April Fools Day is a holiday where you can prank your friends, family and workmates with impunity and no one can really pull you up for it.

But when big companies and news outlets started getting in on the joke, things got messy on a much wider scale.

 

Here are our top 10 picks throughout history in no particular order.

 

1. One of the oldest recorded pranks was, 'The Washing of the Lions' in the moat at the Tower of London, for which a notice was put out around the town. A crowd had arrived at the gates to witness the 'annual' spectacle, to find that lions had not been kept in the tower for centuries. It remained a popular prank for decades after - with people even handing out official-looking tickets to the event to unsuspecting victims in the mid-nineteenth century. Now THAT'S dedication.

 

2. Multi-million pound corporations like to have a laugh too - even better if it's at a competitor's expense. In 1996 Virgin Cola ran an advert saying it had introduced new technology in it's cola cans that made them turn from red to bright blue when the drink was out-of-date - so customers should avoid buying blue cans at all costs. Coincidentally, Pepsi had recently launched its newly designed cans which were bright blue. Boom! Right in the pocket.

 

 

 

 

3. In 1980 The overseas BBC reported that they were keeping up with the times and replacing Big Ben's clockface with a digital version that had an automated time announcement instead of bells. The broadcast had people reminiscing with anecdotes about the clock, and the presenter said they would be giving away the clock hands to the first four people to phone in which spurred numerous calls - even from a Japanese fisherman out at sea. The public were outraged at the Big Ben upgrade and the BBC were inundated with complaints - so they had to apologise for days after the prank for upsetting listeners.

 

4. In the age of the internet, it seems that people want to get their point across without being sure of the facts first. Last year, NPR news shared an article with the title "Why Doesn't America Read Anymore?" which generated hundreds of angry coments both agreeing and disagreeing with the premise. But the prank ironically proved the news outlet's point; when clicked on, the article had dump text telling viewers to like it but not to post a comment to see who actually bothered to read it. Clever...

 

 

 

 

5. The BBC surprised viewers again with ANOTHER April Fools joke in 1965. They interviewed a London University professor about the 'Smellovision' which allowed broadcasters to transmit scent through the airwaves by breaking the smells down to component molecules before being sent through the screen via the machine. The professor asked viewers to call in if they smelled anything - and several phoned, saying they could smell coffee and onion - some even said their eyes watered from the scent. It's amazing how the mind can play tricks on you.

 

​6. Given that he's launching the first commercial space shuttles, you'd be forgiven for thinking that business pioneer Richard Branson might have actually commissioned the first ever fleet of glass-bottomed Virgin Atlantic airplanes. They even went to the bother of mocking up a photo of the plane from the inside, as well as a diagram. Alas, it was false. It probably would have fallen through if it was real anyway.

 

 

 

7. BBC's Panorama pasta prank in 1957 is one of the most memorable public pranks of all time. They aired a three minute segment on spaghetti tree harvesting in Switzerland - a result of an 'unusually mild winter' and the "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil" with video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off the branches. The reporter said "For those who love this dish, there's nothing like real home-grown spaghetti," prompting hundreds of viewers to call in, asking how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. The BBC replied: "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

 

 

 

 

8. After unearthing the remains of Richard the Third in a Leicester carpark in 2012, archaelogists decided to go one step further and say they found legendary Robin Hood buried beneath Maid Marian Way in Nottingham - complete with arrowheads and a sandstone plaque engraved with the initials RH. The team went great lengths to convince people, claiming they had carbon-dated the bones, extracted DNA which matched with the living descendants of the Earls of Huntingdonshire.

 

 

 

 

9. When a man called in to a TV network in early 1960 to complain after seeing a black man kiss a white woman on one of their shows, they hastily sent an executive to meet the viewer and explain to him that it was just the colour contrast on the TV screen. When Paul Krassner - the editor of satirical magazine The Realist - heard about the story, he was outraged that a respected broadcaster was pandering to a racist. As payback, he asked readers to call in with complaints about a very tame celebrity panel show called Masquerade Part - without indicating what was so offensive. Hundreds complained, which resulted in widespread panic at the network as TV bosses watched the tape repeatedly to figure out what was wrong.

 

 

10. In 2008, The Sun published an article saying that Glasgow Airport was to be renamed John Smeaton Airport as a tribute to the legendary baggage handler, who stopped a terrorist from blowing up the terminal after he drove through the entrance in a jeep full of explosives on June 30 2007. This was after the newspaper's Give John A Gong campaign the previous year, which resulted in him being awarded a Queen's Gallantry Medal for his heroic efforts.