Spaghetti-tree hoax

Common card · No. 239268

The spaghetti-tree hoax was a three-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current-affairs programme Panorama, purportedly showing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a "spaghetti tree". At the time of the report's broadcast, spaghetti was relatively unknown in the United Kingdom, and many people did not know it was made from wheat flour and water. A number of viewers contacted the BBC afterwards for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees. BBC staff went along with the joke and instructed callers on how to start their own spaghetti plant. Decades later, CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled".

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