This BBC Story May Have Been The Greatest April Fools’ Day Hoax Ever

It's pretty hard to get something past people on April Fools' Day. Unless you wake up in a haze and aren't quite firing on all cylinders, you can spot a prank pretty quickly. Many television historians consider this April 1, 1957 BBC report to be the best hoax ever.

As the You Tube description describes, "The spaghetti tree hoax is a famous 3-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current affairs programme Panorama. It told a tale of a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the fictitious spaghetti tree, broadcast at a time when this Italian dish was not widely eaten in the UK and some Britons were unaware that spaghetti is a pasta made from wheat flour and water. Hundreds of viewers phoned into the BBC, either to say the story was not true, or wondering about it, with some even asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. Decades later CNN called this broadcast 'the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled.'"

Thanks to Mark Evanier for calling it to my attention.