As it is now after noon, I can reveal this to be an April Fool.

Shame.

I’m not sure how anyone would believe this on any day of the year, let alone the first of April. The Guardian is reporting that it is to move to a completely Twitter based service. Not only that but they will translate their entire 188 year news archive into 140 character bulletins. This would make the report from Dallas, Texas in 1963 “JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?”

Thanks to Ryan for the link. Better luck next time.

Neil Buchanan is not dead.

The much loved children’s TV presenter is the subject of a false rumour which has gained momentum on Facebook, with a group entitled ‘RIP Neil Buchanan (the art attack guy)’ which at the time of writing this has 21,236 members. It seems it might all have started with a false Wikipedia entry claiming Neil had died last month. An obvious April Fool, what with the equally obvious cause of death being joked of as an Art Attack (sigh), but even so it, just goes to show how viral information is on the internet and how little rigour we often apply to what we read.

Wikipedia has long been dogged by cases of false information (sometimes intentionally, sometimes lazily) and there’s a long established history of false obituaries, but I imagine that the news was most shocking to Neil himself.

Of course, you can also be resurrected digitally, as Bob Monkhouse proved to great effect in aid of prostate cancer awareness:

Oh, and don’t forget to join the Neil Buchanan is ALIVE AND WELL Facebook group…

Guardian readers like their April Fools typographically flavoured! Apparently the paper ran this little picture as part of an article on the 1st April 1977. They put together a seven page special report on the fictional semi-colon shaped island republic of ‘San Serriffe’ including all sorts of seemingly plausible information about its economy, geography and population.

Quite how the names of the two islands (Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse) and the capital city (Bodoni) didn’t arouse suspicion is beyond me, but apparently there were many letters written in and requests for more information. There were even sponsored ads by companies in on the joke. They sold ‘I’ve been to San Serriffe’ bumper stickers and 12,000 San Serriffe t-shirts. My favourite spot on the map? ‘Gill Sands’ of course…

Read all about it and appreciate the ludicrous detail here along with other interesting hoaxes. Happy April 1st everyone, stay alert…

Found over at 30gms