Memorable April Fool’s Day Pranks Pulled by the Media

 * In the early 1950s, the BBC aired a “news” item about the spaghetti harvest in Switzerland.

* In 1985, Sports Illustrated published a story by George Plimpton about a Mets pitching phenom named Sidd Finch. According to Plimpton, Finch had a 168-mph fast ball (which he credited to meditations in Tibet), carried a French horn at all times, and wore one hiking boot while pitching.

* In 2004, NPR’s “All Things Considered” ran a story about the USPS’s new “portable zip codes” program. Like people being able to keep their phone number even if they moved, the program was designed to represent “a citizen’s place in the demographic, rather than geographic” landscape.

* In 2008, the BBC showed a video clip of flying penguins as part of its “Miracles of Evolution” series. The idea was that the penguins had evolved in this way in order to escape the harsh weather in the Antarctic by flying to South America’s rainforests.

[Source: CNN.com]