Who on earth ever thought up April Fool's Day? What genius came up with the idea of making a holiday out of practical jokes. Today we pay homage to some truly nerdy April Fool's Pranks.
Google actually has a proud history of April Fool's pranks. You may have noticed one if you did a Google search today. Visitors to the Google.com were greeted with the adventure of many lifetimes, an opportunity to apply for citizenship in the Virgle community, the first permanent human colony on mars. Not to be limited to a single gag, Google also introduced Gmail Custom Time to users of Gmail. This claimed to allow users to assign any time stamp they wanted to emails. In previous years, Google has featured MentalPlex, the Google Copernicus Center, and more. In fact, Google has chosen April Fool's Day for some of its real launches, such as Gmail and a Gmail storage increase.
In 1989, a glowing flying saucer floated landed in a field in Surrey, England, prompting terrified calls by motorists to the police. When the police came to investigate with their billy clubs at the ready, a door opened at the bottom and a small silver figure came out. The police ran in the other direction. The alien was actually a midget, and the UFO was a hot air balloon specially built by Richard Branson (a collaborator in today's Virgle gag) who was dressed as ET for the occasion.
In 1998, MIT students hacked the school's web page and replaced it with one announcing the sale of MIT to Disney. The page was adorned with a picture of the great dome at MIT with Mickey ears. 
On April Fool's Day in 1962, the "technical expert" at Sweeden's Sveriges Television showed viewers, after a lengthy instruction on the prismatic nature of light, how to instantly turn their black and white televisions into color sets by covering the screen with nylon stockings.
Hopefully you had fun with April Fool's Day too. Please, share.
Google actually has a proud history of April Fool's pranks. You may have noticed one if you did a Google search today. Visitors to the Google.com were greeted with the adventure of many lifetimes, an opportunity to apply for citizenship in the Virgle community, the first permanent human colony on mars. Not to be limited to a single gag, Google also introduced Gmail Custom Time to users of Gmail. This claimed to allow users to assign any time stamp they wanted to emails. In previous years, Google has featured MentalPlex, the Google Copernicus Center, and more. In fact, Google has chosen April Fool's Day for some of its real launches, such as Gmail and a Gmail storage increase.
In 1989, a glowing flying saucer floated landed in a field in Surrey, England, prompting terrified calls by motorists to the police. When the police came to investigate with their billy clubs at the ready, a door opened at the bottom and a small silver figure came out. The police ran in the other direction. The alien was actually a midget, and the UFO was a hot air balloon specially built by Richard Branson (a collaborator in today's Virgle gag) who was dressed as ET for the occasion.
In 1998, MIT students hacked the school's web page and replaced it with one announcing the sale of MIT to Disney. The page was adorned with a picture of the great dome at MIT with Mickey ears. On April Fool's Day in 1962, the "technical expert" at Sweeden's Sveriges Television showed viewers, after a lengthy instruction on the prismatic nature of light, how to instantly turn their black and white televisions into color sets by covering the screen with nylon stockings.Hopefully you had fun with April Fool's Day too. Please, share.
1 comment:
April Fool's Day was sooooo 13 days ago. I need something new to read. How about the "Perils of Playsets" or, "How many nerds does it take to make a play house?"
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