Good morning, and welcome!
This week, I was really feeling like a good laugh. After sifting through memories of my favorite pranks (shoutout to my good friend Bella, who iconically replaced every family photo in her house with the same Nicholas Cage portrait), tricks (like my grandpa’s beloved “nail ring” which creates the illusion of a rusty nail stuck through the wearer’s finger), and dad jokes (such as the ones in
this official generator), I came to an epiphany: mischief and merriment are worthless if not shared.
So, with this in mind, I have decided to share this week’s laugh with you.
From anecdotes of jump-scares, there are a lot of shenanigans out there to choose from, but today I'm going to focus solely on famous pranks through the ages. After all, who doesn't love watching a prank from just the right distance to escape any, shall we say, "audience participation"? Join me today in an adventure through the history books to find 5 - oops! I meant 6 - of the best gags ever pulled off by tricksters everywhere. I have only one more thing to say before we start: good luck keeping a straight face!
Prank #1: Bath Time
It is only fitting that for the first prank on this list, we go all the way back to 1698 for one of the earliest hoaxes in history: the Tower of London’s lion washing ceremony. It was to be an lavish event exclusive to the elite living in London. British royalty was even rumored to be involved! In some instances, invitations were even passed out. Everyone wanted to see the Tower’s menagerie staff lead the Tower’s lions to the Tower Ditch (like a moat around the Tower) to bathe and groom them. The date of the ceremony? April 1st… or more commonly known today as April Fools’ Day. The crowds that swarmed to the Tower on this day were in for a huge disappointment, because the “washing of the lions” ceremony was actually a hoax fabricated to fool the masses. After hours of waiting, the irritated crowds dispersed, realizing their mistake. Once, there was even a riot of angry Londoners unwilling to accept the joke. That brings me to the absolute best part about this prank: the 1698 incident was not the only time this hoax proved successful. It was accomplished on large scales again in the eighteenth and nineteenth century as local Londoners tricked tourists into attending… tourists who had no idea that they were actually
lion!
Prank #2: Trypanophobia
Trypanophobia is the pathological fear of needles, which affects 10 percent of Americans - that’s over 30 million people! Though I doubt my distaste is nearly as serious, I admit I’m not a big fan of needles myself. (Even seeing an injection on TV gives me the creeps.) That’s likely the reason this particular prank strikes me as a little mean… but those are the best kind, right? Before a 1947 trip to South America with an entourage of media personnel, President Harry S. Truman became aware of reporter and photographer Tony Vaccaro’s fear of needles and got an idea. A physician was told to falsely inform him that yellow fever shots were compulsory, panicking Vaccaro. He was practically dragged into the White House clinic, reportedly screaming, and told to remove his pants so that the shot could be administered into his backside. After doing so, he was greeted by Truman himself, disguised as a second doctor and lugging a hypodermic needle so large that it was traditionally used on horses. I can’t even imagine the sight without getting the shivers! Luckily for Vaccaro, the president had a very recognizable voice. As Truman jokingly claimed “This won’t hurt a bit, Tony”, the reporter pieced together the real identity of this “doctor” and was more than a little embarrassed to have met the President of the United States while waiting with his pants off for a shot that never came. Talk about being the butt of the joke!
Prank #3: The Ice Borer Strikes Again
The Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer: the sand puppy’s ghastly cousin that existed only in the mind of one unsettlingly imaginative Discover Magazine writer. This fictional creature - fictional, I promise, for those of you prone to nightmares! - could supposedly be found lurking in packs underneath sheets of Antarctic ice. In order to catch their favored prey of penguins (in spite of the fact that a penguin eight times the reported size of an ice borer), the ice borers had to acquire some very crafty hunting methods. Biologist “Aprile Pazzo” suggested that the ice borer had a plate on its head reminiscent of those found on the back of a stegosaurus that was able to become hot enough to cut through ice in cold environments. Like moles, ice borers made their homes underneath the ice in tunnels, traveling in stealth unbeknownst to the world above… at least until they got hungry. To capture a penguin, a group of ice borers would melt the ice around the unfortunate bird, drag it under the slush into their territory, and slaughter it with their huge fangs. However, the unceasing appetite of the horrific creatures evidently was not satisfied by the taste of mere bird, because the article stated that back in 1847, one notable “Antarctic explorer” disappeared without a trace. “To the ice borers, he would have looked like a big penguin,” said “Dr. Pazzo”. Readers everywhere were terrified… and later outraged when they realized that the ice borer article was actually a prank!
Prank #4: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Tacos
A year after 1995’s ice borer incident, popular fast food chain Taco Bell made an announcement: in an effort to relieve the United States Treasury’s immense debt, which, today, totals over 25 trillion dollars, the corporation had purchased the historic Liberty Bell. It was to be renamed the “Taco Liberty Bell” and kept part-time at the Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine, California. Though the company insisted that the “crown jewel of bells” would still be open for public viewing, America was outraged. The National Park Service in Philadelphia was bombarded with livid phone calls, to which they had no idea how to respond because Taco Bell did not actually own the Liberty Bell! Nobody seemed to notice the date of the announcement, which, sure enough, was April 1st, 1996. They eventually scheduled a news conference that very day to quash the rumor and put public minds at ease. However, in spite of the immense initial backlash, both Bells ultimately benefited from this hoax. Taco Bell used the national attention to attract customers to their restaurants (I know I would patronize a place that was able to pull off such an extravagant practical joke), and the Liberty Bell got a 50,000 dollar donation out of the deal after its deceitful “buyers” later decided to publicly honor the monument.
Prank #5: Don’t Look, I’m Neigh-kid
"A nude horse is a rude horse,” claimed G. Clifford Prout in 1959, head of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA). The problem? G. Clifford Prout didn’t exist, and neither did his foundation. SINA was actually the brainchild of Alan Abel, a writer, who hired unemployed comedian Buck Henry to play the role of Prout on his numerous television interviews. The organization claimed to believe that humanity held a double standard for people and animals, the latter of which had been enabled to live lives of sin and dishonor without access to any clothes. Their mission was to make and provide clothing to any creature over 4 inches tall and/or 6 inches long. Thanks to SINA, a drive down the highway found horses flaunting Bermudas, heifers rocking bikinis, and deer sporting new trousers. The weirdest part, however, was that America actually got on board prior to SINA’s exposure as fictional. Abel had to turn down donation after donation, and could only watch in shock as one group of protesters picketed outside the White House, urging the Kennedy family to clothe the horses kept on the estate. The hoax was maintained over 6 years until Abel and Henry finally agreed to tell the public the truth about SINA’s origins. Abel went on to a successful career as a “professional hoaxer”, even managing to fake his own death, and Henry acquired fame bringing about films such as
The Graduate and
Get Smart.
Prank #6: Gulp!
College freshman Lothrop Withington Jr. started this 1939 sensation at Harvard University by boasting that he had successfully eaten a live fish. This apparently was to contribute to his campaign for student body president as an extreme demonstration of the lengths he would go to in leadership of his class. However, one skeptical friend bet him 10 bucks (nearly 200 dollars in today’s money) that he couldn’t do it again. The young politician’s response? Bring on the tartar sauce, or rather, mashed potatoes, since that was what he used to chase down the live goldfish he actually managed to choke down in the presence of a large crowd of classmates and, conveniently, a gaggle of Boston reporters. After their accounts of the instance were published, the craze swept across Harvard’s campus, prompting additional students, and later attendees of other nearby universities, to give goldfish swallowing a try. An element of competition was quickly established, as the American youth tossed back goldfish by the dozen in attempts to break the current record of the day. They called it the “goldfish derby”, and, unbeknownst to many, it was based in lies. The reporters that supposedly witnessed Withington’s stunt were actually its fabricators, partaking in a social experiment that tested the boundaries of fads during our country’s most stressful times. (1939 is better known as the year World War Two began.) However, the origins of goldfish swallowing was not exposed until long after the “derby” count had reached over 100.
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Doubled over yet? Me too. Who knew people could be so imaginatively wacky in their endeavors to put a little mayhem into the world? I'm just glad I wasn't the target of any of these extravagant capers!
My dare for you this morning was best said by the cartoonist, poet and songwriter Shel Silverstein: "Put something silly in the world that ain't been there before." Society has known for a long time that
laughter is good for us, so why not join in the fun? Take it from me, life seems lighter when you look for the hilarity it is filled with.
However, that said, I also have a second challenge for you today.
In the true spirit of the hoax, I confess that there is an impostor among us. One item in this Hijinks Hall of Fame list is a "fake fake" - which means it was a legitimate occurrence! I only added a few "embellishments" in the article to make it out to be a prank, when in actuality, it really happened. My second dare is simple: figure out which item it is. Could Taco Bell have really purchased the Liberty Bell in 1996? Could lion washing ceremonies have actually occurred in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? The secret lies in the history books, or possibly Wikipedia... happy hunting!
(Stumped? I'll admit, the truth is kind of... well... hard to swallow! Does that give you a clue?)
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