It is easy to think the prank is a modern invention. Practical jokes are as old as time itself, and some of the best known come from famous people. Here are a few from our old list of historical pranks.
Benjamin Franklin wrote as a widow
Before he became a famous statesman, Franklin wrote for The New England Courant, a newspaper owned by his brother, who would not let him publish letters under his own name. So he wrote letters as a widow called Silence Dogood. Readers loved them so much that marriage proposals were sent to the paper. Franklin eventually grew bored of the ruse and owned up.
An April Fools food machine for Thomas Edison
At the height of Edison's fame a journalist at the New York Daily Graphic published a story, dated April 1, about a machine that could make food from thin air. Other papers and their readers believed it, and Edison was amused by the requests for the miracle machine that arrived.
William Buckland and the word on the lawn
As a young man at Oxford, the palaeontologist William Buckland used bat guano to write a rude word on the lawn of his college. The grass grew greener and longer where the fertilizer had been, so the word stayed visible after officials cleaned it up.
A coach and a player who did not exist
In 1992 the basketball coach Bobby Knight announced on TV that he had signed a giant recruit from Yugoslavia, Ivan Renko. Reporters picked up the story and some claimed to have seen footage. The player did not exist.
The full list, with more stories, is on the Historical Pranks page.
