 | by Mangesh - Wednesday, April 1, 2009
| | I know some of you are at your computers experiencing Prankster's Block right now. You feel culturally pressured to celebrate April Fool's Day, and you desperately want to pull the wool over someone's eyes, but you don't know who to prank, or even what sort of wool to use (what if they're allergic?). Well, here are a few do's and don'ts, plucked from the mental_floss archives, that might spark some ideas.
DO: Be Prepared!
When Kevin Roose interviewed Jerry Falwell in the evangelist's last print interview, he learned some surprising things, including that the Moral Majority leader was a consummate prankster, ready to prank at every opportunity. "He carried M-80 firecrackers in his pockets, had an extra-loud horn installed on his SUV, and learned to hotwire his associates' cars, drive them several blocks away, and leave them. When we spoke, Falwell admitted placing a stinkbomb under the chair leg of Bob Jones, Jr., then-president of Bob Jones University, at a conference of pastors. "When he sat down, the bomb broke," he said, laughing. "And in a crowded auditorium, it got pretty rank pretty quick. Everyone was choking for ten, fifteen minutes."
DON'T: Prank the Hussein Way
According to former flosser (and famous prankster) John Green: "If you're looking for April Fool's pranks, don't bother taking a page from the late, hilarious prankster Uday Hussein. Between 1998 and 2000, Uday's newspaper published a different April Fool's Day story each year, including one that jokingly told the Iraqi people that their food ration would be increased to include bananas. The people were like, "Oh thank God, I'm so hungry," and then Uday was like, "Just kidding," and then the people were all like, "Oh, ha ha! That was a good one, Uday. It's nice to know that you're not too busy with your 1,200 automobiles to share a joke with the commoners now and again."
Of course, if you're looking to eschew all this foolishness, and simply want to get down to business, we can help you with that too. This week, we're releasing MBA Degree in a Box at the mental_floss store (the #1 Boxed Business School in the Country!). It's written by the hilarious-- and super-smart-- Ethan Trex, and it's a whole lot of fun. Click here to pick up your degree now. And don't forget all the great trivia below. | | Happy Pranking,
Mangesh
E-mail Jason and Mangesh, here. |  | Our weekly attempt to stock our newsletter readers' closets (and bookshelves) with mental_floss paraphernalia!
| Last Issue's Theme was "ORIGINS". The winners (and their facts) are:
| 1) Harland Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken was actually born in Indiana.
-Michael Hans | 2) The term "bug" originated in 1945 when a computer at Harvard malfunctioned and Grace Hopper (who was working on the computer) found a moth in one of the circuits and removed it. -Shara Attales | 3) The Bronx was actually named after Jonas Bronck (not Bronx). It was known as "Bronck's Land" which later became "The Bronx".
-Dan Melinger | Congratulations to all of you... you should be receiving your T-shirts by Pony Express any day now!
| | Oh, and even if your fact doesn't win you some swag, it could win you some fame! The best user-submitted facts will go into our Amazing Fact Generator.
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| Ethan Trex
After four years in a doctoral program at the Wharton School in Philadelphia, Ethan Trex walked away knowing he had no desire to become a research economist. Instead, he spends his days writing about sports and business. He has now co-authored three humorous books with needlessly long titles, including 'Faking It: How to Seem Like a Better Person Without Actually Improving Yourself.' He also contributes to ESPN The Magazine and co-created Straight Cash, Homey, the Internet's undisputed top source for pictures of people in Ryan Leaf jerseys. And on top of all that, Ethan is a weekly contributor to mental_floss.
Ethan's Archive: | | 4 Delicious Facts about Doughnuts By Stacy Conradt |
|  Adolph Levitt invented the doughnut machine in 1920. Before that, doughnuts were made one by one in a frying pan. His machine dropped dough rings into fat, browned them, flipped them and cooled them. He called it the Wonderful Almost Human Automatic Donut Machine. It took him and an engineer 12 tries to perfect, but once he did, they sold like hotcakes - er, doughnuts - and the industry hasn't been the same since. |  There is a National Dunking Association, and used to be a big deal. Actress Mae Murray is said to have started the whole dunking craze when she accidentally dropped her doughnut into her coffee and raved about the results. It just goes to show you that things haven't really changed in the past 80 years - a celebrity does something and it sweeps the nation. Card-carrying (seriously... there were membership cards) celebrity members included Johnny Carson, Zero Mostel, Pearl Buck, and Martha Graham. Jimmy Durante even ran for president of the association. |  Washington Irving of Sleepy Hollow legend may have coined the term "doughnut." The earliest reference anyone can find of that exact word is in a short story of his dated 1808, except he was probably talking about what we call the doughnut holes today. |  Renee Zellweger said she ate 20 doughnuts a day in order to go from a size six to a size 14 in just three months so she could portray Bridget Jones. I wonder if she means mini-doughnuts... surely 20 full-sized doughnuts a day would have you gaining several sizes faster than three months, since doughnuts can be up to 25% fat (they absorb a lot of the fat they are fried in because they are so porous). But that's not going to stop me from eating them. | Disclaimer: All submissions made to mental_floss become the property of Mental Floss LLC and may be used without further permission by the submitter and without compensation to the submitter. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not submit anything to mental_floss.
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