Update on uni/April fools' day!

It's crazy to think we're up to week 5 of uni already! So far I love my subjects, they're all really interesting. One day last week I was SO keen to get to my structural mechanics lecture, that in my haste to get to a spare seat I managed to face-plant into the row of seats in front of me. Rather funny, as I'm sure fellow QRC scholarship kid, Peter (sitting in the row behind), can attest. Along with half the lecture theatre who also witnessed my graceful stumble. But no one was hurt and the seats made a full recovery, so I’m glad I could bring a bit of laughter to the 10am lecture timeslot.

Recently I've become the 2nd year representative of the UQ Civil Engineering Student Association (CESA). Next Wednesday I’m organising a pizza lunch sponsored by Osborn Lane and Red Bull, so any UQ engineering students reading this, come along for a networking opportunity and some free lunch.

To finish off this post and today being April fools' day, I thought I’d share a few media generated pranks:

Left-Handed Whopper

In the year 1998, Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing that they had launched “Left-Handed Whopper” specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day, Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new burger.

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

The BBC TV programme Panorama ran a famous hoax in 1957, where Swiss women were shown harvesting strands of spaghetti from trees and laying them in the sun to dry. The narrator explained that a mild winter and elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil had farmers hoping for a bumper crop. A large number of people contacted the BBC wanting to know how to cultivate their own spaghetti trees or how they can buy a spaghetti plant for themselves.

















Smellovision

In 1965, BBC TV aired an "interview" with a man who had invented a new technology called "Smellovision" that allowed viewers at home to experience aromas produced in the television studio. To demonstrate, the man chopped some onions and brewed a pot of coffee. Viewers called in to confirm that they had smelled the aromas that were "transmitted" through their television sets.