In honour of April Fools Day on Monday, here are a few of the greatest (and funniest) public hoaxes performed on April 1 over the years.
1998: The Left-Handed Whopper
Mirror News UK: "Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today in 1998. The advert announced a new item on their menu: the Left-Handed Whopper. Especially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans, the new burger included the same ingredients as the original Whopper, but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees.
Thousands of customers went into restaurants to request the new sandwich, while many others requested their own 'right handed' version."
Museum of Hoaxes: "Politiken, a Copenhagen newspaper, reported that the Danish parliament had passed a new law requiring all dogs to be painted white. The purpose of this, it explained, was to increase road safety by allowing dogs to be seen more easily at night."
1998: The Left-Handed Whopper
Mirror News UK: "Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today in 1998. The advert announced a new item on their menu: the Left-Handed Whopper. Especially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans, the new burger included the same ingredients as the original Whopper, but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees.
Thousands of customers went into restaurants to request the new sandwich, while many others requested their own 'right handed' version."
1965: Dogs Painted White
Museum of Hoaxes: "Politiken, a Copenhagen newspaper, reported that the Danish parliament had passed a new law requiring all dogs to be painted white. The purpose of this, it explained, was to increase road safety by allowing dogs to be seen more easily at night."
2013: Cats in the Army
TIME: "A U.S. military news release says it will start training cats and integrating them into the military police to cut down on military spending. The first fearless feline seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to Grumpy Cat."
1980: Big Ben Goes Digital
Museum of Hoaxes: "The BBC reported that Big Ben, in order to keep up with the times, was going to be given a digital readout. The announcement received a huge response from listeners shocked and angered by the proposed change. The BBC Japanese service also announced that the clock hands would be sold to the first four listeners to contact them. One Japanese seaman in the mid-Atlantic immediately radioed in a bid."
1998: MITkey Mouse
Museum of Hoaxes: "On April 1, 1998 the homepage of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced some startling news: the prestigious university was to be sold to Walt Disney Co. for $6.9 billion. A photograph of the university's famous dome outfitted with a pair of mouse ears accompanied the news. The press release explained that the university was to be dismantled and transported to Orlando where new schools would be added to the campus including the School of Imagineering, the Scrooge McDuck School of Management, and the Donald Duck Department of Linguistics. The fact that the announcement appeared on MIT's homepage added official credibility to it. But in fact, the announcement was the work of students who had hacked into the school's central server and replaced the school's real web page with a phony one."