Evil April Fool's Day Prank in Romania

Imagine reading that your loved one who has been held in a Romanian prison for years is finally going to be released. You make the long journey to the prison and stand outside the prison gates, waiting desperately for the moment you'll be reunited with your loved one, only to hear... 'April Fools! No one's being released!' This experience happened to sixty people in April 2000 who read in the Opinia newspaper that their loved ones were going to be released from the Baia Mare prison in Romania. They made the long journey to the prison, only to learn that the paper had played an April Fool's joke on them. The Opinia later published an apology.

(I copied this from some other site, but I can't remember where I found it. Sorry. If you know where it came from, just let me know).

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Laxative prank goes horribly wrong

Teachers were thrilled when students at a Brooklyn high school sweetly offered them slices of homemade cake last week.

But the innocent-looking treat contained a nasty surprise - it was laced with laxatives that sent two educators to the hospital and sickened three other staffers.

Now, three seniors at the Brooklyn School for Global Studies in Cobble Hill have been suspended for the prank and barred from graduation - and were under arrest last night.

"It was just cruel and hurtful," one of the victims, Tom Mancuso, 36, told the Daily News Tuesday.

The students - Tiara Peoples, Kenny Ramirez and Quashon Burton, all 17 - were taken to the 76th Precinct stationhouse in Brooklyn. Assault charges were pending, sources said.

"What they did was wrong and they need to be punished," said a school social worker who was sickened by the cake.

"On the other hand, I was very close to these students and I'm very sad," she told The News, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It's very hard when you give so much of your heart and soul to your kids and someone hurts you like that."

The students behind Thursday's stunt weren't seen as troublemakers - one was a straight-A cheerleader. So no one was suspicious when they doled out the chocolate-iced Bundt cake.

People who were offered the cake assumed the red chunks inside the yellow filling were candy, but school officials say they were actually Dulcolax tablets.

"One of the kids said it was baked by his mom. 'Go ahead, it's free,'" said Danilo Dungca, 54, who left a job at the Federal Reserve three years ago to teach in the public schools.

"I'm very close with the kids, so I didn't think anything of it."

As soon as he and Mancuso took a bite, they knew something was wrong.

"It tasted like someone sprayed hairspray in my mouth. I spit it out," Mancuso said. "That's when my lips and my tongue went numb."

"It had red chunks that looked like cherries, but they were bitter," Dungca added, "I spit it out....My mouth was numb. I got sick. I went to the bathroom."

Dungca went right to the emergency room. Mancuso left early, then headed to the hospital when he had breathing problems.

Doctors told him his symptoms were consistent with insecticide poisoning, and there was buzz among students the cake had been sprayed with Raid, he said.

The Health Department tested the cake and did not find any poisons, sources said.

Principal Lisa Gibbs had no comment. In an e-mail to her staff, she alluded to problems at the school and said she considered quitting two weeks ago but changed her mind.

"While I know that we are all deeply offended, angry, disappointed, and saddened by this turn of events, it's important to remember that not all students would be so devious and harmful," she said.

Some students at the school were blasé about the cake caper.

"Nobody's died from a laxative," said Shanell James, 17, a senior and friend of Ramirez. "He thought it was funny. I thought it was funny, too."

Others were dismayed.

Student body president Luis Daray called the prank "very foolish." Bob Zuckerberg, the district's teachers union rep, said it was "horrendous."

For Mancuso, the episode capped a difficult year in which he battled the Epstein-Barr virus.

"Ironically," he said, "this is the icing on the cake."

Source

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Mean April Fools Day Pranks in Iraq

Yes, apparently Saddam liked to joke around a bit. Maybe being a dictator gets boring sometimes... here's what he (and his sons) did:

On April 1, 1998 the Babil newspaper, owned by Saddam Hussein's son Uday, told its readers that President Clinton had decided to lift sanctions against Iraq, only to admit later that it was just joking. The next year the same paper announced that the monthly food rations would be supplemented to include bananas, Pepsi, and chocolate. Again, just a joke. The people were not amused... not amused at all.

Anyone know if the people of Iraq are having better April Fool's day pranks than they had when Hussein was running the show?

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The egg head prank

Here's a great way to make yourself look like a complete jerk:

Ask someone to let you crack 3 eggs on their head for a large sum of money. If they agree, crack two eggs on their head, rubbing all the yolk in quite thorougly. Then walk off and tell them you don't feel like cracking any more eggs, and since you didn't complete your end of the deal, you don't owe them the money either.

Why would anyone do this? I have no idea.

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Introduction to Prank Ideas

This site is about prank ideas. Not just any prank ideas though - interesting pranks. Pranks that make people stop and think "Hey, that was clever!". Not pranks that annoy people or break things or that make a big mess. Those can be really fun to read about, but I wouldn't actually condone anyone doing things like that for real.

Examples?

You know the classic "Bring 4 chickens and number them 1, 2, 3, and 5, let them run loose, and watch in amusement as everyone searches for the missing 4th chicken"? Sound familiar? It's a classic, or so I'm told. But what nobody seems to consider is... what if nobody actually bothers to look for the "missing" chicken at all? This one doesn't hurt anyone or damage anything (as long as nobody hurts the chickens), so it's fine, but flawed. You go through all that effort of finding chickens, and then nobody falls for the prank.

How 'bout this one: leaving rotting meat lying around someplace obscure where people will have a hard time finding it. That's real nice, annoy the hell out of everyone in the vicinity, even if they're complete strangers. This does not amuse anyone except the person who organized the prank. I heard of this one time where some guy ran over a deer and managed to stuff the thing in someone else's locker at school. They eventually found it after a week, and when they opened the door, blood and maggots and disgusting things fell on top of the person opening the locker. Yes, very funny. If you were trying to make yourself look like an immature moron with nothing better to do, you succeeded.

Here's a prank idea that's actually cool: hijacking the London underground train and throwing a party for everyone who happens to be aboard at the time. Yes, a bunch of people actually did this. Multiple times, in fact. There are reasons why things like this are cool. Most importantly, everyone involved has fun in the process. Also, things like this can make people stop and think... "Hey, that was fun, normally train rides are really boring... actually, most of my life is pretty boring...", and thinking like that can get people to do stuff to make their lives better or more fun. That's always a good thing.

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