April Fool’s Day is a day for playing pranks on people and generally trying to fool them by spinning tall tales. It’s a tradition which many in the media have latched onto as well, with many newspapers running spoof stories on April 1 and TV news programs containing far-fetched reports which they pass off as fact.
This kind of practice has been going on for decades, but one such story had British TV viewers in the 1957 stumped. On April 1 of that year, the BBC’s main current affairs show Panorama ran a story about a family in Switzerland who had a spaghetti tree. The report showed the family ‘harvesting’ the spaghetti tree and cooking and eating it. It was given and added air of authenticity by respected broadcaster Richard Dimbleby doing the voiceover.
This was also at a time when there were very few television networks operating and not many shows on them, so people believed much of what they saw without questioning it. The April 1 report on Panorama was believed to have been watched by around eight million people.
Another factor was that spaghetti was pretty rare in Britain at the time and many people may not have realized that it didn’t in fact grow on trees. The plot thickened further when people began to phone the BBC the following day to ask for advice on how they might grow their own spaghetti tree.
However, the BBC were eventually forced to come clean and explain to viewers that the whole thing had been a hoax.
For more real-life mysteries check out the books at www.medialaze.com.
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