2021: the very salty pizzas of Deliveroo
Shortly after 6 p.m., the 1er April, thousands of customers of the food delivery company receive an email indicating that an order has been placed. And the bill is salty: € 466.40 in total for 38 anchovy pizzas and 50 hot sauces. At the bottom of the message, a discrete line indicates that it is a ” April Fool “, which is confirmed a little later by a second email from Deliveroo. But the damage is already done. In the meantime, hundreds of Internet users have expressed their concern – then their indignation – on social networks, some going so far as to oppose their credit card. “We have to admit, it was a failed April Fool’s joke”, will admit the company the next day in a new message to its customers.
2016: the microphone disconnected from Gmail
1er April, Google adds a funny button to its messaging service. It allows you to end an e-mail exchange by sending a humorous GIF representing a mic drop (“Mic drop”) – a practice from the stand-up and hip-hop worlds that is supposed to punctuate a devastating argument. Problem: The button is located right next to the traditional submit button and it is often used by accident. In a message posted on the Gmail support forum the same day, a man even claims to have lost his job because of this GIF mistakenly sent to his employer. Faced with the sling of users, Google is quick to withdraw the function and recognizes that “Mic Drop caused more headaches than laughs.”
2001: shipwreck in Brighton
In 2001, the host of a local radio station in Brighton, UK, announced that a replica of the Titanic will be visible during the day from the chalk cliff at Beachy Head. Very quickly, hundreds of people flock to the top. No liner in sight, but the crowd digs a crack of five feet in the wall of the cliff, more than one hundred meters high at this point. The coast guards evacuate the area and deny access. “These cliffs are known to be dangerous (…) and hundreds of people were drawn to it because of this stupid joke. It’s really not funny ”, declares one of them at Telegraph. A section of the cliff will collapse into the sea a few days later.
1998: false hopes in Iraq
In an asphyxiated country, the news was loaded with hope: the 1er April 1998, the Iraqi daily Babel, property of Oudai Hussein, the son of Saddam, announces the lifting of the sanctions put in place almost eight years previously against the country … before recognizing that it was a farce. The following year, the newspaper said this time around that the monthly food rations will now include bananas, Pepsi and chocolate. Valves recycled in 2000 and 2001. “We would almost have sympathy for the Saudi religious leader, the grand mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ben Abdullah Al-Sheikh, who banned any celebration of the 1er April in 2001 ”, notes the American site Museum of Hoaxes, which lists the best (and worst) hoaxes in history.
1986: troubled agent in Israel
An Israeli intelligence agent reports the 1er April that Lebanese Shiite leader Nabih Berri was seriously injured in an assassination attempt. The news is broadcast all morning on Israeli public radio and Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s defense minister, has to interrupt a sitting in parliament to break the news. He was forced to retract a few minutes later when he learned that the report had been fabricated from scratch. Embarrassed by this case, in a region subject to tensions, the minister promises that the author of the hoax will be tried by court martial.