10 Most Elaborate Jokes from the 1900s – Listverse
We all love a good joke. Catching someone off guard, startling them or misleading them into fear or bewilderment: it all amounts to good-natured fun and entertainment, unfettered by the constraints of language, culture and location. Time itself can be bent by the same confused look you get when you play with someone else’s sensibilities.
Unfortunately, our one time of year, Halloween, seems to focus more on the treat part than the much-vaunted and potentially viral practical joke trick. But just because there was no Halloween and no TikTok doesn’t mean the past is dry and humorless.
Here are ten of the most elaborate practical jokes from the 1900s.
Related: Top 10 hilarious pranks pulled to promote movies
10 Ghost student
In 1927, George P. Burdell enrolled at Georgia Tech. He wrote for the school newspaper and for decades George spent his days in the establishment, until he finally graduated with flying colors. The point is that George P. Burdell does not exist and never existed.
When William Edgar Smith was accidentally sent two registration forms, he decided to register UGA football captain George P. Butler, but used Burdell as his last name instead.
Over the years he completed two of each of his assignments, helping the fictional Burdell pass with flying colors and even earn a degree in mechanical engineering. Since then, the Burdell character has achieved many feats, piloting a B-17 bomber in World War II and participating in subsequent wars, traveling the world and receiving letters for basketball. He even served on the board of directors of MAD magazine.[2]
9 Giant steak
If there’s one thing Seattle Mariners fans love more than baseball, it’s steak. Huge steaks weighing 544 kilos, living, breathing, and… well, you get the idea. When Lou Piniella, the coach, made a bet with Ken Griffey Jr. that he wouldn’t be able to hit a certain pitch out of the batting cage on the first day of live pitching. Griffey took the bet, swung and missed, losing the bet. He now owed Piniella a steak dinner.
Griffey, true to his word, decided to turn the tables and pull a prank. When Piniella went to his office in Peoria, Arizona, he found more than he bargained for. A fully grown, live Hereford cow, underprepared and uncooked. Piniella took the joke with a smile. According to reports, a sheep was also tied up for training at one point.[2]
8 Spaghetti trees
If you want proof that people have always believed whatever they read and that it’s not just a problem of the modern age, remind yourself that people believed there were trees that could grow spaghetti. That’s not a metaphor. In 1957, the BBC published an article about farmers in Switzerland growing spaghetti-like fruit.
It was intended as nothing more than a harmless April Fool’s joke, with the producers giving the crew a budget of £100 to make a fun, practical joke. It resulted in unexpected hysteria. The segment was filmed in Castiglione for authenticity, where the crew bought 9kg of uncooked spaghetti and hung the strands from branches to make it look like they were ‘spaghetti trees’.
There was an unexpected fallout as a result of their antics, with the BBC immersed in phone calls demanding explanations. Some realized it was a joke and turned their outrage on the broadcaster.[3]
7 Indecent naked animals
When comedian Buck Henry founded an organization (coined by Alan Abel) called the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA), he wanted nothing more than a few laughs from it. What he told the audience was that SINA’s mission was to give animals clothes to protect their modesty, you know, because that’s important. Performances as “G. Clifford Prout,” he was a man anointed to clothe every living thing. A naked horse is a rude horse.
The campaign was a success, receiving letters of support and even offers for large checks after appearing on popular shows like NBC’s Today Toon. Thousands of viewers responded, and more interviews and publicity followed before he began urging his members (which he suggested had grown to more than 50,000) to take a more active stance by serving summonses on people who shamelessly leave their pets around naked make you dance. The hoax was finally exposed a few years later.[4]
6 Iceberg Down Under
When millionaire Dick Smith told the world he would tow an iceberg from the Arctic Circle, people had no reason to doubt him. He had the means. What should have aroused suspicion was the time of year. On April 1, Smith came along and towed an iceberg from Antarctica all the way to Sydney Harbour, where people enjoyed the obscene waste of resources. Smith promised to cut the giant iceberg into smaller cubes and sell them as natural ‘Dicksicles’, which would improve the taste of any drink.
It turned out that Smith had roped in a few of his friends, rented a boat and filled it with a plastic tarp, shaving cream and firefighting cream. The whole prank cost him a paltry $1,450 of his fortune. Everything for kicks.[5]
5 Major Rose Bowl hoax
In what is considered the biggest hoax of its kind, the Rose Bowl Hoax stands out as one of the greats of the sport. It was 1961 and the Washington Huskies were about to beat the #1 Minnesota Gophers, but all that remained of that day was the great Rose Bowl Hoax.
Created by Lyn Hardy, a small group of Caltech students changed the University of Washington’s halftime flip-card routine so that it would spell “CALTECH,” cementing the moment in the history book of hoaxes.
After learning that the band and cheerleaders had been moved into dormitories, Hardy appeared as a reporter for the Dorsey High student newspaper. The cheerleaders who organized the flip card routine shared the technical details. With a healthy dose of duplicity and lock-picking and a good dose of luck, the joke became reality.[6]
4 Thrower monk
Most of us are bewildered by the monks and their meditative antics, disciplined and distant. Therefore, it is easy to believe that a monk can program his body and mind to hit the perfect shot. When readers their Sports illustrated on April 1, 1985, that was exactly what was promised.
Sidd Finch – part pitcher, part yogi – played brass instruments and looked like Disney characters when he threw. Sidd was touted to change the landscape of the baseball world with an arm like a cannon. His ability to throw a ball at 270 km/h generated all the interest.
The subtitle of the article was: ‘He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part hermit. Impressively freed from our lavish lifestyle, Sidds decided on yoga – and his future in baseball.” Each of the words read: HAPPY APRIL FOOLS DAY.[7]
3 War of the Worlds
HG Welles wrote an otherworldly masterpiece that has been translated into cinema on numerous occasions over the years, but there was a time not so long ago when the story had not found its way into our common collective fictional lore.
On Halloween morning of 1938, Orson Welles and his crew assembled a radio edit of Welles’ The War of the Worldsturning the old novel into fake news bulletins detailing an alien invasion of New Jersey.
Some listeners, seized by the moment, began terrified to call local police, newspaper offices and radio stations, convinced by mass hysteria. By the next publication, the story had made headlines, and reports of mass stampedes and suicides angered listeners who threatened to shoot Welles on the spot.[8]
2 Sokal’s hoax
The hoax, also known as the Sokal affair, involved a university, a genius and a sense of right and wrong. In late 1994, realizing that the quality of published work had at some point declined, he submitted a mock article to the journal Cultural Studies. Social textin which he touched on some topics from physics and mathematics, drawing on various cultural, philosophical and political morals that he estimated would be considered fashionable by the academic commentators.
The magazine did not detect the ironic nature of the article and published it. Later, Sokal revealed that the article was a hoax, drawing public attention to what Sokal perceived as a decline in standards of accuracy in the academic community.[9]
1 Home for Christmas
Baby Jesus disappeared! From the nativity scene, that is. In January 1994, when Ted Laspe took down the nativity scene to decorate it for the holidays, he realized that his baby Jesus was no longer there. In its place was a printed message: ‘I’m going on holiday. I’ll see you on my birthday.” What followed was nothing short of hoax genius.
Weeks later, Laspe received cards and photos from all over the country: Salt Lake City, Vegas, Colorado and even Alaska. Baby Jesus was having the time of his life with ever-changing handwriting. So Laspe devised an elaborate plan to capture the kidnappers. However, he died after receiving the last card at the hospital. Laspe’s wife, Elizabeth, received another note: “Hello Liz, I took some time off to make sure Ted is settled in. He is doing well.”
Baby Jesus was returned by taxi on Christmas Eve at 6 p.m.[10]