Articles and Stories

April 1, 2014

April 1 is a festival of pranks. Each year journalists they ask themselves: what crazy nonsense has a chance of being believed this year?

Here are a few April Fools’ stories posted around the world:

This year’s article is all over Britain’s newspapers: the Mail, the Times, the Telegraph, the Independent and the Guardian.

Journalists believe that their viewers are opposed to Scottish independence 2014. So they announced, that if Scots vote ‘yes’ to independence from Great Britain, Scotland would switch to driving on the right. The report went on to say in a very credible manner that they will unveil an ambitious scheme to replace the entire British road signage system for the new independent Scotland. M for motorway will be replaced with a new S – for Scotland and the A trunk roads will become N roads – for Nationalist in honor of the new country.

They even created a sign with the new naming convention.

The article continued: The scale of the scheme is enormous: Scotland has 2,174 miles of road, including the 273-mile long A9 stretching from Edinburgh to John O’Groats – known as the "spine of Scotland".

It is estimated that 58,000 signs will have to be replaced – scrapping the famous road sign font known as "Transport" with a new Celtic-tinged typeface, Proclaimer. And it could be that they may take the opportunity to renumber all of Scotland’s roads, beginning at one.

The Australian ‘Food Magazine” reports that every April Fools’ Day Vegemite tricks consumers with funny announcements.

Vegemite (a dark brown Australian food paste made from leftover brewers’ yeast extract containing various vegetable and spice additives) announced on Facebook the availability of a new energy drink: "Start your day with our NEW Vegemite iDrink 2.1 Energy Drink. Will you swap your Vegemite toast for this when you’re on the go?”

The Facebook post pokes fun at the failure of Vegemite’s ‘iSNACK 2.0’ launch in 2009, the original name of its ‘cheesybite’ product. After a significant consumer backlash, Kraft announced it would change the name just four days after release, admitting Australians “just don’t like the name.”

Groupon in New Zealand offered a raffle for a meeting with baby George and the royal parents; the highlight of that meeting would be a professional photo taken with the baby in the winner’s arm.

The dpa (Deutsche Presse Agentur) announced that the Chinese president Xi Jinping started the rumor that the 59-year old Angela Merkel is pregnant. He apparently told Chancellor Merkel that she smelled like his wife Peng during her pregnancy with their daughter Mingze. The story goes that Chancellor Merkel only smiled mysteriously.