The spaghetti-tree hoax
The BBC shows a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from trees
On 1 April 1957 the BBC's serious current-affairs show Panorama ran a three-minute report on a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from trees. Pasta was exotic in Britain then, and many viewers called to ask how to grow one. CNN later called it the biggest hoax ever pulled by a reputable news outlet.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 18 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 10 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 9 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 8 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 23 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 16 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 15 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 12 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — same year
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 4 years later
Middle East
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 9 years earlier
- 1948–1949 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba — 9 years earlier
- 1953 Iranian coup against Mosaddegh — 4 years earlier
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 21 years later
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 22 years later
Africa
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 1 year earlier
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 1 year later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 3 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 6 years later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 10 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 12 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 4 years earlier
- 1958–1962 Great Leap Forward — 1 year later
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 9 years later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 18 years later
Americas
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — 2 years earlier
- 1959 Cuban Revolution — 2 years later
- 1960 Great Chilean earthquake — 3 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 12 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 13 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 21 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 16 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 15 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 3 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 2 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 83)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 76)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 68)
- Mao Zedong (aged 64)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 39)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 28)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 27)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 23)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 73)
- Anna Akhmatova (aged 68)