Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Ah, April 1st, the only day of the yer that people critically evaluate things they find on the internet before accepting as true. Bwahahaha!

On March 31, 1940, a Philadelphia radio station broadcast a message stating that Franklin Institute astronomers had confirmed that the world would end at 3 p.m. the next day. KYW's broadcast alerted listeners that "This is no April Fool joke."

Except it was.

The Franklin Institute's press agent, William Castellini, had put together the announcement after hearing a radio program discussing how the world might end. Figuring it would generate some publicity for the Institute's planetarium, he sent it to KYW, which in turn broadcast the message believing it to be true.

Perhaps predictably, the announcement sparked unnecessary panic & fear and Castellini was fired.


April 1, 1960: the world's first experimental weather satellite, TIROS-1, was launched. Within three months, TIROS-1 generated over 23,000 images of earth and its atmosphere, providing an unprecedented perspective from above and revolutionizing weather forecasting.

Television InfraRed Observation Satellite (TIROS) was a series of early weather satellites launched by the United States, beginning with TIROS-1, developed by the Radio Corp. of America under technical direction of the Army Signal Corps. DARPA initiated the TIROS program in 1958 and transferred the program to NASA.



The TIROS project emerged from early efforts examining the feasibility of surveillance from space for meteorology and intelligence gathering which began in the U.S. as early as the late 1940s. The Radio Corporation of America conducted a study for the RAND Corporation in 1951, concluding that a spaceborne television camera could provide worthwhile information for general reconnaissance. In 1956, the RCA received funding from the U.S. Army to develop a reconnaissance satellite program, initially called Janus, under the administration of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA). The project remained under the administration of ABMA but was transferred to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now DARPA) in 1958.

TIROS-1

Objectives: To test experimental television techniques designed to develop a worldwide meteorological satellite information system. To test Sun angle and horizon sensor systems for spacecraft orientation.

Description: The spacecraft was 42 inches in diameter, 19 inches high and weighed 270 pounds. The craft was made of aluminum alloy and stainless steel which was then covered by 9200 solar cells. The solar cells served to charge the on-board batteries. Three pairs of solid-propellant spin rockets were mounted on the base plate.

Two television cameras were housed in the craft, one low-resolution and one high-resolution. A magnetic tape recorder for each camera was supplied for storing photographs while the satellite was out of range of the ground station network.

The antennas consisted of four rods from the base plate to serve as transmitters and one vertical rod from the center of the top plate to serve as a receiver.

The craft was spin-stabilized and space-oriented (not Earth-oriented). Therefore, the cameras were only operated while they were pointing at the Earth when that portion of the Earth was in sunlight.

The video systems relayed thousands of pictures containing cloud-cover views of the Earth. Early photographs provided information concerning the structure of large-scale cloud regimes.

TIROS-I was operational for only 78 days, but proved that satellites could be a useful tools for surveying global weather conditions from space.

TIROS-1: The Forecast Revolution Begins




TIROS I - History

"Have you noticed how often in times that are past
We have used new inventions to improve the forecast?
Television is coming, it is not far away;
We'll be using that too in a not distant day.
Photographs will be made by the infra red light
That will show us the clouds both by day and by night.
From an altitude high in the clear stratosphere
Will come pictures of storms raging far if not near
Revealing in detail across many States
The conditions of weather affecting our fates.
There will then be no need for the stale weather maps
With their many blank spaces and wide open gaps
And with no information as the hours elapse.
In the coming perpetual visiontone show
We shall see the full action of storms as they go.
We shall watch them develop on far away seas,
And we'll plot out their courses with much greater ease."

[Excerpt from: The Raymete and the Future, poem by George M. Mindling, Offiial in Charge, Weather Bureau Office, Atlanta, Georgia, March 29, 1939. In: NOAA History. Weather Man Poems]


April 1, 1962: Almost nuclear war for real...4-Minute Nightmare - False Signal Hints Attack, Sends US Bombers to Runways. The 4 harrowing minutes that the alert lasted revealed a flaw in SAC & the Air Defense Command comms. Nuclear war averted.




These April fools day showcases on THE PRICE IS RIGHT were the best! Announcer Johnny Olson having a difficult time keeping it together reading the script.

April, 1, 1984: A hoax that shocked the (in those days in the sense of networking still mostly American) world.

It was 1984, and the world was still in the middle of the Cold War, so any form of network connectivity to any East Block country, let alone the USSR, was unthinkable and considered a direct threat to (US) national security, as was the idea of modern computer technology (like the Digital Equipment Corporation's 'VAX') being in the hands of the Soviets. Konstantin Chernenko was prime minister of the USSR, General Secretary of the Communist Party and head of the 'Politburo' (the body that had the real political power in that time).

Here's the original Usenet article:

Obviously the article caused a flood of reactions, especially from the US, and of course I had taken care that they were all directed to my own mailbox.

After 2 weeks, when some people had started worrying about the costs (!) the discussion about the "hoax-or-for-real" was causing on Usenet (costs? sure, most of the network then was still a dial-up network and modems were very slow), I revealed the real source, while including some of the reactions I got.

Here's how it ended: The kremvax hoax

"This is the real thing." White House bomb shelter anecdote from Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr. in his memoir IN THE LINE OF FIRE (1993). In 1954-55, Crowe was an assistant to Eisenhower military aide, Edward L. Beach, nuclear football carrier and author of Run Silent, Run Deep.




On April Fools Day 1996, Taco Bell, in a newspaper advertisement, claimed to have purchased the newly named ‘Taco Liberty Bell.’ Not realizing the story was a joke, thousands flooded the National Park Service and Taco Bell with angry phone calls.
While the prank rubbed some the wrong way, overall, the joke was an enormous success that brought tons of attention to Taco Bell. Today, there would be boycotts, riots in the streets, torched Taco Bells and much rage, rage.

According to marketing author Thomas L. Harris, the stunt worked because "in today's world...almost everything is corporate-sponsored", making the announcement believable even for "a national historic monument". The company coined the term "publitisement" to describe its stunt, "breaking through advertising clutter to achieve massive awareness" for its then-new "Nothing Ordinary About It" ad campaign. From the other side, activist Paul Rogat Loeb lamented that the hoax "felt too real for comfort" in an era "when every value, ideal, and public symbol has a profit-seeking sponsor".
Taco Liberty Bell

Nothing hits like old Coast to Coast episodes.

Art: "I'm sorry, come again?"

Guest: "Art, the worms crawl beneath your skin and when they eat through the outer layer, they can live outside for up to an hour. The VA is destroying all records of evidence in Gulf War veterans."

Art, without missing a beat: "Like the movie Alien?"

Guest, completely sincere: "Like the movie Alien."

Ed Dames: "We remote-viewed the assassination of John F. Kennedy and determined that the throat wound was made by a flechette."

Art: "A what?"

Dames: "A flechette, Art. It's a projectile that resembles a small dart."

Now you too can find the strangest episodes just by searching a word, name, or phrase in the Art Bell database. It's like finding the Rosetta Stone. LOL.


Why won't the nightmare dream of UFO disclosure hypermania marketing madness die??




Gmail launched on April Fools in 2004. Paul Buchheit had wanted Google to launch a web-based email service. He was employee #23, joining 3 months after Google had left its garage office. Internally, some thought email might be a distraction from the search business.



Years before Google made the name its own, "Gmail" lived on Garfield․com — a fan email service where users could snag their own gmail․garfield․com address. It was email for people who hate Mondays.


It vanished like a pan of lasagna into Garfield’s belly... but its pawprints can still be seen on the Wayback Machine

By May 2001, Garfield’s Gmail was replaced by a free service at @e-garfield․com via Everyone․net. Google didn’t adopt the Gmail name until April 2004 — and there’s no evidence they got the idea or name from Garfield․com. But it's safe to say Garfield beat them to the inbox.


On this day in 2004 - April Fools' Day - the UK declassified its very real Cold War era documents re: BLUE PEACOCK - a plan to keep atomic landmines warm using... chickens. Blue Peacock, renamed from Blue Bunny and originally Brown Bunny, was a British tactical nuclear weapon project in the 1950s.



"Blue Peacock was designed after the free-falling Blue Danube (Britain's first nuke) and weighed 7.2 long tons (7,300 kg). A total of two firing units were built: the casing and the warhead. Due to its large steel casing, it had to be tested outdoors in a flooded gravel pit near Sevenoaks in Kent. Since the bomb would be unattended, anti-tampering devices were also used. The casing was pressurized, and pressure and tilt switches were added. The warhead could be detonated via three methods: a wire located three miles (4.8 km) away, an eight-day timer, or anti-tampering devices. Once armed, Blue Peacock would detonate ten seconds after being moved, if the casing lost pressure, or if it was filled with water."

The Many Design Flaws of the Atomic Landmine. That was one massive Chicken-powered nuclear land mine!  Some history about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx8Hv1ResAU

Tom O'Leary, head of education and interpretation at the National Archives, told the paper: "It does seem like an April Fool but it most certainly is not. The Civil Service does not do jokes."

Crazy damn Brits! However, Gen Curtis LeMay was just as crazy on his idea of stopping the Reds advancing across West Germany using Davy Crocketts to collapse a mountain range. Yes, believe it or not during the Cold War all SAC Air Force bases had to keep the precious nuclear weapons WARM during the winter. Still true today but they have climate controlled nuke storage depots and much more advanced hardened components to ensure detonation.

The UK's Project Blue Peacock was recently featured on SECRETS DECLASSIFIED WITH DAVID DUCHOVNY. I could be wrong, but I bet this took multiple takes due to Duchovny laughing.