Listening 37 – Listen for specific words

Playing pranks on April 1st, which is known as April Fools’ Day, is a longstanding tradition in Western culture – and even companies and major outlets get in on the act!

In 1957, for example, the BBC aired a three-minute report about the unusually spaghetti harvest in Switzerland – complete with footage of a Swiss family pulling strands of spaghetti off of tree . It may sound implausible that anyone would for such a story, but at the time, pasta was not an everyday food in Britain. It was sold in tins with tomato and considered a delicacy, so much of the population was unaware that it did not, in fact, grow on trees. Hundreds of called the station wanting to find out how to grow their own spaghetti trees.

Another BBC April Fools’ prank duped a large number of listeners in 1977, when an announced that a once-in-a-lifetime planetary alignment would occur at precisely 9:47 AM. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, resulting in a reduction in the force of the Earth’s gravity. He told the audience that if they jumped in the air at the exact of the alignment, they would feel a strange floating sensation – and sure enough, one minute afterwards, listeners called in they had jumped and floated around the room.

One prank that did not go over too well was in 1933, when a published a doctored photo showing the collapse of the state capitol building after mysterious . The accompanying article attributed the blasts to the accumulation of hot air by the politicians’ verbose debates. Although the end of the article indicated that it was a joke, readers were very upset and many wrote angry calling the prank tactless.

If you think people aren’t as easily fooled in more modern times, think . In 1998, Burger King placed a full-page ad in a newspaper announcing a revolutionary new hamburger. It was supposedly for left-handed burger connoisseurs in that all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees. The next day, thousands of lefties up to order the special sandwich, as right-handed people took pains to specify the correct of their hamburger.

The origin of April Fools’ Day dates back to the Roman Empire, when a court jester commented, within earshot of the emperor, that fools would make better . The emperor, amused by the prospect, decreed that on one day of the year (April 1st) a fool would preside over the Roman Empire – and thus the tradition was .

…or was it? In fact, the ancient Roman origin of April Fools’ Day is nothing more than a prank itself! A professor gave this to a journalist in 1983, and it was reported in many reputable news outlets. The story was broadcast far and wide, yet nobody disputed it – and after a few weeks, the professor came and admitted that the whole thing was a hoax. The actual origins of April Fools’ Day are unknown, but the earliest between April 1st and trickery is found in the literary classic Canterbury Tales, which was written in 1392.