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April Fools' Day!

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Prompt: Write about April Fools Day or pranks.

From "APRIL FIRST PROMPT"  

Word count:316

It's the 1st of April, and a certain monkey is sure to be very excited. Yes, Andre, I'm looking at you. Best give the fella' som bananas to keep him busy

This is the day for pranks, as we all know. Some of my favourite ones are the elaborate pranks staged by the media, especially before the internet really changed our lives. Back when everyone had just a few sources of news that we all watched/read at the same time, and there was no widespread use of internet yet to check any online forums for answers.

Some fun ones I know of are these two gems:

In 1950 there was a very successful prank where a newspaper tricked people into thinking they would get free wine from the wine shop (not sure what to call it in English), if only they brought their own bucket or container for the wine. There was some nonsense about excess wine they had to get rid of. A fair number of hopeful people lined up, just in case. Worth a try, I guess.

And just to make it better, that same prank was done again, successfully, in 1987.

In 1995 there was a very elaborate prank in another newspaper, where they pretended that a car had been cut in half by the police's laser equipment. The police had just gotten a new type of speed measuring equipment, and it had supposedly Split a car down the middle. They had even actually cut an old car and placed it on the road for the sake of the prank. To top it of, they hired an actress, who held a crying baby in front of the "car wreck", explaining how scary the "accident had been". Not sure how many people believed it, but the effort alone was impressive.

Happy April Fools' Day!