Here’s a piece on ten of the best April Fool's Day hoaxes.

In 1996, American fast-food chain Taco Bell announced that it had bought Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, a historic symbol of American independence, from the federal government and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell.

How do you think that went over? Aside from the astounding fact that many, many people believed it, you have to wonder who signed off on that one. Some say there’s no bad publicity, but I envision pickup trucks and molotov cocktails converging on Taco Bell. You can never reckon what you’ll get from the “we’ll teach them a lesson” crowd in suburban America.

In 1998, a newsletter titled New Mexicans for Science and Reason carried an article that the state of Alabama had voted to change the value of pi from 3.14159 to the "Biblical value" of 3.0.

I’m pretty sure that most evangelist types are wholly ignorant of pi, but at the mere mention of the bible I bet a bunch of them jumped on the bandwagon out of faith. Regardless, when I was in school they didn’t even use the decimal form. When I was a kid pi was 22/7. It’s been brought to my attention that some people (virgin, male comic book readers) can recite upwards of three or four thousand decimals of pi from memory. My initial reaction is to set up a BB gun firing squad for these folks.

And here’s my favorite:

Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth's gravity. Moore told listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment of the planetary alignment, they would experience a floating sensation. Hundreds of people called in to report feeling the sensation.

I simply cannot fathom the idiocy most people. These are the same people that feel better when they wave a magnet over an injury. The same people who send cash to Nigeria. The people that scald their balls with drive-through coffee.

It’s a large pool to draw from. New age hippy types, frequent customers of palm readers, people who look directly into the hose when there’s a kink in it, “Jackass” impersonators, Bermuda triangle aficionados, the “black helicopter” crowd, unemployed poets, urban myth spreaders (excluding the dog & peanut butter story), ad nausium.

On an unrelated note, the only thing that’s ever been up my ass are a doctor’s fingers. I don’t want anything in my ass. If Angelina Jolie was begging me to stick her finger in my ass during sex I would decline adamantly. It’s a personal choice—do whatever you want, just stay away from my ass. Aside from not relishing the feeling of any type of probe, no matter how many times she washed her finger I’d be consumed with watching that finger all night long and keeping it away from me. Who knows, it could put me off for weeks.

And while we’re at it, leave my balls alone too. They’re fragile.