April Fool ’s Clarence Day is never as sport as you think it might be . With few exception , the pranks are n’t original or elaborate – and the worst you ’ll belike get is aglitter bombvomiting shining , unimaginable - to - bump off fragments of plastic into your clothes , hair , and carpet .
If you were in Sitka , Alaska , back on April 1 , 1974 , however , you were privy to one such singular exception . Back then , on April 1 , 1974 , on a beautiful clear day with coolheaded , azure sky , a mischief - maker pulled off a frivolity four years in the devising : He win over resident physician of this little , frigid metropolis that the nearby Mount Edgecumbe stratovolcano was recrudesce .
On that fateful day , 50 - year - old prankster Oliver “ Porky ” Bickar and a bunch of impish friends cover Sitka Sound and scale all 976 meters ( 3,202 animal foot ) of the mute volcano . Setting alight to dozens of tires , they threw them into the crater , and not after long , a potent feather of black smoking rose skyward .
The prank took three or four age to plan , and expect clean-cut sky for maximal effectualness . Bickar could n’t have catch all those tyre up there himself , so he enlisted the help of a whirlybird airplane pilot to stock them up , along with kerosene , skunk bombs , and rags .
Careful not to cause a total scare , Bickar even alerted the Federal Aviation Administration of their plan , who allowed them to go ahead . accord to theMuseum of Hoaxes , the prankster even alerted the local constabulary , but forgot to mention their scheme to the Coast Guard . clearly , the prank made global headline .
One response reportedly come good manners of a lawyer from Denver who , upon witness the famous , cataclysmal eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 , sent him a clipping of a relate news report with an attached line say : “ This meter , you little fake , you ’ve gone too far . ”
accord to theAlaska Volcano Observatory(AVO ) , Mount Edgecumbe , part of a rather complex serial of nest volcanic cone within an expansive volcanic field , has n’t erupted for more than 4,000 years . At present , it ’s either torpid or extinct – so if you come about to live in the area and see “ ash ” rising from its crater , it ’s probably a prankster diddle tribute to the late , tearaway Bickar , who died back in 2003 .
Whether or not you think this was villainous or hilarious , you have to give the guy points for originality .
[ H / T : QI ]
