The Top 5 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time

practical joker named Porky Bickar had flown hundreds of old

tires into the volcano's crater and then lit them on fire, all in a (successful) attempt to fool the city dwellers into believing that the volcano was stirring to life. According to local legend, when Mount St. Helens erupted six years later, a Sitka resident wrote to Bickar to tell him, "This time you've gone too far!"

full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of

a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers.

crews filming near the Antarctic for its natural history series

Miracles of Evolution had captured footage of Adélie penguins taking to the air. It even offered a video clip of these flying penguins, which quickly became one of the most viewed videos on the internet. Presenter Terry Jones explained that, instead of huddling together to endure the Antarctic winter, these penguins took to the air and flew thousands of miles to the rainforests of South America where they "spend the winter basking in the tropical sun." A follow-up video explained how the BBC created the special effects of the flying penguins.

of the Madison Capital-Times announced with large headlines that the

Wisconsin state capitol building lay in ruins following a series of mysterious explosions. The explosions were attributed to "large quantities of gas, generated through many weeks of verbose debate in the Senate and Assembly chambers." Accompanying the article was a picture showing the capitol building collapsing.

Gmail Motion, a new technology that would allow people to

write emails using only hand gestures. Gmail Motion, the company explained, used a computer's webcam and a "spatial tracking algorithm" to track a person's gestures and translate them into words and commands. For instance, a person could 'open a message' by making a motion with their hands as if opening an envelope. Or they could 'reply' to a message by pointing backward over their shoulder.