Igual que aquí el Día de los Inocentes, en el Reino Unido el 1 de abril es la jornada para gastar bromas. Algunas bromas, orquestadas sobre todo por los medios de comunicación, han pasado a la historia.
On April 1st, 1957, British TV’s most important news programme, Panorama, closed its edition with an unusual story presented by Richard Dimbleby, the country’s most respected journalist. Dimbleby explained how, after a mild winter, Swiss farmers were experiencing an enormous spaghetti harvest. A short film showed peasants pulling spaghetti strands off trees and putting them in baskets.
The BBC ‘Spaghetti Harvest’ is one of the most famous April Fools’ Day hoaxes of all time – millions of people believed the story and hundreds rang the corporation asking how to cultivate their own spaghetti trees at home. In those days, spaghetti was a rarity in Britain.
UNCLEAR ORIGINS
The custom of playing practical jokes on April 1st goes back hundreds of years, and is practised in many countries around the world, but the origins are unclear. The most popular theory is that when the Gregorian calendar was changed in 1582, moving the start of the year from the end of March to January 1st, those who continued to observe the old date were the victims of jokes.
Cómo pedir comida en inglés en un restaurante
GROWING POPULARITY
April Fools’ Day jokes have become very popular in the UK in recent decades, especially in the media. This popularity probably began with the sophisticated hoax, based on printers’ terminology, perpetrated by The Guardian in 1977. The paper published a seven-page special report on the (fictional) resort of San Serriffe, with its twin islands, in the form of semi-colons, of Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. The Guardian phones rang all day, with people asking for more information. The Sunday Telegraph also famously wrote about a Japanese marathon runner lost in England in 1981 after thinking he had to run for 26 days and not 26 miles. Several readers ‘saw’ him but were unable to stop him.
More HOAXES
There have been many hoaxes in recent years, all over the world. Burger King announced in 1998 in America that it had invented a hamburger for left-handed people, while in 2002 supermarket chain Tesco ‘revealed’ its new carrots that whistled when fully-cooked.
In 2007, the New Zealand ‘scientist’, ‘Dr Ewe Noh-Watt’, made the incredible ‘discovery’ that global warming was actually the result of the country’s falling sheep population. Sheep, he said, are white and normally reflect sunlight back into space: less sheep, more solar radiation.
Over time, April Fools’ Day tricks have become more and more spectacular. In Denmark, in 2004, some practical jokers found an old underground train and placed the front part of the first carriage, which had been cut obliquely, in the middle of the main square in Copenhagen. They put loose tiles all around it. It looked as if it had burst through the ground from the track below! So, if you hear of any strange stories on April 1st, it might be better to take them with a pinch of salt!
Best of BBC Hoaxes
Over the years, rather surprisingly, the BBC, the most respected media organisation in the world, has been one of the greatest sources of April Fools.
In 1976, Patrick Moore, the UK’s most famous astronomer, announced on BBC Radio that a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur at 9.47am on April 1st. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily altering the Earth’s gravity. People jumping in the air at this moment would feel they were floating. Hundreds of people rang the BBC ‘confirming’ the event. One woman said she and 11 friends actually floated around the room!
In 1980, BBC Radio reported that Big Ben was going to be modernised with a digital readout. The public could buy the old clock hands. A Japanese seaman rang the BBC from mid-Atlantic with an offer. Thousands of other listeners rang to object to the plan.
Finally, in 2008, BBC TV broadcast a series called Miracles of Evolution. In one programme they ‘showed’ penguins flying thousands of miles from the Antarctic, in the middle of winter, to the rainforests of South America to “spend the winter basking in the tropical sun.”
GLOSSARY
mild: benigno
harvest: cosecha
peasants: campesinos
strands: filamentos, hebras
baskets: cestos
April Fools’ Day: equivalente al Día de los inocentes
hoaxes: engaños
rarity: rareza
practical jokes: bromas
printers: impresores
resort: lugar turístico
semi-colons: punto y coma
left-handed: zurdos
chain: cadena
to whistle: silbar
global warming: calentamiento global
to fall: disminuir
carriage: vagón
loose: sueltas
tiles: baldosas
to burst through: perforar violentamente
track: vía
to take something with a pinch of salt: no tomarse algo al pie de la letra
sources: fuentes
to float: flotar
readout: lectura
hands: agujas
to broadcast: transmitir
to bask in the sun: tomar el sol