The BBC Reports a Remarkably Successful Spaghetti Harvest

The spaghetti harvest

In 1957, Panorama was already one of Britain's most serious current-affairs programmes.

So naturally, on April 1, it reported on spaghetti trees.

The BBC showed farmers in Switzerland carefully gathering long strands of spaghetti from branches and explained that the year's crop had benefited from a mild winter. Richard Dimbleby—one of the most authoritative broadcasting voices in Britain—delivered the report with exactly the gravity normally reserved for actual news.

This was, of course, an April Fool's joke.

Not everyone noticed.

The straight-faced presentation was convincing enough that some viewers took the report seriously.

There was no spaghetti crop.

There were no spaghetti trees.

There was simply the BBC, Panorama, Richard Dimbleby, and a television report in which televised authority successfully suggested that dinner grew on branches.