I was just reading Wired Magazine online and came across this.

Specifically, let's look at 1998.

1998 Disney has bought MIT for $6.9 billion. The School of Engineering will be renamed the School of Imagineering and the campus will move to Orlando, according to hackers who altered the MIT homepage. Hey, anything's better than trying to work in an Athena cluster.

From the MIT Hack Gallery:

On April Fools Day of 1998, hackers broke into the MIT web server and changed the MIT home page to indicate that The Walt Disney Company had purchased MIT for $6.9 billion.

More here.

What are some of your favorite April Fool's pranks?

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Did they (MIT) do anything this year? (My favorite non-MIT related prank: getting my grandma to believe that my mom was having twins when I was six).

Posted by: 0 on April 1, 2008

It would have been great if MIT did something this year

Posted by: Simi on April 1, 2008

I don't know of any pranks this year but I wouldn't be surprised if one happened.

Posted by: Bryan on April 1, 2008

My French teacher goes a little nuts on 'poisson d'avril'.
She brought in a box containing 'squirrel' that she hit on the way to school and tossed a stuffed (as in taxidermy, not as in fun and cottony) ferret at whoever looked in. She also told us we had a pop essay test, 500 words, on the definition of extentialism citing examples from L'etranger. Je plaisante! she said, seulement 100 mots! o_o

Posted by: Alison on April 1, 2008

You should really check out The Adventure of Many Lifetimes

Posted by: Keshav '12 on April 1, 2008

Google's pranks are the best. Take Pigeon Rank, for example - awesome!

I actually fell for the lunar mission one... :-$

Jerome

Posted by: Jerome Baum on April 1, 2008

Ha, that's awesome.

Best April Fool's prank? Today my mom got pranked twice for the same thing. lol My sister said she got a tattoo down her side last night and did it again this afternoon. I guess my mom forgot the first time. lol

Posted by: Steph on April 1, 2008

This is my favorite prank of the day: Flying Penguins (a BBC documentary)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxmpihCjqw
Watch it!!!

Posted by: Melis on April 1, 2008

Today all East Campus residents got a paper in their mailbox telling them that East Campus desk is to be closed permanently in May due to verbal abuses from the desk workers. It says that from now on all our mail will be sorted in a box until further notice. The notice also says that there will no longer be services from desk such as movie rentals, room keys, and sodas, etc. It was supposedly signed by the Dean of Residence Life or something like that. I believed it for like 2 seconds and I realized it was April Fool's. =]

Posted by: KB on April 2, 2008

My school's admin pretended that the seniors this year wouldn't be having a prom or a graduation ceremony.
And we obviously fell for it because who would have thought that they would get involved?

It was cruel

Posted by: Natasha on April 2, 2008

While flying penguins, thinkgeek, and xkcd all were quite good, the best was definitely a tie between two:

YouTube and IGN.

YouTube Rickrolled THE ENTIRE COUNTRY by having every single one of its featured videos a Rickroll link.

IGN released this: Click to see the most expensive, elaborate, and frustrating April Fools prank ever.

Posted by: Snively on April 2, 2008

Oh my god, Youtube yesterday was so awesome. I was on the floor.

Also, I want to be a Virgle pioneer. Please?

Posted by: Marissa '12 on April 2, 2008

Well, my friends were trying to play a prank on their parents by taking their mom's car to the school and leaving it there. However, when the got up at 6 in the morning and drove the parent's van to school, they found their own car already parked there.

Posted by: Judy '12 on April 2, 2008

MIT did do something for April fools. Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" was played on a continuous loop on about 10 of the tv channels all day.

Posted by: A Random Freshman on April 2, 2008

I was Rick Rolled on Fool's Day. -_-"

And in other Rick Astley related things, check this out:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j33/timfaircloth/rickroll_chart.jpg

Posted by: Johanna '12 on April 3, 2008

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