April Fools Day is Friday, so this week we’re doing a theme week on the 5 Biggest Pranks in History!
We’re starting off with a prank those jokesters at the BBC pulled on April Fools Day 1957. The news show Panorama ran a fake news report about the spaghetti harvest in Switzerland. It showed a family in southern Switzerland as they gathered their “crop”, removing long strands of noodles from the branches of spaghetti trees, then lying them in the sun to dry. The report was made even more believable because of its voiceover by a respected broadcaster named Richard Dimbleby. Dimbleby was the BBC’s first war correspondent and its leading commentator. It’s safe to say he was a trusted voice!
The idea for the hoax came from the show’s cameraman, Charles de Jaeger. The idea came to him after remembering how teachers at his school in Austria would tease his classmates about being so dumb that they’d believe spaghetti grew on trees.
Around 8 million people watched Panorama that night, and the BBC received hundreds of phone calls the next day from viewers wondering how they could grow their own spaghetti. It seems crazy that so many people would believe the story, but at the time, spaghetti wasn’t eaten regularly in Britain and many considered it to be an exotic delicacy. It was mainly sold in tins with tomato sauce, so not much was actually known about it. To the people wondering how to grow their own spaghetti trees, the BBC told them to “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best!”
The BBC eventually admitted that the whole thing was a prank. Decades later, CNN called it “the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled”. Learn more here.