Lamb on the Run: Some of the best April Fools’ jokes

Green Valley resident Joe Roth has license plate “HEY JOEY”… Friend who once worked for the CIA in Langley, Va., said a co-worker showed her his car plates one day. “YPS A MA I” (read it like you’d see it in a mirror) … “5 KATZ” on a University of Arizona vanity plate …

Remember what happens next Tuesday, April Fools’ Day…

I went looking for some of the best April Fools’ jokes…and accidentally erased half of them…

…Here’s a few from that Web site…

—In its April 1985 edition, Sports Illustrated published a story about a new rookie pitcher who planned to play for the Mets…His name was Sidd Finch, and he could reportedly throw a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy…

…Surprisingly, Finch had never even played the game before, but had mastered the “art of the pitch” in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the “great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa”… Mets fans celebrated their teams’ amazing luck at having found such a gifted player, and the magazine was flooded with requests for more information…But in reality this legendary player only existed in the imagination of humorist writer George Plimpton…

—On March 31, 1940, Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute issued a press release stating that the world would end the next day…The release was picked up by radio station KYW which broadcast the following message: “Your worst fears that the world will end are confirmed by astronomers of Franklin Institute, Philadelphia…Scientists predict that the world will end at 3 p.m.…This is no April Fool joke

…. “Confirmation can be obtained from Wagner Schlesinger, director of the Fels Planetarium”…

…The public reaction was immediate…Local authorities were flooded with frantic phone calls…The panic only subsided after the Franklin Institute assured people that it had made no such prediction. The prankster responsible for the press release was William Castellini, the institute’s press agent…He intended to use the fake release to publicize an April 1 lecture at the institute titled “How Will the World End?”…

…Pretty soon he was the institute’s former press agent…

—In 1959, Indiana’s Kokomo Tribune reported the city police in a cost-saving plan would close the police station from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.…An answering machine would record all calls made to the station during this time, and these calls would be screened by an officer in the morning…The police reportedly anticipated that the screening process would save money, since many of the calls would be old by the morning and would not need to be answered…

…A spokesman for the police admitted that “there will be a problem on what to do in the case of a woman who calls in and says her husband has threatened to shoot her or some member of the family”…But in such a situation, the spokesman explained, “We will check the hospitals and the coroner, and if they don’t have any record of any trouble, then we will know that nothing happened.”

…The plan wasn’t adopted…

…These and other April Fools’ schemes are recorded at the Museum of Hoaxes operated by Alex Boese at http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/

On Saturday, University of Arizona students plan to join a worldwide demonstration of “Earth Hour”…

From 8 to 9 p.m., many of them plan to participate in the self-imposed darkness like residents in 25 major cities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Israel, Ireland, Thailand and the United States

…Each of those areas will do it starting at 8 p.m. local time and UA officials are encouraging dorm residents to go on the mall and play some organized games instead of sitting in the dark…

Jim Lamb is a reporter for the Green Valley News who says every morning his wife wakes up, looks at him and wonders, “Is it April Fools’ day again?

...Just kidding…His column appears Fridays.

jlamb@gvnews.com | 547-9749