Would you have believed this?

Wednesday is April Fool's Day, a time to remember the biggest hoax any major news bureau ever pulled. It happened in 1957, when the British Broadcasting Corporation ran a three-minute television news report on the current events program Panorama. Respected broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, the British equivalent of Walter Cronkite, claimed to be reporting from the canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland, where locals were holding a Harvest Festival to celebrate their bumper spaghetti crop. Swiss housewives were seen picking spaghetti from trees. The superior crop was attributed to a mild winter and the virtual disappearance of the "spaghetti weevil."

Pasta was not an everyday food in the United Kingdom in 1957, and many Brits did not know it's made from wheat flour and water. An estimated eight million people watched the broadcast on April 1 and hundreds phoned the next day to request more information about spaghetti farming. Could they grow their own spaghetti trees? BBC operators advised callers to "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." The next day, the network admitted the hoax.

Why not celebrate April Fool's Day by watching the original BBC telecast, linked here. Would have have believed it?  www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU