HUMOR COLLECTIONS

April Fools' Day is back for another exciting instalment, because, well it's April 1 2009 and it kind of happens every year.

A map of the islands of San Serriffe

So to celebrate this unique* occurrence we've put together our top ten best April Fool pranks ever.

*(April 1st happens each year)

1. San Serriffe
Back in the hazy, distant days of 1977, the annual japery of April Fool's Day was far from a fixture in the UK's newspapers. But then The Guardian ran a seven-page feature on the remote island nation of San Serriffe, in the Indian Ocean – complete with descriptions of its two main islands, Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse, its capital Bodoni, and its ruler, General Pica. Of course, it was all an elaborate joke, with most of the names being punning references to typographer's terminology. But huge numbers of people fell for it – aided perhaps by the fact that the paper roped in many legitimate advertisers, including Guinness and Kodak, to play along with the gag. The Guardian's office switchboard was flooded with phonecalls from gullible people wanting more information on the fictitious islands.

The San Serriffe joke is notable not only for sparking the British press's fondness for April 1 tomfoolery, but also for being the most sustained untruth ever printed by the Guardian that wasn't the result of a spelling error.

2. Google custom time
Ever wished you could turn back time and make sure that birthday email actually arrived on the actual birthday of its much-loved recipient rather than a day late? Or maybe you just want a little advantage when replying to a first-come, first-served free ticket offer? Well thanks to Google's Custom Time feature launched on April 1st 2008, you can. Simply select the '1 hour ago' or '6 hours ago' option when sending your mail and the very concept of late no longer exists.

3. New York City April Fool's Day Parade
When a press release was sent around in 2000 announcing the 15th annual New York City April Fool's Day Parade, not even the facts that a) it promised a float on which Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker would 'spew racial epithets at the crowd', b) that it came from notorious prankster Joey Skaggs, c) that Skaggs had been issuing press-releases about the non-existent parade for a decade and a half, and d) it had the words 'April Fool' in the title, were enough to dissuade CNN from sending a film crew to cover it.

4. PigeonRank
Google has a history of entertaining – if not remotely plauible – April 1st hoaxes (see 2) and arguably the most original of these was their 2002 revelation that Google's search results were created by vast batteries of trained pigeons. This enabled them to attain speeds 'superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl.'

5. Dutch Elm Disease
A 1973 prank by BBC Radio, in which academic Dr. Clothier warned of the dangers of Dutch Elm Disease spreading to redheaded people. The fact that Dr. Clothier sounded suspiciously like Spike Milligan should probably have given the game away on this one.

6. Cleaning The Internet
A perennial favourite, which hit hardest in 1997, is a forwarded email warning that the internet will be shut down over April 1 so that robots can crawl along it cleaning out dead sites. This is of course false: the internet actually has a nice lady called Eleanor who comes in to dust it down every second Tuesday.

7. Pi
The claim that the Alabama State Legislature has voted to change the value of pi (3.1415926…) to the more 'Biblical' 3.0 was in fact a joke, from the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter. The fact that so many people believed it is probably a worse reflection on Alabama than it is on them, however.

8. Patrick Moore
In 1976, the hugely respected astronomer and xylophonist Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio that a rare planetary alignment would reduce Earth's gravity temporarily, causing people to feel a floating sensation. Once again, the BBC uses a patrician authority figure to take the piss out of its audience. Is anything they say actually true?

9. Colour television
In 1962, Swedish black-and-white-only television told its viewers that they could instantly convert their televisions to colour by pulling a pair of nylon tights over the set. This doesn't actually work, but it does look pretty cool.

10. Spaghetti Trees
If the idea of a reputable newspaper like the The Guardian pulling their legs was too much for people in 1977, twenty years earlier the thought that the BBC – in the authoritative persona of Panorama presenter Richard Dimbleby – would tell people fibs must have seemed like communist crazy talk. Which probably explains why, when Panorama ran a short segment about how Swiss people harvested spaghetti from trees in 1957, hundreds of people wrote back asking how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. In their defence, it's worth bearing in mind that a) spaghetti was comparatively alien to most British kitchens in 1957, and b) people are incredibly stupid.