Wednesday, April 1, 2009

April Fool's Day: The Swiss Spaghetti Trees in 1957




Swiss Spaghetti trees

The BBC television programme Panorama ran a famous hoax in 1957, showing the Swiss harvesting spaghetti from trees. They had claimed that the despised pest, the spaghetti weevil, had been eradicated. According to the Museum of Hoaxes, "Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, 'place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.'" It was, in fact, filmed in St.Albans.


Link: Museum of Hoaxes' "Top April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time"
Source: Wikipedia and You Tube