Happy April Fools Day!

A personal favorite: On April 1st, 1985 Sports Illustrated published a story about Sidd Finch, a new rookie pitcher,  who planned to play for the Mets. Sidd Finch could reportedly throw a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy. This was 65 mph faster than the previous record. Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the "art of the pitch" in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the "great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa." Mets fans celebrated their teams' amazing luck at having found such a gifted player, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more information. In reality this legendary player only existed in the imagination of the author of the article, George Plimpton. It is also debatable whether or not this prank inspired the very, very, very bad movie 'The Scout' starring Brendon Frasier.

Just plain mean: On April 1st, 1976 The British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation.

Brilliant! On April 1st, 1875 Australia's This Day Tonight news program revealed that the country would soon be converting to "metric time." Under the new system there would be 100 seconds to the minute, 100 minutes to the hour, and 20-hour days. Furthermore, seconds would become millidays, minutes become centidays, and hours become decidays. The report included an interview with Deputy Premier Des Corcoran who praised the new time system. The Adelaide townhall was even shown sporting a new 10-hour metric clock face.

Those are just a few of my favorites. But in my mind nothing beats the French Aviator who flew over a German camp in WWI and dropped what appeared to be a bomb from the sky. The German soldiers ran away as fast as they could, but when the 'bomb' hit the ground nothing happened. They walked over to see that it was just a football with a note that said 'April Fools'. Not sure it gets much better than that.

Until next time... Good luck and good fun!

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