April Fool’s Day has been celebrated since the Roman times. While you might be switching the salt and the sugar, or putting a plastic spider in someone’s tea, there have been some truly incredible pranks that fooled the entire world.
Here are our 5 favourite April Fool’s Day pranks – see if you can beat these!

On 1 April 1972, newspaper headlines around the world announced the dead body of the Loch Ness Monster had been found. A team of zoologists from had ‘discovered’ the carcass floating in the water the day before. Initial reports claimed it weighed a ton and a half and was 15½ feet long. Upon inspection, Nessie turned out to be a bull elephant seal.

In 1977, the Guardian devoted no less than seven pages to a travel story about the islands of San Seriffe (shaped like semi-colons). So idyllic did the paper make the islands sound that they received countless calls from people demanding to know more about how to book a trip. But it was all an outrageously nerdy joke about printers’ terminology – all the islands’ towns were named after fonts, and the national bird was the Kwote. 

The BBC reported in 1980 that in order to keep up with the times, Big Ben was going to be given a digital readout. The BBC Japanese service also announced the clock hands would be sold to the first four listeners to contact them. One Japanese seaman in the mid-Atlantic immediately radioed in a bid.

Closer to home, Beeld newspaper reported on 1 April 2003 that, in a last minute deal to avoid war, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had accepted an offer of exile in South Africa. In exchange he would run South Africa’s oil industry. Details of the arrangement included: Hussein would be given a game farm on which to live, and he would travel in a jet outfitted with a missile defense system. The US was said to be happy about the deal because it would make Hussein “somebody else’s problem.”

Last year, Springbok supporters from all over South Africa took to social media platforms last year in passionate protest following the announcement from official team sponsor ABSA that the new Springbok jerseys would be red and gold. The Springboks have been playing in green and gold jerseys since 1905. 

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