April Fools Day: Historical Events Mistaken for Joke

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Panorama - April Fool's Day Hoax - Spaghetti Harvest - 1st April 1957

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sourced by Jacob Zinn

The first of April is a day to pull practical jokes, even for news outlets. TV stations have tricked viewers into thinking spaghetti grows on trees and that stretching a nylon sock over a television could change the black-and-white image into colour.

But in fear of being gullible, viewers are now wary of news they hear on April Fool’s Day, even when the stories are entirely real.

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Here are some real news events that happened to fall on April 1st:

• 1946 – A 7.8-magnitude earthquake caused the April Fool’s Day tsunami, which killed 159 people in Hawaii and 6 in Alaska.
• 1979 – Iran declared April 1 as Republic Day to celebrate officially becoming an Islamic Republic. It is still mistaken as a joke.
• 1984 – Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father.
• 1993 – NASCAR driver Alan Kulwicki died in a plane crash near Bristol, Tennessee with several executives from Hooters, en route to the Food City 500.
• 1999 – The Northwest Territories in Canada split, creating the territory of Nunavut.
• 2003 – Video game companies Square and Enix merged to form Square Enix, originally dismissed as a joke.
• 2004 – Google launched Gmail, but because Google is known to pull pranks on April Fool’s Day, many thought it was a hoax—especially since Google was offering the then-unheard-of 1GB of online storage.
• 2009 – CBS announced the cancellation of Guiding Light after the daytime soap opera’s 72-year run.