The History of April Fools Day

The BBC has a story up (well, since 1998) about the history of April Fools day, it starts of with the line:

Every year on April 1 the unwitting, the gullible and the plain stupid are caught out by tall stories or practical jokes. But why do people play these jokes at all?

But we will get back to that quote a bit later.

Everyone has their favorite April Fools Day story. The BBC ran theirs- a 1957 BBC broadcast that discussed Spaghetti farming in Switzerland. At the time spaghetti was still relatively new to Europe so people called in to find out how to grow their own spaghetti bushes.

The Museum of Hoaxes lists the top 100 Hoaxes of all time (with the BBC’s coming in at #1). Some really good ones their, worth checking out.

Interesting Images

Following up on both Joel’s post about oil and Eric’s post about Flocke I’ve got two things for you. Admittedly these items are only tangentially related to Joel & Eric’s posts, but as far as I am concerned they are close enough.

First up we’ve got images of Darvaza (The Burning Gates), Darvaza is a village in Turkmenistan where, in 1971 a drilling rig found an underground cavern and then promptly fell inside creating a crater about 75 meters across.

As the underground cavern was filled with natural gas (relatively close to oil, right?) it would have killed virtually everything around had someone not had the idea to ignite the gas and let it burn off instead of polluting the surrounding area.

37 years later and the Gates of Hell (another name for the site) are still ablaze. John H. Bradley has posted some incredible pictures of the Gates.

Next we’ve got the animals: The BBC has made a three-part series called “Tiger- Spy in the Jungle.”

Using a whole bunch fo different types of cameras (and some elephants in place of traditional cameramen) they caught some incredible (and adorable) images of life in the jungle, well, at least life in the jungle when the animals are posing for pictures. You can check out some of the pictures that the Daily Mail posted here, or some others that the BBC posted here (plus some videos).

Part one apparently aired yesterday (int he UK) so keep an eye on the Discovery Channel in the next few months to re-air the program.

UK Madness

Ok, first up we have this installation in Liverpool. the wall turns 360 degrees and looks like it does some odd angling along the way as well.

Following that we have the BBC news image of the day- it’s the UK Astute, a 7,000 ton nuclear submarine being wheeled through the streets of Cumbria. Wouldn’t you just love to look out your window and see this rolling down the street? Some times you just gotta love the UK.