Top 20 Fools - the best of the best of the April Fools on the net archive.

After you read these historic jokes, check out the Special Collections index for the best prank postings on 6 foolish topics: RFCs, Microsoft, US Government, Linux, Usenet, and virii.

Here they are, democratically (kinda) decided upon, duely authorized and certified, top 20 fools:

  1. JPEG Virus Alert - 1994 - 953 votes (note: Really folks... this was a hoax about JPG files. But as of September 2004, it seems the mightly Microsoft corporation has made it real :)
  2. Microsoft Bids to Acquire Catholic Church - 1994 - 738 votes
  3. Creators admit UNIX, C Hoax - 1991 - 514 votes
  4. USSR on Usenet, the infamous 'kremvax' post (and replies part 1 and part 2) - 1984 - 397 votes
  5. Microsoft Windows for the Macintosh - 1991 - 115 votes
  6. Internet Downtime - 1996 (and its counter part Internet Cleaning - 1997) - 98 votes
  7. RFC 1149: A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers - 1990 - 70 votes
  8. Linux'95 final release - 1995 - 64 votes
  9. CERT Advisory CA-96.13 - Alien/OS Vulnerability - 1996 - 63 votes
  10. NASA Headline News: The Congressional Budget Explorer Module (CBEM) - 1994 - 55 votes
  11. BMW Introduces It's Newest Innovation: ROAD WARMERS - 1989 - 51 votes
  12. 911 Chatline - 1994 - 47 votes
  13. BIG.MONEY.FAST - 1994 - 44 votes
  14. Siggraph '91 Preliminary Program - 1991 - 41 votes (This is the webmasters personal favorite)
  15. Apple Releases New Macintosh Extension: Caffeine Manager - 1992 - 34 votes
  16. Fallwell Ministries takes over TSR, Inc. - 1994 - 34 votes
  17. McDonalds and EUnet join to offer Global "Internet in a Lunchbox" - 1994 - 24 votes
  18. FAQ: Top-level international planet domain names - 1993 - 22 votes
  19. RFC 748: Telnet Randomly-Lose Option - 1978 - 20 votes
  20. TeXhax Digest, Friday, April 1, 1988 - 1988 - 17 votes
  21. Gene Spafford warns about April Fools on the net (and replies) - 1988 - 13 votes

Past Favorites, and those ALMOST getting into the top10 list:

Also: Don't miss the rest of the Special Collections.


Send a message about this page:

Subject: April Fools