April Fools' Day Pranks Revealed

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Well, thank goodness. It feels like things are getting back to normal today. It turns out Twitter will allow the free use of vowels. It has restored the I and the E to its name, so we don't have to call it T-W-T-T-R, or Twttr.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Which is too bad, because I was looking forward to having MORNING EDITION hosted by Dvd Grn.

GREENE: It would have been good.

INSKEEP: Stv Nskp. Anyway, YouTube is not shutting down. It was not really an eight-year contest to find the world's best video - not even close. Google knows the scratch and sniff search engine feature is also gone.

GREENE: Now, if this is all making sense to you, maybe you fell victim to one of the April Fool's jokes yesterday. Tech companies are notorious for pranks. Turns out, athletes are too. With the NHL's trade deadline approaching, two Philadelphia Flyers conspired for a prank on their fans.

INSKEEP: Claude Giroux tweeted to his teammate: Good luck in St. Louis, you're a great teammate and friend. The teammate, Scott Hartnell, thanked him for his support and said he'd miss Philly. And they let their tweet stand for almost 40 minutes before admitting it was an April Fool's joke.

GREENE: And some of our listeners had an ideas, too. A comment on NPR.org urged the satirical newspaper The Onion to run Associated Press articles all day.

INSKEEP: Which didn't happen - sorry to say - although looking at some of the news stories yesterday, you might have thought it did. Some of you wrote in wondering why we spent a couple of minutes on a group that re-enacts historical events from the '90s.

GREENE: And here's our confession, the group - Hootie and the Time Travelers - was actually voiced by some of our colleagues. So Hootie and the Time Travelers will not be re-enacting the last viewing of the Hale Bopp comet or marking the anniversary of the first episode of "Friends." Sorry. Sorry.

INSKEEP: Awww. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.