On this day in 1976, during an interview on BBC Radio 2, British astronomer Patrick Moore announced that a very rare planetary event was about to take place—that Jupiter and Pluto would soon align in relation to Earth, and their combined gravitational pull would momentarily override Earth's own gravity and make people weigh less. He called it the Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect, and said that if people jumped into the air at exactly 9:47 a.m., they would experience a floating sensation. Moore signaled, "Jump now!" over the airwaves, and within minutes the BBC switchboard was flooded with calls from people who claimed it had worked.
In 1957, the BBC TV show "Panorama" ran a segment about the Swiss spaghetti harvest enjoying a "bumper year" thanks to mild weather and the elimination of the spaghetti weevil. Many credulous Britons were taken in.
In 1998, Mark Boslough fabricated a press release claiming that the Alabama legislature had legally defined pi to be equal to 3. The justification was that "The Bible very clearly says in I Kings 7:23 that the altar font of Solomon's Temple was ten cubits across and thirty cubits in diameter, and that it was round in compass." This is still occasionally reported as real to this very day.
In 2015, Cottonelle announced the introduction of left handed toilet paper.
In 1962, the Swedish national TV network put on a technical expert who told the public that its black-and-white broadcasts could be made color by viewing them through nylon stockings. Many Swedes fell for the hoax.
Happy April Fool's Day everyone. Oh, and in 1897, the Indiana legislature actually did attempt to pass a bill legally defining pi to be exactly 3.2. And also 4 and also 3.23, depending how you used it.
The bill was initially referred to the House Committee on Swamp Lands which, after grave deliberation, decided it should be considered by the Committee on Education. The Education Committee recommended that it be passed, and it was, 67 to 0. No one voted against it.
In the Senate, the bill was referred to the Committee on Temperance. It passed first reading, but that’s as far as it got. According to The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers, the bill “was held up before a second reading due to the intervention of C.A. Waldo, a professor of mathematics [at Purdue] who happened to be passing through.” Waldo, describing the experience later, wrote, “A member [of the legislature] then showed the writer [i.e., Waldo] a copy of the bill just passed and asked him if he would like an introduction to the learned doctor, its author. He declined the courtesy with thanks, remarking that he was acquainted with as many crazy people as he cared to know.”
A local newspaper reported “Although the bill was not acted on favorably no one who spoke against it intimated that there was anything wrong with the theories it advances. All of the Senators who spoke on the bill admitted that they were ignorant of the merits of the proposition. It was simply regarded as not being a subject for legislation.”
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