April Fools' Day

Friday, April 1, 2022—April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day as it is also known.  A date that has been celebrated for centuries.  But what in the world could possibly be the origins of a day dedicated to pranks and practical jokes?

The exact origins remain a bit of a mystery, the most widely accepted theory says it dates back to 1582 when France switched from the Julian calendar where the new year began on April 1 to the Gregorian calendar where the new year began on January 1 as called for in 1563 by the Council of Trent.  People who didn't get the word that the start of the year had moved or refused to accept the change and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the object of jokes and hoaxes.  Paper fish would be placed on their backs and they were referred to as poisson d'avri which means April fish.  It symbolized a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.  These people were considered fools and had practical jokes played on them.

Historians have linked April Fools' Day to ancient festivals such as Hilaria, which was celebrated in Rome at the end of March and involved people dressing up in disguises.  There's also speculation that April Fools' Day was tied to the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, a time when Mother Nature fooled people with changing and unpredictable weather.

On April 1, 1700, English pranksters began popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools' Day by playing practical jokes on each other.  The celebration spread throughout Britain during the eighteenth century.  In Scotland it became a two day event in which people were sent on phony errands and had fake tails or kick me signs pinned to their rear ends.

All Fools' Day is practiced in many parts of the world with the playing of practical jokes and sending people on fool's errands.  In modern times, people have gone to great lengths to stage elaborate pranks.  Here's the top ten hoaxes from a list of the best one hundred pranks of all time as judged by notoriety, creativity, and number of people duped.

1)  The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest (1957):  The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop.

2)  Sidd Finch (1985):  Sports Illustrated published a story about a new rookie pitcher who planned to play for the Mets.  His name was Sidd Finch, and he could reportedly throw a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy.  But Sidd Finch had never played the game before.  He mastered the art of the pitch in a Tibetan monastery.  This legendary player was the creation of the article's author, George Plimpton.

3)  Instant Color TV (1962):  At the time there was only one television 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 new technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to display color reception.  All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their television screen.

4)  The Taco Liberty Bell (1996):  The Taco Bell Corporation announced it had purchased the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell.  Outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia to express their anger.

5)  San Serriffe (1977):  British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic consisting of semi-colon shaped islands located in the Indian Ocean.  It described the geography and culture of this obscure nation.  Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse.  Its leader was General Pica.  Only a few readers noticed that everything about the islands was named after printer's terminology.

6)  Nixon for President (1992):  National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program announced that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again.  His campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again."  Listeners flooded the show with calls expressing shock and outrage.  Nixon's voice was impersonated by comedian Rich Little.

7)  Alabama Changes the Value of Pi (1998):  The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the Biblical value of 3.0.  The article soon made its way onto the internet, then rapidly spread around the world.  The Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation.  The original article was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution and had been written by a physicist.

8)  The Left-Handed Whopper (1998):  Burger King published a full page ad in USA Today announcing the introduction on their menu of a Left-Handed Whopper for the 32 million left-handed Americans.  The ingredients were the same as the original Whopper, but the ad claimed all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers.  Thousands of customers requested the new sandwich.

9)  Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers (1995):  Discover Magazine reported that a highly respected wildlife biologist found a new species in Antarctica—the hotheaded naked ice borer.  The creatures had bony plates on their heads.  When fed by numerous blood vessels, they could become burning hot thus allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds.  They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards where the hotheads consumed them.  It was theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837.  To the hotheads, the explorer looked like a penguin.

10)  Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity (1976):  British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur and listeners could experience it in their own homes.  Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity.  Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment the planetary alignment occurred they would experience a strange floating sensation.  When 9:47AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation.  One woman reported she and her eleven friends had floated around the room.

Have you ever played an April Fools' joke on someone, or had one played on you?  Tell us about it. 

10 BIGGEST BRAND FEUDS

Companies have been suing each other for ages, especially over copyright infringement.  Some of the biggest brands in the world have taken each other to court.  The outcome of some of these lawsuits have altered entire industries some of which might look very different today if the outcome of the lawsuit had gone the other way.

10)  DYSON VS. HOOVER (2000)

Duration of lawsuit:  one year

Winner:  Dyson

Damages:  $4.9 million

Dyson claimed Hoover infringed on its patent for the bagless cleaner which uses a dynamic similar to a centrifuge to pull dust from the air.  The court found that Hoover used the same technology which did infringe on James Dyson's invention.  Hoover appealed twice and lost both times.  The court instructed Hoover to stop selling its Vortex model.

9)  ORACLE VS. SAP (2007)

Duration of lawsuit:  seven years

Winner:  Oracle

Damages:  $357 million

Center of the lawsuit was SAP's TomorrowNow unit which Oracle claimed had illegally downloaded copyrighted documents and programs from Oracle.  SAP admitted it had infringed on copyright and tried to settle out of court before a jury awarded Oracle $1.3 billion in damages, an amount later brought down to $357 million. Both sides accepted the lower amount.

8)  20TH CENTURY FOX VS. UNIVERSAL STUDIOS (1978)

Duration of lawsuit:  two years

Winner:  Universal Studios

Damages:  Unknown

After 20^th Century Fox successfully released the first Star Wars movie in 1977, Universal Studios decided it needed a space epic of its own and launched Battlestar Galactica.  Fox accused Universal of copyright infringement, citing 34 specific things allegedly copied.  The case was settled out of court.  ABC television network, where Battlestar Galactica aired, canceled the show in 1979.  [I worked for 20^th Century Fox during this time and the series I was working on used material from Star Wars.  The Fox legal department kept a very close eye on how we were using the film footage to make sure it didn't give any ammunition to Universal for the lawsuit.]

7)  GUCCI VS. GUESS (2009)

Duration of lawsuit:  four years

Winner:  Gucci…and Guess

Damages:  $4.6 million

In 2009 Gucci started a four-year-long legal battle, accusing Guess of copying Gucci's logo on a line of shoes.  They also accused Guess of counterfeiting, unfair competition, and trademark infringement.  They demanded $221 million in damages. Gucci filed two lawsuits, one in New York and the other one in Milan, Italy.  The New York case was closed in favor of Gucci and they were awarded $4.7 million in damages.  The Milan court ruled in favor of Guess, stating the use of the "G" was common in the fashion industry.

6)  APPLE VS. MICROSOFT (1998)

Duration of lawsuit:  six years

Winner:  Microsoft

Damages:  Unknown

Apple licensed parts of their Macintosh computer to Microsoft for its Windows 1.0 software.  When Microsoft released Windows 2.0, it added other features, including overlapping windows, which could also be found in the Macintosh's software.  Apple filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement and listed 189 parts of the interface that had been copied.  After six years, the court dismissed 179 of Apple's claims and said the remaining ten in dispute could not be copyrighted.

5)  A&M RECORDS VS. NAPSTER (2010)

Duration of lawsuit:  five years

Winner:  A&M Records

Damages:  $26 million

Napster originally launched as a pirated music marketplace, allowing anybody to download music for free.  Music labels didn't wait long to sue.  Even though the plaintiff was referred to as A&M Records, it actually included all members of the Recording Industry Association of America.  After the case was concluded, Napster was forced to shut down.  The brand was later acquired by the software company Roxio and relaunched as a legal music store, but it eventually died.

4)  MICROSOFT VS. MOTOROLA (2010)

Duration of lawsuit:  five years

Winner:  Microsoft

Damages:  $14.5 million

Microsoft accused Motorola of charging excessively to license its patented technologies.  Motorola was charging a 2.25% royalty amounting to $4 billion.  The court decided it wasn't fair and reasonable, fined Motorola, and ordered them to pay Microsoft $14.5 million for breach of contract.

3)  BP VS. TRANSOCEAN OFFSHORE AND HALLIBURTON (2010)

Duration of lawsuit:  five years

Winner:  Settled out of court

Damages:  Unknown

After the Deepwater Horizon  oil spill that killed eleven workers and polluted the Gulf of Mexico with millions of barrels of oil, BP was levied with fines and clean-up costs running into $40 billion.  BP believed their partners at the time of the spill, Transocean Offshore and Halliburton, should share the costs of the fines and demanded $15 billion.  The companies settled in 2015 in a series of legal deals.

2)  APPLE VS. SAMSUNG (2011)

Duration of lawsuit:  Ongoing since 2012

Winner:  not yet determined

Damages:  not yet determined

This lawsuit is one of the biggest in the technology industry.  It goes back to the first iPhone which Apple accused Samsung of copying for its Galaxy 5 series.  A jury in 2012 decided that Samsung had infringed on Apple's patents.  Samsung originally faced $1 billion in damages, which was reduced to $548 million before dropping down to $399 million.  The current state of the lawsuit is a discussion about the basis for Samsung to pay the damages.  The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of the $399 million in damages and returned the lawsuit to the federal court.  A number of similar lawsuits between the pair are ongoing in countries around the world.

1)  APPLE VS. ERICSSON (2015)

Duration of lawsuit:  one year

Winner:  Ericsson

Damages:  Not disclosed

Apple filed a lawsuit against Ericsson claiming the patents it owns on wireless LTE connections are essential to the industry and the company was demanding excessive royalties.  Ericsson countersued and accused Apple of infringing on over 40 patents.  They settled out of court with Apple having to pay an undisclosed amount.  With Apple originally paying royalties as a percentage of total device cost, it's most likely a significant amount.  Apple wasn't the first smartphone maker to take legal action against Ericsson.  Samsung and Ericsson reached a confidential out of court settlement in 2014.

Out of the ten biggest brand lawsuits, two of them involved Microsoft and three of them involved Apple—biggest lawsuits/biggest companies.

St. Patrick's Day—history, symbols, traditions, green beer, and Irish coffee

March 17—St. Patrick's religious feast day and the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. A date that falls during the Christian season of Lent. The Irish have observed this date as a religious holiday for over a thousand years. Irish families would traditionally attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon.

The first St. Patrick's Day parade took place in the U.S., not in Ireland. Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City on March 17, 1762, (when we were still a British colony). In 1848, several New York Irish aid societies united their parades to form one New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade. Today, that parade is the world's oldest civilian parade and the largest in the United States with over 150,000 participants.

Today, St. Patrick's Day is celebrated by people of all backgrounds in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Although North America is home to the largest celebrations, it has been celebrated in other locations far from Ireland, including Japan, Singapore, and Russia.

In modern day Ireland, St. Patrick's Day has traditionally been a religious occasion. Until the 1970s, Irish laws mandated pubs be closed on March 17. In 1995, the Irish government began a national campaign to use St. Patrick's Day as an opportunity to promote tourism.

Symbols and Traditions

The shamrock was a sacred plant in ancient Ireland, symbolizing the rebirth of spring. By the seventeenth century, it became a symbol of emerging Irish nationalism.

Music is often associated with St. Patrick's Day and Irish culture in general. Since the ancient days of the Celts, music has always been an important part of Irish life. The Celts had an oral culture where religion, legend, and history were passed from one generation to the next through stories and songs.

Banishing snakes from Ireland has been associated with St. Patrick. A long held belief says St. Patrick once stood on a hilltop and with only a wooden staff managed to drive all the snakes from Ireland. The fact is the island nation of Ireland has never had snakes. The climate is too cold and damp for reptiles that cannot internally generate their own body heat.

Every year on St. Patrick's Day the traditional meal of corned beef and cabbage is consumed. Cabbage has long been an Irish food, but corned beef didn't become associated with St. Patrick's Day until many years later.

Belief in leprechauns probably comes from Celtic belief in fairies—tiny men and women who could use their magical powers to serve good or evil. Leprechauns are only minor figures in Celtic folklore, cantankerous little men known for their trickery which they often used to protect their fabled treasure. The cheerful, friendly image of the leprechaun is a purely American invention created by Walt Disney in his 1959 movie, Darby O'Gill and the Little People.

Chicago is famous for a somewhat peculiar annual event: dyeing the Chicago River green. The tradition started in 1962, when city pollution-control workers used dyes to trace illegal sewage discharges and realized that the green dye might provide a unique way to celebrate the holiday. That year, they released 100 pounds of green vegetable dye into the river—enough to keep it green for a week. Today, in order to minimize environmental damage, only forty pounds of vegetable dye are used, making the river green for several hours rather than days.

Green beer, certainly associated with St. Patrick's Day here in the United States, is NOT an Irish creation. Purists claim that Arthur Guinness would turn over in his grave if anyone attempted to add green food coloring to the traditional Irish brew. Green beer is most likely of American origins.

And Irish coffee?  The forerunner of today's Irish coffee was said to have originated one miserable winter night in the 1940s at Foynes' port, the precursor to Shannon International Airport on the west coast of Ireland near the town of Limerick. Joseph Sheridan added some whiskey to the coffee to warm the arriving American passengers, proclaiming it to be Irish coffee.

A travel writer named Stanton Delaplane brought Irish coffee to the U.S. after drinking it at Shannon Airport. He worked with the Buena Vista Café in San Francisco to develop the perfect drink. The Buena Vista Cafe started serving Irish coffee on November 10, 1952, and continues to serve large quantities of it to this day starting from the time they open in the morning for breakfast until they close at night. [On several occasions, I have enjoyed Irish coffee at the Buena Vista.]

So, here's to everyone celebrating on March 17 whether Irish or not. Enjoy your corned beef and cabbage, green beer, and Irish coffee.

10 STRANGE CITIES HIDDEN UNDER OTHER CITIES

Cities being built on top of ruins of ancient cities. Subterranean caverns running beneath today's cities. Underground fortresses and secret facilities being built. Many cities world wide have entire cities located beneath them, some centuries old and others relatively new.

Here are just a few of those places.

1) Edinburgh Vaults

Located in the nineteen arches of Edinburgh's iconic South Bridge, the Edinburgh Vaults were used to house tradesmen as well as the city's less desirable residents. When it was constructed in 1785, the bridge was intended to expand the city, and also serve as a custom-built shopping district. Along those ends, buildings located on the bridge's arches were given underground storage areas. Unfortunately, the storage vaults began to flood and were evacuated by their rightful owners. Shortly afterward, Edinburgh's downtrodden moved into them. The damp, dark rooms were a hotbed for crime, with serial killers Burk and Hare frequenting them for victims. [They were notorious body snatchers who became serial killers when there weren't enough 'legally' executed criminals to supply their need for bodies to sell to medical schools] Tons of rubble was dumped into the Vaults in the mid-1800s to close them down for good, but an access tunnel was discovered in the 1980s, leading to some fascinating discoveries. The underground city now has conducted tours.

2) Napoli Sotteranea

If you were to pick a European city that would be least likely to host an underground secret, Naples might be on your list. The flooded canals of Campania's capitol actually lay atop a bed of volcanic rock known as tuff, which is easy to mine and work. Over the centuries, a massive system of tunnels and caverns have been carved out of this material. The ancient Greeks used them as reservoirs, but there are also many fascinating ruins down below, including theaters and early Christian worship sites. During World War II, the tunnels were used for air raid shelters.

3) La Ville Souterraine

Most of the subterranean cities here have fallen into disuse and disrepair, but the massive complex beneath the streets of Montreal is one of the city's main commercial hubs. La Ville Souterraine was constructed after the Metro subway system opened in 1966, and covers over 20 miles of space under the city. Entry points are constructed around residential or commercial businesses at the surface, and the network contains underground stores, restaurants, nightclubs, and a library. During the bitterly cold winter, the majority of the city's commerce happens below the streets.

4) Burlington Bunker

The English country town of Cortsham, Wilshire, doesn't seem like it would be hiding any dark secrets, but guess again. Buried 100 feet below the quaint cobblestone streets lies a massive, sprawling subterranean city built in case a nuclear attack targeted London. The Burlington Bunker consists of 35 acres of construction and over 60 miles of roads. It was designed to support a maximum population of 4,000 people and boasted a number of amenities, including a television studio, cafeterias, and even a pub. Many of the walls are decorated with colorful murals. The existence of Burlington Bunker was classified until 2004, when it was decommissioned. It was never used, not even for test exercises.

5) Old Sacramento

In 1862, massive flooding swept through California's capitol, submerging both homes and businesses. The Legislature was relocated to San Francisco and the people who were left behind tried to figure out how to prevent a disaster like that from happening again. The solution was to raise all of the city's streets by ten feet, building new construction vaulted above the remains of the old. The abandoned spaces were used for storage and other purposes, and there is still a good amount of old Sacramento architecture left untouched beneath the surface, illuminated by squares of rose quartz set into the sidewalk as makeshift skylights.

 6) Beijing Underground

The Cold War saw the threat of global nuclear annihilation loom heavy over our heads, so it's not surprising that many world leaders saw fit to head underground for safety. Perhaps the most ambitious project was Mao Zedong's underground city, which covers a staggering 33 miles of catacombs beneath the capital. China began construction in the 1970s when tensions with the Soviet Union were high, and the sprawling complex eventually came to contain medical clinics, schools, theaters, and even a roller rink. Food would come from a subterranean mushroom farm. It was opened to tourists in 2000, but closed in 2008. Some parts of the complex are now being used as illegal apartments.

7) Subtropolis

Having an office with a window is a nice perk, but for the workers of Subtropolis, that is not an option. This massive cave system carved out of the bluffs above the Mississippi River hosts 50 companies and thousands of employees working in a giant limestone mine. Subtropolis makes up a complex larger than downtown St. Louis's business district, and hosts the U.S. Postal Service's collectible stamp stockpile, a number of data centers, and an artisanal cheese aging facility. Even 5K and 10K races are held in this underground complex.

8) Paris Catacombs

Over 200 miles of tunnels, caves and catacombs stretch beneath the streets of Paris, France, and are used for a variety of fascinating purposes. Originally hollowed out for limestone when the city was being built, the Paris catacombs have been used for corpse disposal, mushroom farming, and hideouts for the French resistance during World War II. They were closed to the public in 1955, but a whole subculture has arisen around the underground city. Explorers have renovated tunnels, built living areas and even hosted art exhibitions in the Paris catacombs. The structural integrity of the remaining quarry walls are monitored by a team of French officials as they have been known to cave in and take whole neighborhoods on the surface with them.

9) Las Vegas Tunnels

The glittering streets of Las Vegas are a playground for people from all over the world with its tempting gambling, nightlife, and food. But beneath the streets, a subterranean city houses the unlucky people chewed up and spit out by Sin City. In the 1990s, with the tourism boom putting lots of tax money into the city, Vegas built a system of drainage tunnels to protect the city from flash floods. The 200 miles of tunnels have now become home to about a thousand people, who create living spaces in the cramped, scorpion-filled spaces and hope that the rain doesn't wash away everything they own.

10) Underground Seattle

One of the most famous underground cities in America was created as a result of a major disaster. In 1889, a cabinetmaker working in Seattle's Pioneer Square area tipped over a glue pot, which caught fire and started a massive blaze that destroyed 31 blocks of the city. Instead of just rebuilding, the City Council decided to raise all of the streets one to two stories higher than the old height. This created a cavernous area of walled-in sidewalks, with glass skylights in the street's above, that people used to get from business to business, as well as the remnants of buildings damaged by the fire. Seattle condemned the Underground in 1907 following a bubonic plague scare, but it was opened for tours in 1965. I've taken this tour [actually, took it on two different occasions]. Fascinating place.