10 Greatest April Fools Day Hoaxes Of All Time
4. Atomic Blueprint Scare (1 April 1952)
Two young boys (age 13 and 14) walked into a police station in Highgate, London, and handed in a folder they had found on the pavement at a bus stop.
The folder contained detailed blueprints with unusual mathematical symbols and equations written in the margins. On the outside of the folder were the words, “Harwell Atomic Research Establishment, Harwell, England; Top Secret - To be burned after reading.”
Scotland Yard were called. A reporter who happened to be present went public with the story within an hour. A Member of Parliament, C. Orr-Ewing, stood up in the House of Commons and informed the other members that atomic secrets had been leaked.
Scotland Yard could make no sense of the document and brought in some experts from the Harwell Laboratory. They concluded that the document was meaningless gibberish.
It turned out the boys had lied about finding the folder. The folder had actually been given to them by another friend of theirs, Victo Paul Mehra (age 15).
Victor said he had made the papers himself during his lunch break. He used Norwegian billhead receipts, some random blueprints (including blueprints of a sausage making machine) and simply scribbled some nonsense in the margins.