April Fools Day 2008

In newspapers, magazines and news websites

• About.com's Car Reviews posted a fake story that Toyota had announced a new 256 horsepower V6 Prius to accommodate the needs of car buyers looking for performance in a compact package that projects an environmentally friendly image.
• ACT on Campus announced that they were selling the banned substance BZP; at midday, a challenge to MP Jim Anderton was announced to debate the BZP ban.
• Automobile Magazine posted a story announcing the return of the Oldsmobile brand after the rights were purchased by Toyota.
• As part of its promotion of the new BBC iPlayer, the BBC showed alleged video footage backing up the claim that one of its wildlife documentary teams had secured never-before-seen footage showing penguins soaring in the Antarctic skies.
• BMW announce the Canine Repellent Alloy Protection system.
• Chicago Public Radio reported that Major League Baseball has retroactively awarded the 1945 World Series title to the Chicago Cubs, due to an alleged ineligible player appearing on the roster of the Detroit Tigers.
• CNET News.com claimed that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would be hosting Saturday Night Live.
• Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter printed a full page story about a ski-slope near Stockholm which was to be glassed in for use through a longer period of the year at an expense of 2.4 billion swedish kronor ($402,000,000 USD)
• The Daily Express newspaper published a story that the clock faces of The Clock Tower, Palace of Westminster (Big Ben) were being taken down and repaired, and a digital clock will stand in its place for the meantime. A picture was also shown.
• The Daily Mail published a picture of the British chancellor, Alistair Darling, playing a National Lottery scratchcard in a newsagent.
• The Daily Mirror announced Dog Racing on Ice.
• Among press releases sent to the Daily Telegraph for consideration for publication on this day were claims that Professor Avril Buffon would begin excavation of a Mithra temple under Heathrow Airport's new Terminal 5 and the claim that British Waterways had begun installation of speed cameras to deter "brisk boaters" on its canals.
• Electronic Gaming Monthly claimed that Bungie was working on a Lego version of the Halo video game franchise.
• Gawker announced today that they have sold their website Jezebel to Conde Nast.
• The Guardian announced Carla Bruni, France's First Lady, will head a government initiative to improve style amongst Britons.
• Herald AM had a front page article announcing that the Spire of Dublin had been sold to a casino called 'The Emerald Isle' in Las Vegas, Nevada.
• The Herald Sun published an advertisement by Virgin Blue advertising the 'No Chair Fare' offering standing room for half the price of the regular fare and free calf massages for flights longer than two hours. Visiting Virgin's website reveals the offers to be an April fools joke. Even so, hundreds tried to purchase standing tickets by contacting Virgin by phone.
• The British radio station Kerrang! 105.2 included a story in their news bulletins that piranhas had escaped from the Birmingham Sea Life Centres into the city's canals and had formed attacking shoals.
• MetroXpress in Denmark announced that Greenland had been sold to the United States for the sum of 1.2 billion DKK.
• The Republican-American changed the Women section to the Men section.
• Science (journal) reported that "U.S. President George W. Bush has announced a dramatic shift in his attitude toward science.
• Scientific American magazine printed an article on their website about the so-called "Hyper Games", an Olympic-like event where all the athletes are encouraged to use enhancements that include steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, genetic and/or surgical modifications.
• Press releases sent to New Zealand news website Scoop included claims that a retail website had been bought by Microsoft, that Intercity was introducing a "hydrobus" service across the Cook Strait, that the Department of Conservation had trained rats to find native frogs, and that a local retailers' association had a contract to dress the Prime Minister..

• Tagesschau announced that the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany would decide whether to abolish Daylight Savings on April 2nd due to incoming complaints from the Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer and the Deutscher Bauernverband.
• The Metro (London) had an advert with a Guinness in reverse (head taking up the majority of the glass with a small amount of stout at the top) with the tag line "For one Day Only".
• The Register reported "Teacher's head explodes due to Wi-Fi, mobile radiation". The site also reported the resignation of Jimmy Wales from the Board of Wikimedia and claimed that he had vowed to live a life of celibacy devoid of material wealth from within a brotherhood of Franciscan Friars.
• The Sun, a newspaper, reported that Nicolas Sarkozy was to enter surgery to make him as tall as his wife, Carla Bruni, after being subject to ridicule over his height during his trip to London in March 2008. GMTV also included this in their news broadcast.
• The Sydney Morning Herald published a story in its Good Living magazine about a whale meat restaurant opening in The Rocks.
• The Universe Today space news website reported that NASA was planning to "etch sponsor logos onto the surface of Mars" to raise money for its missions. This was going to be accomplished by modifying a laser on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
• Virgin Media announced that the United States was to scrap the dollar and adopt the Euro.
• The Western Mail published a story about a single complaint against a Barclaycard advertisement being rejected. The complaint said that the advert was offensive towards the Welsh. The same story was mentioned briefly in the Daily Telegraph.

In sports

• Burnley Football Club announced their intention to share stadiums with arch-rivals Blackburn Rovers during the 2010/11 season while their stadium is redeveloped.
• Raymond Domenech, France's national football team's coach, announces on the Federation's website that the national team will not participate in Euro 2008.
• The Hamilton Tiger-Cats announce that a rematch of their historic 1961 win over the Buffalo Bills will be played in June 2008, and that one of their two 2008 home games against the Montreal Alouettes will be moved to Ralph Wilson Stadium. The mock announcement is a direct response to the Bills' plans to play home games in Toronto, which the Tiger-Cats have vehemently opposed.

In video games

• Assassin's Creed - Jade Raymond presented "a brand new chapter" in the game series, a video of Metal Gear Solid 4 with Solid Snake disguised as Assassin's Creed protagonist Altair. Hideo Kojima appears at the end of the video, asking the viewer if they liked it. Kojima later announced that the Altair costume actually becomes available to wear in the game after satisfying certain prerequisites.
• Apricot Blender Game Project claimed to have been hacked and all the a's deleted from their game's source code
• City of Heroes - Announced that in-game sound effects will be replaced in Issue 12 with comic book-style onomatopoeia..
• Command & Conquer - EA announced that the new Soviet logo for Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 would be a flower and sickle instead of the hammer and sickle. The flower supposedly represented the Soviet Union's "rebirth" as a nation.
• Cyberathlete Amateur League - (CAL) Announced that it has been sold to former CAL Operations Manager Martijn Bloemheuvel for an undisclosed amount of money. In order to strike a deal, the site, along with all of its assets would be accompanied with $20 and a box of chocolates. Furthermore, there is speculation of the famed CAL Store selling a new line of Dutch Ovens, Rudders, and other fashionable items for gamers at competitive prices.
• Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - The Diablo Loot Piñata, a piñata shaped like Diablo and filled with loot from the game.
• DragonRealms - Experience messaging was temporarily reversed to make it look like you had experience when you didn't and vice versa. Death messages were changed into netspeak and humorous phrases. Equipment appraisals were replaced with netspeak.
• EverQuest II - In addition to the April Fool's Day themed quests made available, all treasure chests in the game appeared as wooden Companion Cubes.
• Football Manager 2008 - In the game, a news message would appear if a player reached April 1st in-game during play, saying that the player would get £500 million to help improve the players team. when the player pressed the accept button, a pop up would appear saying that they wouldn't make it that easy. This was only available if the player had installed the 8.0.2 patch and is unknown if the stunt will be repeated inside the game.
• Flyff - Gpotato posts a fictional list of preliminary version 12 information, which includes new areas, new vehicles, new content and changes from the Korean version of the game.
• Furcadia - Players on the main maps could become a toaster by bumping an already toaster-person. A text filter changes normal text to leetspeak on the main maps.
• Grand chase - the main news page of the site claimed that the 3 female characters were being used in the game were being removed from the game and replaced with characters exclusive to the US version of the game
• Grand Theft Auto IV - The most recent news release offers a chance to win season tickets to a fictitious baseball team, a sweepstakes which will purportedly reward 50 winners with season tickets and a custom designed T-shirt.
• Guild Wars - players at level 20 in any location found that their characters had been replaced with stick figures. Also, the unofficial Guild Wars Wiki changed its front page design to that of the World of Warcraft Wiki. Additionally, update notes for a patch that doesn't exist were posted on the official website. This patch drastically weakened some classes whilst overpowering others.
• Illarion claimed to have released a 3D update on their isometric client activated by simultaneously pressing "3", "D" and "F11"
• The Lord of the Rings Online - Turbine announced a new playable race called the Fowl-People in a new book update called The Battle of Amon Hen.
• Mount & Blade - A leak of the final version was said to be released while in fact it was the first version to ever be publicly released
• PangYa - The Japanese PangYa website changed their website to the PangYa Bakery, featuring bread related PangYa items and even a bakery location. The reason for this is because Pangya sounds like the Japanese word for "bakery" (panya).
• RuneScape - An NPC in Draynor Village called Diango was selling Dragon Kites, Jagex was trying to trick players into thinking they were Dragon kiteshields, however, they were red kites with a picture of a dragon on them. This practical joke relates to a previous years' "Dragon Plate" announcement (tricking players into thinking a Dragon Platebody would be released) - When they were released, it was really Diango selling spinning plates with a Dragon on them.
• Spore - EA and Maxis announced the creation of SporeDate.
• Starcraft II - Blizzard announced a new Terran unit, the Tauren marine. Taurens come from another game from Blizzard, Warcraft.
• Sim racing - The Pits announced that they were scrapping three years of development on an anticipated road racing mod in favor of combining forces with co-developer RaceSims Revolution and starting fresh with a commercial game.
• Tabula Rasa - Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa Community Team announced the new Hybrid Race called the "Skitterin Hybrid".. The first 100% community requested playable race.
• World of Warcraft - Blizzard announced the online MMORPG is coming to consoles with World of Warcraft: Molten Core. They also announced a new playable character class called Bards. This character will be playable via a control scheme similar to Guitar Hero. Ironically, the publisher of Guitar Hero, Activision announced several months before that they would be merging with Blizzard to form Activision Blizzard.
• Wii Want More, a supposed new channel for the Wii that would include downloadable content for the Wii for already released games. The site followed the same layout as Nintendo Press-Release site.
• Xbox - Microsoft unveils four new accessories coming to Xbox 360 in the near future.
• Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates - For one day only, Funny glasses are available for purchase from the Palace Shoppe. This item was originally available on April 1, 2006; the item decays and disappears after one day. In the forums, the 'S3kr1t OceanMaster Forum' has been 'accidentally' exposed to public view. It includes new jokes from the game moderators and developers, and includes last year's posts from this prank.

On websites

• 2600: The Hacker Quarterly changed their biannual conference's (H.O.P.E.) website and registration information to look identical to Presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign site. Later they posted text on the site claiming it was hacked and spread the information to various blogs.
• 352 Media Group announced a move to "go green" by having all their employees pedal under their desks to power their computers.
• 3D Realms released a new Duke Nukem Forever "screenshot" and the new "corporate logo".
• 4chan added Dynamic posting guide added to Random board.
• 711chan redirects its news page to Gaia Online.
• Early in the morning of April 1st, Adult Swim's forum Administrators changed everyone's rank color to grey and changed their rank to "SwimFool". Later that day, they changed everyone's ranks and colors to new, random ranks and colors.
• ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising hub, announces on its blog that it will begin collecting funds for US candidates in Euros, due to the decline of the dollar.
• Allakhazam's Final Fantasy XI Online website changed their interface to reflect Hello Kitty Online Adventures.
• Amarok claimed their next release would come with support for the iTunes Store, with a "small bug" resulting in no charge being made for the service.
• Arch Linux claimed to have changed its main language to German.
• Art Lebedev Studio has a new product out today called Defendius, a door chain with a maze.
• atsec information security announced a patent for the ultimate solution of buffer overflow errors.
• Blizzard Entertainment have announced a new Starcraft Terran unit; the Tauren Marine.
• Bungie displayed an image of Mister Chief (a badly drawn version of Master Chief) on the background of the online players map on their Bungie Online page.
• Burnley FC Supporters Team informed their players that they would be playing a game against some of the biggest names in world football.
• Casters Realm announced a new Halo MMORPG game called Halo: Divide of the Covenant.
• Club Penguin celebrated its annual April Fools Day party. Several rooms were decorated (weirdly) and the forest was turned upside down.
• CNN posted an article claiming that rapper Snoop Dogg had converted to Mormonism.
• Coin collecting site announced the US Cent will no longer be produced by the United States Mint.
• CollegeHumor displayed a fake Myspace page of a girl name Crystal on its domain, claiming that her dad bought her CollegeHumor.com.
• CSFBL announced a game called "ComputerSims RPS (Rock Paper Scissors), which they said was in honor of the 8th anniversary of the site. (The site was in fact founded on April 1, 2000.) The title was meant to parody the future version of the game, ComputerSims Baseball.
• CubeCart announced the release of version 5 of their software, which had been completely rewritten in ASP.NET, and were ceasing development on the PHP versions
• Cyberathlete Amateur League - (CAL) Announced that it has been sold to former CAL Operations Manager Martijn Bloemheuvel for an undisclosed amount of money. In order to strike a deal, the site, along with all of its assets would be accompanied with 20$ and a box of chocolates. Furthermore, there is speculation of the famed CAL Store selling a new line of Dutch Ovens, Rudders, and other fashionable items for gamers at competitive prices.
• Improv Everywhere changed their site design claiming to have spent $4000 on it. The new design mocks websites of the 90's by including a background midi and "under construction" images.
• IGN Movies presented an exclusive look at a trailer for a fake Legend of Zelda feature film.
• IsoHunt torrent search engine rickrolled everyone on their front page.
• ITCafe claimed that Steve Jobs is offering 1000 Macbook Air notebooks for the first 1000 correct answerers for a quiz which they claimed to be launched at 12:00 (GMT+1:00), however the link pointed into the forum, where it is shown, that it's actually a prank. They claimed that Steve Jobs did this as an answer for the previous complaint of the Hungarians for their lack of Apple Computer's presence in Hungary.
• Isotx announced a 23 billion dollar merger with Electronic Arts.
• IWOOT are offering a The Dynamo Keyboard which powers your PC whilst you type.
• Janet Love, a Janet Jackson fansite, stated that she would be re-shooting her video for single Rock With U after she decided she was unhappy with the end result. Infamous celebrity blogger Perez Hilton picked up and the story and posted it himself without realizing it was an April Fools' joke.
• The Jeopardy! website features a picture of Alex Trebek with his old moustache.
• JoBlo had a fake news exclusive that Jake Gyllenhaal was the new Spider-Man in a 2010 film.
• The J. Peterman Company announced in an email to their customers that its Paris office (which it doesn't have) informed them that today was Poisson d'Avril. Without mention of the connection between poisson d'avril and April Fools' Day, they decided to celebrate with free shipping for everyone, for the day only. Unknown as to whether it was a joke or not.
• Mangaka Ken Akamatsu, on the diary section of his website, announced a crossover involving Negima and Hayate the Combat Butler in honor of the 50th anniversaries of Shonen Magazine and Shonen Sunday.
• Kobra's Corner was allegedly litigated by the Church of Scientology in a message signed by "The Law Firm of Benjamin A. Dover.
• Kongregate: "Rickroll" and a fake "News" item. The main page's Featured Game is the "Kongai Launch" (launch of the in-development and much-awaited Kongai collectible card game). Playing the game instead brings up a window that plays the entire "Never Gonna Give You Up" video by Rick Astley. Watching the whole video, however, does actually give you a collectible badge for completing the "Never Give Up Challenge". Also, the "News" section has a "Major Kongregate Announcement!" that begins, "Kongregate is pleased to announce that we're moving forward with a deal involving both Kongregate.com and Newgrounds.com."
• Kotaku changed their coverage to news concerning cakes.
• Kernel.org Announced the migration of their servers from Fedora to FreeBSD
• Kerrang!.com suggested that Fall Out Boy had split up and that Robbie Williams had become the lead singer of Velvet Revolver.
• Kingdom of Loathing, an online web-game, became 'Kingdom of Salad', with many images being replaced with salads, and in-game messages having the word 'salad' inserted randomly.
• Kryptonsite.com posted fake news about the TV series Smallville, including fake episode titles for all of the shows eighth season, a fake episode description and announced the website would shut down.
• The Leaky Cauldron posted saying that Sybill Trelawney, a character from the Harry Potter novels, was predicting the future and posting her predictions on their website.
• LinkedIntelligence blog reported that LinkedIn was going to end free service starting on May 1st.
• Linux Journal was renamed "BeOS Journal".
• LiveJournal announced that they would be adding a new member to their Advisory Board, linking members to the journal rickastley, which contains a Rickroll.
• Swedish news site The Local published a story stating that the national football team coach must pick a woman for the squad to play at Euro 2008.
• Lostpedia came up with a news story which stated that the FCC fined ABC US$5 million for profanity over the "whispers" heard throughout the show Lost.
• MagicTheGathering.com announced Duel Decks: Ninjas vs. Pirates, consisting of two preconstructed decks featuring well-known Ninjas and Pirates from Magic history. The announcement also featured a commercial video with Wizards of the Coast employees dressed up as pirates and ninjas.
• Mahalo Daily's Veronica Belmont begins an 'exclusive interview' with Steve Jobs, but the answer to her first question is interrupted as the viewer is rickrolled. Jobs turns out to be a superimposed still picture into the interview shot.
• Messamusic.co.uk posted a news article stating that the first visitor to click on a hidden link would receive a free record contract for 5 years. The competition was ran in partnership with 'AF Records'.
• Metacafe changed the logo in the site header to be upside-down for the day.
• Metafilter altered it's site so that the background color slowly brightened over time, for instance going from the normally readable deep blue to painfully brilliant turquoise. Ultimately it was revealed that moderators included a small link hidden at the bottom of the page (make it stop!) that would revert the site to the normal format.
• Metasploit announced an as-yet-fictitious Metasploit Framework 4.0, which is allegedly proprietary software. (Earlier versions of Metasploit are open source.) The site requests that users with previous open-source copies destroy them. The announcement of its new "PwnCraft" interface is also likely a hoax.
• “Microsoft Research Reclaims Value of Pi”: In 2008, an executive with the Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments posted on his personal blog an updated spoof of the 1998 Aprils Fool hoax claiming Alabama's state legislature had rounded the value of pi to the "Biblical value of 3." The 2008 hoax claimed that Microsoft Research had determined the true-up value of pi to be a definitive 3.141999, or as expressed in company literature, “Three easy payments of 1.047333.”
• The Motley Fool announced that it would ignore the stock market for six months in favor of more general topics, and presented a series of fake articles highlighting its new approach, including a review of various spatulas and a comparison of Chuck Norris with Jack Bauer.
• MOO announced a new product, a poster-sized business card called the "MightyCard".
• Mortal Kombat's co-creator, Ed Boon announced on his website that he was leaving Midway to become a chef.
• Mousedroid.com announced that the upcoming Star Wars live action series would start with a 6 hour mini series to introduce fans to the series, similar to how The Clone Wars animated movie will premiere first and lead into the animated TV series.
• Mozilla Employee Johnathan Nightingale announced that the Toronto Office moved to the CN Tower
• MuggleCast announced on their podcast that the show would become a combined Harry Potter, Twilight, Lord of the Rings and Narnia podcast.
• Mugglenet posted several news updates with news stories that could possibly have happened in the wizarding news, mainly about sex scandals, alcohol abuse, steroid use and that Warner Bros. was planning to create an animated Harry Potter TV series.
• Mugglenet Interactive changed the themes for many parts of the forum, altered the names of the Staff Ranks, added new word filters and changed some of the smileys as a combined April Fool's joke and a birthday present for the Head Administrator for the website.
• NASA's Astronomy Picture of the day displays "Dextre the Magnificent".
• It also includes link to a picture showing a ridiculously large Swiss Army knife, the Wikipedia article on Red Green and an onion video about robots taking over.
• National Taxpayers Union: Their "Government BYTES!" blog has an entry mentioning a "fascinating video of Robert Byrd singing about earmarks in 1987"; the link, however, is really a rickroll.
• NBC's The Office website was made to look like it was vandalized by the Racine Branch of Dunder Mifflin.
• Neopets added a 'Neobuddy', a character from the site (although it seems like it is selected from a personality quiz, it is always the same) that randomly pops up in a pop-up window giving advice, but becomes increasingly more annoyed as its suggestions are rebuffed.
• Nestlé, is changing the name of their Butterfinger candy bar to "The Finger". Complete with video overview.
• Nestoria, a UK property search engine, announced a feature to easily buy several houses using credit card.
• Newgrounds became "Poogrounds" (presented by Ebaum's World), and all of the movies and content on the front page were related to poop.
• Nightwish's home page says the band is going green, adopting new energy-saving measures.
• NooBTooB (An independent internet forum) changed the banner logo to state BooBTooB, as well as many users 'confessing' to be moderators in disguise.
• NORML runs story titled: President George W. Bush Announces Amnesty For All Marijuana Prisoners
• OKCupid announced a partnership with "Genetimatch LLC" to pair couples genetically.
• OneClick Wi-Fi changed their service from finding people to play wi-fi with to finding life partners. The general theme of the site was changed to match the new service. Also, female and male, and moderator and admin icons were swapped. Admin "Ace Jon", who's been saying he has been having real life problems for the past two weeks and would have his internet cut off after March 31, revealed his story was a April Fools prank.
• The Open Directory Project promoted its German language directory to the main page.
• The developers of Opera announced that the development version of Opera scores 106/106 in the Acid3 test, and easter eggs appeared instead of bars. Additionally, all avatars on MyOpera have been replaced with drawings of various animals.
• Orkut replaced its own logo in internal pages with a similar-looking logo that reads "Yogurt."
• Overclockers Australia announced that they had moved away from PCs and that their new sponsor was Apple Inc.
• The PETA Files blog announced the debut of their first branded food product, "Newkirk Nuggets" made from the cloned upper-arm cells of PETA president Ingrid Newkirk.
• Pizza Hut (UK) are offering a new domestic cleaning service whilst you eat. £5 voucher also included for this promotion.
• On the Penny Arcade forums, anybody who typed or quoted the word "Cobain" in the Social Entropy forum has their avatar replaced by Kurt Cobain. Also, a special April Fools Day forum was opened.
• The webcomic The Phoenix Requiem posted a comic implying that the character Jonas Faulkner is Doctor Who.
• Playstation.co.uk has a topic announcing a new update for the popular PS3 game Warhawk. The update is based enitely on clowns in honour of a regular forumer
• PSX Extreme jokedly confirmed that a highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII remake had been in development under Square-Enix since 2007.
• Punknews had posted that Cancer Bats are changing their name of their name due to pressure by PETA, Gaslight Anthem would be touring as Bruce Springsteen's backing band, Fake Problems got kicked off the current Anti-Flag tour after a disagreement on America's Involvement in Iraq and impromptu haircuts which led to a brawl at a Chicken and waffles restaurant, and Dillinger Four release artwork and tracklisting for their often delayed upcoming album C I V I L W A R.
• Quakenet announced they would be replacing user's hosts on IRC with text advertisements in order to raise money. The IRC Oper's made many fake hosts regarding Nigerian money scams, meeting hot singles, and pointing to ads.quakenet.org
• Qualcomm announced a new product by the name of "HandSolo": a cellphone finger implant.
• The Redwall Wiki became the "Loamhedge Wiki".
• Report 103's - reporting on the fictional Grap Instituut voor Handels Onderzoek (GIHO) "INNOVATION MAY BE DETRIMENTAL TO BUSINESS" finding
• Replacementdocs announced that the archive had been purchased by Google in an effort to expand their Google Books program.
• Return to the Pit Sold to Flickr and became flickrttp.
• Rinkworks.com changed their name from "RinkWorks" to "Jijijjijijijiiijij".
• Roliana.com Told the users that it would be traded off to another company who plans to shut it down. After the scare a freebie was handed out to users who found hidden text on the announcement.
• Rotten Tomatoes reported on the following movies: The Shining remake, Cloverfield sequel, Warcraft movie, Kingdom Come movie, The Sopranos prequel
• Ryanair published that they will enter the profitable business of X-rated images, selling them over the internet. The website was said to be www.ryanbare.com.
• SFX claimed that one of next year’s Doctor Who TV movies will be a crossover with Battlestar Galactica, climaxing with a massive battle between the Cylons and the Cybermen.
• Shortpacked! was redesigned as McAwesome's Parasailing and Chocolate Bakery.
• The Simpsons Archive changed their main page to "GSIMPSONS", claiming that they have been bought out by Google.
• Comic book artist Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn, announced on his website that he was publishing a children's book, Learn and Grow With Spawn.
• Toyota Solara car forum Solaraguy.com changed its entire layout to be a Chuck Norris fan site, "WTF-Chuck.com", including changing user's avatars to random pictures of Chuck Norris, and any references to the word "Solara" is changed to "ChuckMobile".
• Sophos announced that it had developed a technology called RAPIL (Recognition and Analysis of Potentially Intruding Lifeforms) that could stop hackers from writing computer viruses through webcam facial recognition. Unfortunately the system does not work if the hackers are wearing hats, sunglasses, or have fake beards.
• A poster on Sound Opinions forum announced that a new My Bloody Valentine album would be released in less than two weeks.
• The comedy duo, Smosh produce a video claiming that they are being sued by the Pokemon company for $20,000,000, and asked viewers to buy items that they were auctioning on their website.
• SpaceWeather claims NASA has rescheduled the solar maximum out of impatience. It was due in 2012 but is now set to occur this month.
• The SpongeBob wiki, SpongyWiki, changed to AvatarWiki for this day only, claiming that the owners preferred Avatar: The Last Airbender because it won the KCA 2008 "Favorite Cartoon" award.
• Starslip Crisis featured a strip drawn in the style of creator Kris Straub's new webcomic chainsawsuit.
• Stick Sports forum told it's members that as of April 2nd the site would be shutdown.
• Tax Foundation covered fictional stories about shoe salesmen seeking tax credits for shoe buyers and a state running tobacco stores to fund education.
• American Cable Network TBS put up a fake homepage replacing the network's "TBS Very Funny" branding as "the bor!ng station".
• TechCrunch announces that they are suing Facebook for $25 million in statutory damages.
• TechNet Edge has an interview with the creator and footage of the IT Probot - a robot for your datacenter,
• The Tiger Pep Band at DePauw University modified its Web site to appear as though its school had become a satellite campus of arch-rival school Wabash College, and included a slightly-modified feature article about the Wabash Pep Band borrowed from Wabash's alumni web site.
• TheDailyWTF announced that it would now be called The Daily WTH as in "The Daily What The Heck" and registered the http://www.thedailywth.com domain. They also changed their slogan to "For When Life is a Living Heck".
• The Pirate Bay announced a sudden change in Swedish copyright law, which forces them to move their whole system and one of their admins to Sinai, Egypt.
• Online store ThinkGeek advertised several hoax items including a YouTube Tazer, a Betamax to HD DVD converter and a new Wii video game titled Super Pii Pii Brothers.
• TNA Wrestling's official website includes an April Fools' edition of TNA News with headlines such as the Rock N' Rave Infection being on the cover of the next Rock Band video game.
• The Toontown Online fan website, ToontownCentral, had it's skin change to VMK forums, and later in the day, the background changed to 'Evil Kid Bug's Estate of Evil'. Also, on the same website, a fake Toontown release note was put on, but the prank didn't go too well.
• Toribash's forum website claimed to have been hacked by a Swedish group. The police report on the incident was a link to a Youtube rick roll. On the real forums Nabi, the developers of the game, announced the beta of their new game Glitchracer with the same link.
• The Transformers Collectors Club website allowed three pages that were alleged to be from the upcoming BotCon-exclusive comic book to be "leaked" to various websites. The comic featured several concepts widely believed to be disliked by the fandom, but the prank backfired somewhat when the fake comic inexplicably proved more popular among the online fandom than the genuine article.
• Users in NotebookReview Forums are switching avatars and sigs.
• On the forum of Tweakers.net, users will get to see Lemmings (video game) falling down, blowing up and digging through their screen. The probability of these lemmings appearing and the amount of lemmings can be adjusted in their profile.
• Trophy Manager claimed they released "Pro Envy" a new variation of Pro Diamond with some features, such as destroying peoples TM PRo membership.
• The Ubuntu Forums changed to a bright neon orange color scheme
• UKNova reverts to page design 1.0, citing "some server issues".
• UKThrash - an online community for thrash metal - took their entire website down and replaced it with a splash screen containing news that the site had been closed in connection with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and forum members were under investigation for defamation and libel.
• Uncyclopedia presented its own main page as the featured article for the day.
• Webcomic UserFriendly posted a fake comic which claims the destruction of everything by the large hadron collider. This comic transitions to the real comic.
• Webcomic VG Cats showed a comic in the "B^U" style, that is, a parody/mockery of Ctrl+Alt+Del's art style. A link on that page leads to the real home page.
• VGMaps.com made a screenshot map for a fake game called "The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Hours." It claimed to be the third game in the series, along with Oracle of Ages and Seasons. The maps are detailed enough that it's possible to imagine how you would "play" the game and solve the puzzles.
• VGMusic.com switched its main page to one that looks to be designed by amateurs. The new design mocks websites of the 90's by including a background MIDI and "under construction" images. In addition, their board was switched to the old WWWBoard design, and the MIDIs in the New-files directory were switched.
• Virtual Console Reviews, a site containing reviews for Virtual Console games, claimed that the Virtual Boy would be joining the Virtual Console lineup.
• WarGaming.org put up a page to trick users into thinking it had been hacked by a competing site.
• Webcomics XKCD, Questionable Content, and Dinosaur Comics swapped each others sites in a circular fashion so that visitors to xkcd.com saw content from questionablecontent.net. Questionable Content displayed the latest Dinosaur Comic from qwantz.com and qwantz.com featured the latest XKCD comic.
• Westjet announced that it would be introducing Sleeper Cabins onboard its existing fleet of Boeing 737 Next-Generation aircraft for a nominal incremental fee of $12.
• Whirlpool published an announcement that the site had been acquired by NineMSN.
• Wikipedia had April fools/April Fool's Day 2008 by editors.
• wis.dm an incognito user usurped the identity of the site's CEO "Martin" and announced the site would be shutting down, citing: "So long, and thanks for all the fish.
• WikiFur made its featured article for the day about the Weighted Companion Cube. Clicking on the article took you to an enlarged photograph with the title "April Fools!". The rest of the page contained false stories and facts and asked for help on improving the article on Yiff (Furry pornography). Their featured comic was a fake comic named Furry Arcade, including a fake description and an edited panel from Penny Arcade. The front page read that the wiki was editing "OVER 9000" articles - which was actually correct, as of two days earlier. All the news articles were fake.
• Wikispecies featured a message on its homepage, reading "You have been blocked from editing Wikispecies for a period of 1 day because today is April 1. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make constructive contributions. You may not appeal or contest this block.
• Wookieepedia converted the entire text of its front page into Aurebesh.
• Woot.com is holding a woot-off, but every item for sale is exactly the same. During the woot-off 4 Bags of Crap were offered, each selling out in a matter of seconds.
• World of Warcraft posted information about a new 'hero class' called the 'Bard', who would use the power of rock music to defeat enemies. WoW's developer Blizzard Entertainment have recently merged with Activision, makes of Guitar Hero. An 8-bit console version of 'Molten Core', a 40-man dungeon in the game, was also announced. Further more the World of Warcraft forums have been altered so that every user has the same avatar and the text in the postings now feature random chat memes like "lolcats" and "wutz".
• WoWInsider has changed itself to HKO (Hello Kitty Online) Insider
• WoWInterface uploaded an AddOn that claimed to increase the average /roll results, instead it plays a rickroll AVI, specifically crafted to play inside the WoW game (this is the first known addon for WoW that utlises the ingame MovieFrame). Will only play sound of the AVI outside of game due to players missing the 'correct' codec leading some to believe it was audio only.
• Wrong Planet ran an article claiming to have acquired Autism Speaks
• Wunderground had a blog from Jeff Masters about "cyclopsychic research" proving a link between hurricanes and global warming.
• Xfire changed their website so that all text was rendered in L33t speak.
• Yehey.com announced its merger with search engine giant, Yahoo for the entire day.
• You Don't Know Jack's Monday (31/03/2008) game featured even more bizarre questions than normal, topped off with a "Jack attack" round that had all the answers being the questions. The Tuseday (1/04/2008) had Dis or Dat, the words that make up the name of the game, as its answers.
• YouTube rickrolled their Featured Videos list. The prank began with international YouTube portals before affecting the main site. Every featured video redirected to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video.
• Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series.com posted a news entry indicating that they were shutting down the website and posted a fake last video entitled "The Last Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged Episode"
• Ytmnd.com changed their homepage to indicate that they are running at reduced capacity and will be completely shutting down in the near future, with "We've Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters playing in the background. The HTML source of the page includes the comment

 On television 
 On American Idol, Ryan Seacrest claimed that the show's broadcast had been pre-empted and that instead, they were going to broadcast a celebrity episode of The Moment of Truth featuring Simon Cowell.
 The BBC show footage of flying penguins, fronted by Terry Jones, as a trailer for the BBC iPlayer.
 CNN-IBN claimed that Rakhi Sawant had assaulted one of their reporters.
 Hillary Clinton made an announcement in front of the audience in Pennsylvania that she is challenging her opponent Barack Obama to a bowling match (a reference to Obama's recent poor showing at a bowling centre during his campaign in the state), and that whoever wins the game will get the party nomination. She also made a reference to her famous '3 am phone call' by saying that after that the nation will know that the winner will be ready to pick up that phone and will know how to bowl. Clinton concluded by saying that America will get a president 'who knows how to bowl on Day 1'.
 Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek resumes his formerly-signature mustache for half the episode - it is not referred to at any point, and is missing in the second half.
 Nick @ Nite said it will disappear forever. This was actually used in a promo for a prank-themed marathon and also asked for videos of practical jokes played on family members on the website.
 Pardon the Interruption, a sports talk show on ESPN hosted by Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, began with the two hosts discussing the breaking news that the last sixteen seconds of the NCAA Tournament game between Kansas and Davidson were to be replayed in Charlotte, NC because Sherron Collins, the Kansas player guarding Stephen Curry during the last play of the game, had already fouled out of the game. At the end of the bit, it was revealed the news was an obvious prank. 
 GMTV showed a miracle cream, which when worn overnight with special socks on, made the person lose weight. A woman had supposedly lost half her body weight with help from the product, SO-TOX.
 The Price is Right featured a showcase with three absurd, and completely fictional, products: a "stato-intellicator," a "trans-rebounder," and a baggage-class trip to Boguslovania via OCD Air.
 Seven Network's Sunrise had all of the hosts swapping positions (e.g: main hosts doing news and sports, while the people who do sport and news played host).
 Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak reveals that he is wearing a full hairpiece - on removal, his head is completely bald.
 WWTV in northern Michigan ran a story about the discovery of a "furry trout" in Lake Superior.
 The Flemish children's' television station Ketnet announced that two of their presenters, Kristien Maes and Kobe Van Herwegen, were to marry..Over 1,700 viewers contacted the station with suggestions for the wedding. VRTFansite.be later revealed the hoax, adding that the presenters were not a couple.

 In podcasts 
 Daily GizWiz (on Twit.tv) the reviewed a bogus product called the SpearHat, with a link to a fabricated website, spearhat.com, showing a crude metal spear attached to a baseball cap.  Leo Laporte and Dick DeBartolo also assumed eath other's names and roles in addition to the usual switch in "Turn the Tables Tuesday" editions of the podcast where Leo presents a product instead of Dick; therefore Dick, pretending to be Leo, presented the SpearHat. 
 Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht of Diggnation, a weekly video podcast produced by Revision3, announced that Revision3 had been acquired by Fox News and that drinking, a tradition on the show, would no longer be allowed and that both Rose and Albrecht would switch computers.
 Patrick Norton and Dave Randolph of Systm said that Randolph invented a new perpetual motion machine. Using some old parts, transistors and a lightgun (Zapper) from an old NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) he's done just that.
Revision3 tweaked the flash player on their site to play all videos vertically mirror-flipped.  Internet Superstar, whose show schedule caused it to be released on April 1 additionally changed their music to a reverse sound.  A bogus blog post was posted on the Rev3 blog announcing Revision3's commitment to engage in "breakthrough experiments to do science and other cool stuff.
The Sonic Society played a fake show called Pony Talez before launching into their real episode. The end credits were then interrupted by a Rickroll.
Control Point, a Team Fortress 2 podcast, claimed to have been taken over by fictional server supliers Ooberservers.com. The changes included a name change to "Oober Control" coupled with a complete site overhaul, altered intros, faux advertisements, and the weekly "briefcase" segment changed to a satchel (referring to the TF2 Scout class). The 24th Podcast was released coupled with the joke, with the hosts discussing the changes.
The  Star Trek: Excelsior radio drama released a new episode, "Debugging Entry/The Interregnum, Part II", which proved to be nothing more than an audio adaptation of All Your Base Are Belong To Us using the series' main cast.
On  Rangercast, Episode 127 was released and presented as an episode from one year in the future (the preceding episode was numbered 82). The episode started by announcing co-host Hayden West's death, then continues to discuss the entirely fictitious premiere of the next season of Power Rangers
 On the radio
702 ABC Sydney Breakfast's "Sports Segment" announced that the new grandstand at the Sydney Cricket Ground would be named after former AFL player Warwick Capper. 
All Things Considered (NPR) ran an enthusiastically positive review of the fictional composer "Simon Fluegel" and his one note composition, "B-flat". 
 American Public Media's Marketplace (radio program) announced some Americans would not receive income tax rebate checks from the government, as promised... but would instead receive actual retail items like air conditioners, to prevent taxpayers from spending their rebate on debt repayment.
Clyde 1 and Clyde 2 (Glasgow) announced on a news bulletin that Glasgow Airport's name was to be changed to John Smeaton International airport to commemorate his bravery. This was backed up with a speech from him.
Coast to Coast AM host George Noory reported that a baby Tyrannosaurus rex had been captured in the African Congo. 
The town of Ely, MN aired a series of radio ads that the small town in the BWCA would be sold to Canada. 
 KIOZ also known as Rock 105.3 in San Diego, CA. Radio D.J. Missi announced that the metal group Metallica has disbanded and cancelled their 2008 tour along with the highly anticipated 2008 9th Studio Album.
KSJN 99.5 FM in Minneapolis and  St.Paul, Minnesota aired a classical song accompanied by sports-like live commentary.
 KTAR-FM 92.3 in Phoenix, AZ carried out an elaborate full day prank in which listeners were told that during the night the Arizona legislature had passed an emergency bill turning all of the state freeways into toll roads. At 5:19 PM the station revealed the prank, which had received attention as genuine news by such national news outlets as CNN, and because of which at least one citizen quit their job.
 Mix 106.3 aired an apology for their April Fools Joke.  The apology was the April Fools joke.
 Nova 96.9 (Sydney, Australia). Kate Ritchie announced that she will play a guest role for Home and Away rival soap, Neighbours.
 Real Radio Scotland announced that the Space Shuttle Endeavour was to make an emergency landing at Cumbernauld Airport and that listeners would be able to see the shuttle during re-entry. It also (falsely) reported that there was heavy congestion of roads leading to Cumbernauld due to the landing.
 The Rock (New Zealand) were forced to issue an apology after their promotions team falsely advertised a free Foo Fighters concert in Auckland for April 1 2008.
 Time 106.6 (United Kingdom) announced that two milk floats had collided on a major local road, leaving milk, yoghurt and orange juice spilled across the carriageway. Drivers were advised to avoid the area to prevent getting milk on their tyres which would in turn go off, and make their tyres smell bad.
 Alternative station Triple J (Australia) announced a competition where the prize would be a free boob job.
 On The Edge 102.1 (Toronto), Dean, Jason and Todd invited Meat (an intern) on the air to tell him that all his errors on the show had resulted in him being fired. Halfway through this six minute ordeal Meat started crying. At the end, on a side note, Dean said, "And by the way, April Fools." Laughing and shouting ensued.
 On the Today FM (Ireland) Breakfast Show, during a commercial break prior to a quiz, an English-accented female voice was heard over the ads apparently coaching the contestant on the answers to the upcoming questions.
 On WUSB (FM) (Stony Brook, New York), a staff member informed the host of Off The Wall, Eric Corley, that the radio transmitter was down yet again due to technical problems. The host, believing he is off the air, vents much anger and says some critical words about the station and the university and its unfair policies. The host takes a personal phone call from a friend who informs him that the radio is working perfectly and suggests that Eric play everything off as an April Fool's Day joke.
 U105 (Northern Ireland) announced that the road between the towns of Strangford and Portaferry had been flooded. This "road" is in fact the Narrows of Strangford Lough, which on 31 March 2007 became the site of the world's first commercial tidal turbine for generating electricity.
 WBRU's (Providence, Rhode Island) DJs incorrectly introduced each song that they played throughout the day.
 WFMU in East Orange, New Jersey and KFJC in Los Altos Hills, California switch stations for the day, with KJFC's format playing on WFMU and WFMU's format on KJFC.
 WRNO in New Orleans, Louisiana switched to "Rush Radio" all day to celebrate that station's acquisition of The Rush Limbaugh Show. Replays of that show aired throughout the entire broadcast day for six days; it was not until April 7 that the station's regular format returned.
 WRRV,  a Poughkeepsie, New York station hyped an April Fool's Joke for several days, and even ran a short article in the Poughkeepsie Journal on March 31,  telling listeners to tune in around 7:20 AM to hear the biggest prank ever. At 7:20 it was revealed that the prank was a prank in itself - there was no prank.  
 Z100 gave out the fake phone number of Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers.

The Morning Madhouse on The Edge FM in New Zealand had 2 girls on the air saying they were looking for a male partner for a threesome.  One of the girls gave out her cellphone number and encouraged interested guys between 18-30 to call if they were keen.  The joke was revealed the next morning and some of the 500 voice mails messages and text's from willing guys were broadcast.
Events mistaken as April Fools' Day hoaxes

 The Daily Star (United Kingdom) printed a story quoting Daniel Craig as saying that the James Bond character should be modernised by making him bisexual.
 The announcement that the GNOME Epiphany web browser will be dropping support for the Gecko layout engine backend and supporting only WebKit.
 Los Santos Role Play (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas MMORPG) announced it was closing its servers, due to a DDoS attack.
 Marquette Golden Eagles men's basketball coach Tom Crean leaving Marquette to coach the Indiana Hoosiers.
 NationStates, a political browser game, renamed its fictional United Nations organization due to a Cease and Desist order from the real UN. It was later revealed that the legal complaint was real, but deliberately published by NationStates on April 1 as a "reverse joke".
 The announcement of the end of the tv show Royal Canadian Air Farce
 Still Alive, the closing song from the video game Portal, was released as a free downloadable track for the game Rock Band on Xbox Live.
 The Swiss bank UBS posted billions of pounds of sub-prime losses.
 The nation-wide public transportation strikes (initiated by Ver.di) in Germany were surprisingly cancelled on 4/1/2007 at 1:00 GMT+1
 The International Organization for Standardization officially voted to approve Office Open XML.
 Australia's Powerhouse Museum called for submissions to a public archive of "memorable" emails including "touching tales", "romantic messages" and "e-mails you regret sending".
 Several newspapers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere reported the story of Thomas Beatie, the Oregon man who claimed he was pregnant.
UEFA requires the Swedish hamburger chain Max to close their restaurant near the arena in Borås during the European Under-21 Football Championship. The reason is a requirement from the main sponsor McDonalds. This was published on April 1 2008. There is an agreement between UEFA and the city with a clause saying that the sponsors shall have monopoly around the arena.
 British sprinter Dwain Chambers joined English rugby league team Castleford Tigers shortly before 1 April 2008. The athlete was attempting a return to top flight athletics at the time following a high profile drugs ban, and his apparent unfamiliarity with rugby led many people to assume this was an April Fools' Day prank.
 Although originally meant as a April Fools, Gamespot announced as a joke that Guitar Hero would release an all instrumental version of the game Activision did announce a month later that the next version of Guitar Hero (GH4, World Tour) would have a Drum style controller with the game, as a competitor to Rock Band.
 CBS reported massive staff layoffs reportedly being made at CBS-owned TV stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, including long-time anchors Diann Burns and Harold Greene.
References
External links
 A long list of supposed 2008 April Fool's