I discovered this great site for April Fool's Day hoaxes where the No 3 is a Swedish classic: Instant Colour TV.
"In 1962 there was only one tv channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white. The station's technical expert, Kjell Stensson, appeared on the news to announce that thanks to a newly developed technology, all viewers could now quickly and easily convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen, and they would begin to see their favorite shows in color. Stensson then proceeded to demonstrate the process. Reportedly, hundreds of thousands of people, out of the population of seven million, were taken in. Actual color tv transmission only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970."
Don't forget the comments! For example,
"It's all true. I should know. It was the very first time my dad got the nylons off my mother. Nine months later, I was born."
or
"the Norwegians had a similar one in the sixties: It was told in the news on the only TV channel that if you turned of all powerconsuming devices in the house, except for the television set you would get color. The funny part was that if you were staning in your window you could see the "darkness" spreading while people turned of all lightsources to verify the claim."
"First time Dad got the nylons off my mother, nine months later I was born" - haven't laughed like that for ages.
ReplyDeleteApparently you can track birth peaks back to power cuts and the wins of local football teams.
I've never been able to keep a straight face whilst listening to Bryan Adam's 'Summer of 69'. I was born on the first day of spring 1970.
There was actually a variant of this hoax in Sweden this year. I don't know all the details but it told people to try various ingenious tricks to get digital TV without buying a box, none as good as the nylon one though.
ReplyDelete