April Fools’ Special: History’s Hoaxes Happy
April Fools’ Day. To mark the occasion, Notional Geographic News has compiled a
list of some of the more memorable hoaxes in recent history. They are the lies,
darned (可恨的) lies, and whoppers (弥天大谎) that have been perpetrated on the
gullible(易受骗的) and unsuspecting to fulfill that age-old desire held by some to
put the joke on others. Internet Hoaxes The Internet
has given birth to a proliferation (增殖) of hoaxes. E-mall inboxes are bombarded
on an almost daily basis with messages warning of terrible computer viruses that
cause users to delete benign (良性) chunks of data from their hard drives, or of
credit card seams that entice the naive to give all their personal information,
including passwords and bank account details, to identity thieves. Other e-mails
give rise to wry(歪曲的) chuckles, which is where this list begins. Ban
Dihydrogen Monoxide (一氧化二氢) City officials in Aliso Viejo,
California, were so concerned about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide that they
scheduled a vote last month on whether to ban foam (泡沫) cups from city-sponsored
events after they learned the chemical was used in foam-cup
production. Officials called off the vote after learning that
dihydrogen monoxide is the scientific term for water. "It’s
embarrassing," city manager David J. Norman told the Associated Press. "We had a
paralegal(律师助手) who did bad research." Indeed, the paralegal had
fallen victim to an official-looking Web site touting the dangers of dihydrogen
monoxide. An e- mail originally authored in 1990 by Eric Lechner then a graduate
student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, claimed that dihydrogen
monoxide "is used as an industrial solvent and coolant, and is used in the
production of Styrofoam(聚苯乙烯泡沫塑料)." Other dangers pranksters
(爱开玩笑的人) associated with the chemical included accelerated corrosion and
rusting, severe bums, and death from inhalation. Versions of the
e-mail continue to circulate today, and several Web sites, including that of the
Coalition to Ban DHMO, warn, tongue-in-cheek, of water’s dangers. Alabama
Changes Value of Pi The April 1998 newsletter put out by New
Mexicans for Science and Reason contains an article titled "Alabama Legislature
Lays Siege to Pi". It was penned by April Holiday of the Associmated Press (sic)
and told the story of how the Alabama state legislature voted to change the
value of the mathematical constant Pi from 3.14159 to the round number of
3. The ersatz (假的) news story was written by Los Alamos National
Laboratory physicist Mark Boslough to parody(滑稽地模仿) legislative and school board
attacks on the teaching of evolution in New Mexico. At Boslough
’s suggestion, Dave Thomas, the president of New Mexicans for Science and
Reason, posted the article in its entirety to the Internet newsgroup Talk.
Origins on April 1. ( The newsgroup hosts a lively debate on creation vs.
evolution. ) Later that evening Thomas posted a full confession to the hoax. lie
thought he had put all rumors to bed. But to Thomas’s surprise,
however, several newsgroup readers forwarded the article to friends and posted
it on other newsgroups. When Thomas checked in on the story a
few weeks later, he was surprised to learn that it had spread like wildfire. The
telltale signs of the article’s satirical intent, such as the April I date and
misspelled "Associmated Press" dateline, had been replaced or deleted.
Alabama legislators were bombarded with calls protesting the law. The
legislators explained that the news was a hoax. There was not and never had been
such a law. TV and Newspaper Hoaxes Before the advent
of the Internet, and even today, traditional media outlets such as newspapers,
radio, and television, have sometimes hoaxed their audiences. The deceptions nm
the gamut from purported natural disasters to wishful news. Swiss
Spaghetti (意大利式细面条) Harvest Alex Boese, curator of the
Museum of Hoaxes, a regularly updated Web site that also appeared in book form
in November 2002, said one of his favorite hoaxes remains one perpetrated by the
British Broadcasting Company. On April 1, 1957, the BBC aired a
report on the television news show Panorama about the bumper spaghetti harvest
in southern Switzerland. Viewers watched Swiss farmers pull
pasta off spaghetti trees as the show’s anchor, Richard Dimbleby, attributed the
bountiful harvest to the mild winter and the disappearance of the spaghetti
weevil. The broadcaster detailed the ins and outs of the life of
the spaghetti farmer and anticipated questions about how spaghetti grows on
trees. Thousands of people believed the report and called the BBC. to inquire
about growing their own spaghetti trees, to which the BBC replied, "Place a
sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."
"It was a great satirical effect about British society," Boese said.
"British society really was like that at that time. The British have a
tendency to be a bit insulated(绝缘的) and do not know that much about the rest of
Europe:" Taco Liberty Bell On April l, 1996, readers
in five major U.S. cities opened their newspapers to learn from a full page
announcement that the Taco Bell Corporation had purchased the Liberty Bell from
the U.S. government. The announcement reported that the company was relocating
the historic bell from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Irvine, California. The
move, the corporation said in the advertisement, was part of an "effort to help
the national debt". Hundreds of other newspapers and television
shows ran stories related to the press release on the matter put out by Taco
Bell’s public relations firm, PainePR. Outraged citizens called the Liberty Bell
National Historic Park in Philadelphia to express their disgust. A few hours
later the public relations firm released another press announcement stating that
the stunt was a hoax. White House press secretary Mike McCurry
got into the act when he remarked that the government would also be "selling the
Lincoln Memorial to Ford Motor Company and renaming it the Lincoln-Mercury
Memorial". Crop Circles Strange, circular formations
began to appear in the, fields of southern England in the mid-1970s, bringing
busloads of curious onlookers, media representatives, and believers in the
paranormal out to the countryside for a look. A sometimes
vitriolic (讽刺的) debate on their origins has since ensued (跟着发生), and the curious
formations have spread around the world, becoming more and more elaborate as the
years go by. Some people consider the crop formations to be the
greatest works of modern art to emerge from the 20th century, while others are
convinced they are signs of extraterrestrial communications or landing sites of
UFOs. The debate rages, even today, although in 1991 Doug Bower
and Dave Chorley, two elderly men from Wiltshire County, came forward and
claimed responsibility for the crop circles that appeared there over the
preceding. 20 years. The pair made the circles by pushing down nearly ripe crops
with a wooden plank suspended from a rope. Munn Landing—a
Hoax Ever since NASA sent astronauts to the moon between
1969 and 1972, skeptics have questioned whether the Apollo missions were real or
simply a ploy to one-up (领先) the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The debate
resurfaced and reached crescendo levels in February 2001, when Fox television
aired a program called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon
Guests on the show argued that NASA did not have the technology to land on
the moon. Anxious to win the space race, NASA acted out the Apollo program in
movie studios, they Said. The conspiracy the9rists pointed out that the pictures
transmitted from the moon do not include stars and that the flag the Americans
planted on the moon is waving, even though there is thought to be no breeze on
the moon. NASA quickly refuted these claims in a series of press
releases, stating that any photographer would know it is difficult to capture
something very bright and very dim on the same piece of film. Since the
photographers wanted to capture the astronauts striding across the lunar surface
in their sunlit space suits, the background stars were too faint to
see. As for the flag, NASA said that the astronauts were turning
it back and forth to get in firmly planted in the lunar soil, which made it
wave. The crop circles were thought to be the greatest works of modern art, the signs of ______ or landing sites of UFOs.