Editor
Nic
Odd but Awesome is our way of giving you completely random fun facts. This issue, all of the facts are themed after April Fool's Day. Some of these pranks are hilarious, but some of them are just weird, and some of the pranks involve radioactive llamas in space... April Fools!
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By Nic
One theory says that April Fools Day is on April 1st because the biblical character Noah sent a dove out to find dry land for the ark to land at before the water level had lowered at all.
In the time of Ancient Rome, the Romans had a tradition of practical joking around the March equinox.
In the early 1960’s, a Swedish television channel that broadcasted in black-and-white instructed their viewers to convert to color by pulling a stocking over their television set.
In 1934, a number of American newspapers published an image of a man flying using a device powered by his own lungs, and some even published a follow-up story.
British supermarket chain Tesco published an advertisement in The Sun in 2002 announcing a “whistling carrot”, achieved through genetic modification. Sadly, it was not true.
In 1965, BBC interviewed a scientist who claimed to have invented “smellovision”, a television which let you detect scents through the TV. Though it was a prank, many viewers claimed that they could actually smell it from home when the scientist sliced onions and brewed coffee on the air.
Pocket-lint, a gadget site, predicted the future in 2004 when they announced, as a joke, that Apple would create a cell phone similar to the iPod touch. Little did they know that this prediction would be fulfilled as the iPhone.
Some French schoolchildren have a tradition of taping a picture of a fish on each other’s backs. When the victim discovers the prank, the pranksters yell “Poisson d’Avril”, or “April Fish”.
Sources: Timeanddate.com, Independent.co, Factmonster.com
April Fools Day!
