Why do the Wikipedia writers call that a hoax? It is not a hoax (and I do note that you correctly call it a prank).
I don’t think that qualifies, as it wasn’t a prank.
Well, it may not have originally been intended as a prank, but it sure turned out that way for a lot of people.
According to my mother (also supported by a quick Google search), the panic of the W of the W broadcast was greatly overstated by the media. She listened to it, said it was perfectly obvious that it was a radio play, and did not know a single person who thought otherwise. In her opinion, the media ceased upon a few isolated reports of people who were confused, and later the incident achieved legendary status.
Your parents’ marriage?
My regret is that Clarence Darrow (who adduced Eoanthropus dawsonii in the Scopes monkey trial) did not live to see “Piltdown Man” exposed as a fake. (Scopes did.)
The OP is remiss for not explaining that pranks are rated on two scales: the execution scale and the humor scale. The Asiana Airlines thing, for instance, scored high on execution (getting a newscaster to read infiltrated lines), but the judges gave it a pretty low humor score, which actually took the overall score down a notch.
I don’t think hoaxes have as strict a rating system, and humor is not a requisite component of the judging.
The Caltech website calls it a hoax and not a prank. So presumably this is why Wikipedia does so as well.
No mention yet of the Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot film?
I think we need to define hoax and prank. Personally, I think of the Caltech stuff as pranks and the Patterson-Gimlin film as a hoax.
While they’re not the same thing, I think we have space in this thread for both.
See, I think to be a prank, the “punchline” exposing the whole thing as fake has to be part of the original plan. As bigfoot hoaxers intend to fool people and never show up and shout “gotcha!” they don’t qualify.
Naked Came The Stranger was a very successful prank.
Seconded.
If that’s a hoax it’s a damn good one.
I agree. However, we’ll never know if the bigfoot film hoaxers ever intended to come forward to shout “gotcha”, because they both died before they could to so. Their film, whatever their motives and intent, went on to become more of a legend than either a hoax or prank. In any case, I think it is now accepted as a fake, but it sure got a lot of people talking, and those guys had been laughing all thru the years.
I think it’s completely explicable in terms of luck: if hoaxers make 500 attempts at establishing evidence for Bigfoot or UFOs or the Loch Ness monster, there are going to be a few that have no evidently disprovable points. The Patterson film managed to portray an odd creature that moves in an unusual way successfully, without a single point to spoil the illusion. It does not constitute believable evidence not because of any internal flaw, but the grievous external flaw of having not the smallest shred of corroborating evidence to support it. If the choice is a perfect hoax or the only evidence of a large ape-like creature living in North America… Occam’s Razor says it all.
I believe Bob Gimlin is still alive.
Notre Dame playing in the Nat’l Championship
My favorite is the one where, as their buddy was just jumping off on a bungie, they screamed at him and threw a spare one over the bridge.
Roll Tide!