LIRPA SLOOF TO THE RESCUE

One supposition connects today’s date all the way back to Noah. Apparently, that Biblical hero was pacing the soggy poop deck of his animal-laden ark, weeks into the deluge and up-to-here with the Herculean task of saving God’s animals — the mess, the clamor, no PetSmart deliveries! So on April 1 he sent a dove off in search of dry land.  But the dove never returned. 

Since then, the first day of the fourth month has always included a bit of foolery. 

One of the best was the BBC’s “spaghetti harvest,” a three minute hoax that aired April 1, 1957, on the current affairs program “Panorama.” The announcer told his British audience that Ticino, a Swiss region near the Italian border, was enjoying “an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop”. The camera even showed footage of people picking pasta off trees and bushes, then sitting down to eat their “home-grown” macaroni. Believable? The BEEB was besieged with calls from viewers asking if orzo would grow in their Cotswolds plots.

On April 1, 1905, the German newspaper BERLINER TAGEBLATT featured  a banner headline announcing that thieves, hired by robber barons, had dug a tunnel underneath the U.S. Federal Treasury in Washington, D.C, and stolen $268 million of America’s silver and gold. Word that America had been robbed spread like wildfire through Europe, causing financial mayhem. Finally, Louis Viereck, a New York correspondent for the newspaper, admitted he had, uh, sorry folks, cooked up the chicanery.

Sweden’s best was the Pantyhose Prank. On April 1, 1962, a “supposed” technical expert for the country’s only television channel breathlessly announced that viewers “can now watch their usual black-and-white broadcasts in stunning color simply by stretching a pair of nylon stockings and taping them over your screens,” Every viewer who tried it saw only fuzzy grey images (Duh!) and it wasn’t until April 1, 1970 that regular color programming debuted in Sweden.

Writer George Plimpton is credited with one of the all time great April Fools jokes when he concocted the tale of Mets fireball pitcher Siddhartha (Sidd) Finch for a lengthy SPORTS ILLUSTRATED article. Only sharp-eyed readers caught the date (April 1, 1985) on the cover and figured it out; others wondered if Tom Terrific’s stats were about to be decimated and called the front office to order season tickets.

April 1 seems to activate fun-and-pun-loving folk.  In 1966, the fast food restaurant Taco Bell announced — and people did not question this — that it had just purchased the Liberty Bell in  Philadelphia and planned to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. 

In 1959, in Sao  Paulo, Brazil, protesters fed up with overflowing sewers and inflated prices ran a campaign to elect a female rhinoceros to the city council. Their candidate, a black rhino named Cacareco (Portuguese for “rubbish”), won a seat by a whopping 100,000 votes. The election board disqualified her but this  remains the most famous protest vote in Brazilian history.  

And in 1994, PC MAGAZINE published an article outlining a bill currently being debated in Congress that would prohibit the use of the internet while intoxicated. The article was written by none other than … Lirpa Sloof.

So have fun today. Put fake parking tickets on the windshield of your teenager’s car. Fill a Krispy Kreme donut box with Brussel sprouts. Add jelly beans to the ice dispenser and watch what happens when someone goes to get ice water. It’s Lirpa Sloof day!