Best April Fools Day Video Hoaxes

With April Fool's Day almost upon us, the Tribune posted a great list of unforgettable pranks.

While their list shows off some of the more notable pranks throughout history, we thought we'd put together a few TV-themed hoaxes that fooled folks with some pretty convincing video clips.

Flying Penguins

Perhaps the best of the best was done just two years ago in Britain, where ex-Monty Pythoner Terry Jones introduced the world to a marvel of nature -- the newly discovered flying penguin.

The clip was just a promo to get people to watch online BBC videos. It seems to have worked. The must-watch clip became one of the highest-viewed Internet videos of its time. Check it out:

Spaghetti Harvest

Topping the Museum of Hoaxes' list of all-time April Fool's pranks is a little story done by the BBC in 1957. A producer and cameraman put together a convincing tale about the early arrival of spring -- and how that had produced a bumper crop of spaghetti in Switzerland. Upon airing of the story, the BBC was flooded with calls from callers wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. BBC operators pertly replied callers should, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

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Turn Your Car Into a Robot

In 2004, a British engineer at BMW claimed he'd converted a Mini Cooper into a robot. The design and simple Web page it was posted on convinced quite a few people, especially after they watched a clip of the "robot" stopping a moving car. But it turned out to be just a clever viral marketing campaign for the Mini, made with state-of-the-art CGI for the day.

UFOs Over Haiti

In this great Internet video that surfaced in 2007, a woman holding a camera gasps as she sees several UFOs flying low to the ground, right over her head. Her shaky hands tilt the camera as one flies right over her, then joins up with some other lights in the sky.

The video was done so well, some UFO fanatics became worried. If hoaxes are so convincing, one asked, what will happen when the real thing arrives? Will no one believe?

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