INANE
(ih-NAYN)
Lacking
intelligent thought – complacently foolish Common clues:
Vacuous; Silly; Absurd; Pointless; Nonsensical; Cockamamie;
Foolish; Fatuous; Ludicrous Crossword
puzzle frequency:
5 times a year Frequency
in English language:
36766 / 86800 Video: Hollywood
Squares April Fools 2003
April
Fools' Day or All Fools' Day, though not a holiday in its own
right, is a notable day celebrated in many countries on April 1.
The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical
jokes of varying sophistication on friends, enemies and
neighbors, or sending them on fools' errands, the aim of which is
to embarrass the gullible. In some countries, April Fools' jokes
(also called April Fools) are only made before noon on 1 April.
"Whenever
I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I
can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but
not with all those flies and death and stuff."
--Mariah
Carey
Though
the 1st of April appears to have been observed as a general
festival in Great Britain in antiquity, it was apparently not
until the beginning of the 18th century that the making of
April-fools was a common custom. In Scotland the custom was known
as "hunting the gowk," i.e. the cuckoo, and April-fools
were "April-gowks," the cuckoo being a term of
contempt, as it is in many countries.
Well-known
pranks
Alabama
Changes the Value of Pi: The April 1998 newsletter of New
Mexicans for Science and Reason contained an article written by
physicist Mark Boslough claiming that the Alabama Legislature had
voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi to the
"Biblical value" of 3.0. This claim originally appeared
as a news story in the 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a
Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.
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. A large number of people contacted the BBC wanting to
know how to cultivate their own spaghetti trees. It was in fact
filmed in St Albans.
Left
Handed Whoppers: In 1998, Burger King ran an ad in USA Today,
saying that people could get a Whopper for left-handed people
whose condiments were designed to drip out of the right side. Not
only did customers order the new burgers, but some specifically
requested the "old", right-handed burger.
Taco
Liberty Bell: In 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page
advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had
purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt"
and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell." When asked
about the sale, White House press secretary Mike McCurry replied
tongue-in-cheek that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and
would henceforth be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
San
Serriffe: The Guardian printed a supplement in 1977 praising this
fictional resort, its two main islands (Upper Caisse and Lower
Caisse), its capital (Bodoni), and its leader (General Pica).
Intrigued readers were later disappointed to learn that San
Serriffe (sans serif) did not exist except as references to
typeface terminology. (This comes from a Jorge Luis Borges
story.)
Metric
time: Repeated several times in various countries, this hoax
involves claiming that the time system will be changed to one in
which units of time are based on powers of 10.
Smell-o-vision:
In 1965, the BBC purported to conduct a trial of a new technology
allowing the transmission of odor over the airwaves to all
viewers. Many viewers reportedly contacted the BBC to report the
trial's success. This hoax was also conducted by the Seven
Network in Australia in 2005. In 2007, the BBC website repeated
an online version of the hoax.
Tower
of Pisa: The Dutch television news reported once in the 1950s
that the Tower of Pisa had fallen over. Many shocked people
contacted the station.
Write
Only Memory: Signetics advertised Write Only Memory IC databooks
in 1972 through the late 1970s.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "April
Fools’ Day.”
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