April 1, lemmings and indexes

[Bror Hellman]

On Wed, 4 Oct 1995, Daniel van Eijmeren wrote:

> Brings up another question, which I have since I saw the English 
> version of the story: Is fooling each other on 1 April a worldwide 
> tradition? 
> 
> I used to think it was typical Dutch...

It's very thoroughly anchored in Sweden... When I was small we used to 
have these nursery rhymes like: "April, april, din dumma sill, jag kan 
lura dig vart jag vill." Which (roughly) translates into: "April, april, 
you stupid herring, I can fool you (to go) where *I* want."

An every april 1st all the newspapers and all the television news-programs
will include at least one attempt to fool you.

Classical foolings from the Swedish history of April 1st:

Put a ladies stocking over your black and white TV to turn it into colour.
How to convert a coffee-machine into a vodka-machine...
The whole kingdom of Denmark sold to Norwegian oil-sheik. (This even 
fooled a Norwegian news-paper...) They even suggested that he paid it all 
in herring and cheese!

-- 

                    Steamboat Willie


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