There will be heavy snowfall in Delhi tonight!!
Happy April Fool’s Day to all of you.
Without partaking in the traditions any further, let us throw light on some of the most famous weather pranks of all time which made it to news and fooled millions of people changing the world weather drastically for a day!
1981 - The Guardian reported that scientists at Britain's research labs had developed a machine to control the weather. It was said that Britain will gain the immediate benefit of long summers, with rainfall only at night. Readers were also assured that it would snow every Christmas in Britain. This lasted all day and Londoners rejoiced fully. To everyone’s shock, it was later announced that it was an April Fool’s Day prank.
1984: The Eldorado Daily Journal in Illinois announced a contest to see who could save the most daylight for daylight savings time. Contestants were required to save as much daylight as they could. Whoever succeeded in saving the most daylight would win the contest. Only pure daylight would be allowed, no dawn, twilight light or moonlight was allowed. Light could be stored in any container or box. The contest received a huge, nationwide response.
1998 - Guinness issued a press release announcing that it had reached an agreement with the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich in England under which the Greenwich Mean Time would be renamed Guinness Mean Time until the end of 1999. The Financial Times, not realizing that the release was a joke, resented the agreement stating that Guinness had adopted ‘brash tone for the millennium’. When the Financial Times learned that it had fallen for a joke, it printed a curt retraction, stating their reaction was intended as an April 1st spoof and they were okay had the agreement been real.
1978 - A giant iceberg suddenly appeared in Sydney Harbor on the morning of 1st April 1978. Locals were excited as they were told that iceberg had been specially towed from Antarctica. Dick Smith, a local millionaire businessman said that he was going to carve the berg into small ice cubes, which he would sell to the public for ten cents each. These ice cubes from the pure waters of Antarctica were promised to improve the flavor of any drink they cooled. But just as the berg went into the harbor, was its secret revealed. It started to rain, and the firefighting foam and shaving cream that the berg was really made off, got washed away, uncovering the white plastic sheets beneath. And as some said, businessman Dick Smith, made a real d*** of himself.
April Fool’s Day is celebrated since 1500s when fools in France were called ‘poisson d’avril’ or April fish, as it was easy to catch a naïve young fish and similarly it was easy to fool a naïve person.
Indians on the other have their own unique way of celebrating the Fool’s Day. Every year a ‘Maha Moorkh Sammelan’ is held across North India where the brightest, or the dumbest fools rather, compete for the title of King of Fools and for the precious prize of a ride on a donkey. No we are not trying to fool you yet again..
