In honor of April Fool's day I was going to write to you all and regale you with tales of the origins of this interesting tradition, dare I say holiday. However, as a poured over the wikipedia entry I realized that the history of April Fool's day is actually really pretty boring and mostly nonsensical. At some point Chaucer was involved and really at no point was it funny. So I will spare you.

What I did find sort of entertaining were the real life public pranks that have taken place over the years. Those seemed worth sharing:

• Alabama Changes the Value of Pi: The April 1998 newsletter of New Mexicans for Science and Reason contained an article written by physicist Mark Boslough claiming that the Alabama Legistature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi to the "Biblical value" of 3.0.
• Spaghetti trees: The BBC television program Panorama ran a famous hoax in 1957, showing the Swiss harvesting spaghetti from trees. They had claimed that the despised pest the spaghetti weevil had been eradicated. A large number of people contacted the BBC wanting to know how to cultivate their own spaghetti trees.
• Left Handed Whoppers: In 1998, Burger King ran an ad in USA Today, saying that people could get a Whopper for left-handed people whose condiments were designed to drip out of the right side. Not only did customers order the new burgers, but some specifically requested the "old", right-handed burger.
• Taco Liberty Bell: In 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell."
• San Serriffe: The Guardian printed a supplement in 1977 praising this fictional resort, its two main islands (Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse), its capital (Bodini), and its leader (General Pica). Intrigued readers were later disappointed to learn that San Serriffe (sans serif) did not exist except as references to typeface terminology.
• Smell-o-vision: In 1965, the BBC purported to conduct a trial of a new technology allowing the transmission of odor over the airwaves to all viewers. Many viewers reportedly contacted the BBC to report the trial's success.
• Tower of Pisa: The Dutch TV news reported once in the 1950s that the Tower of Pisa had fallen over.
• Crazy Canucks: The Canadian news site bourque.org announced in 2002 that Finance Minster Paul Martin had resigned "in order to breed prize Charolais cattle and handsome Fawn Runner ducks.

I must confess that I am really not a fan of having pranks pulled on me. As a result I refrain from pulling them on others and thereby reduce the chances that I am going to find my office supplies stuck in jello or the toilet seat saran wrapped. So anyway, I wish you all a prank free April Fools Day.

In case you were wondering, New Mexicans for Science and Reason is a real group. They even have their own podcast: http://www.nmsr.org/