⭐ Feature: To Pull Someone's Leg / The Greatest April Fool's Day Jokes of All Time
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This is the spot!

Hi, everybody. My name is Shauna, and this is the American English Podcast. My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States. Through common expressions, pronunciation tips, and interesting cultural snippets or stories, I hope to keep this fun, useful, and interesting. Let's do it. Hi, everyone. How's it going?

That introduction was taken from a YouTube channel called The Folklorist in a video titled Porky's Prank. Do you know what a prank is? A prank is a practical joke or a playful, mischievous act meant to trick someone, usually for fun. People play pranks to get a laugh, sometimes to surprise someone,

or to make them look silly, but not in a mean way. For example, kids might secretly switch the salt and sugar in the kitchen so that mom ends up sipping salty coffee while dad wonders why his eggs taste like dessert. That's a classic prank.

The kids played a prank on their parents, and they probably ran off laughing. As you may know, April 1st, in just a few days, is a holiday, an unofficial holiday, called April Fool's Day. It's a day of practical jokes. In other words, jokes that, for the most part, are harmless.

Porky's prank, as you heard in the introduction, is one of the three practical jokes that we will talk about in today's fun fact. I hope that you enjoy these three stories I'll share in part two of this episode, so be sure to stay tuned for them.

As you may notice from the title, this is a feature episode. That means it's an episode from the past that I've decided to bring back. I've improved the audio a bit, added more to the stories, and more to explanations. If you'd like to hear the original, it was episode 54.

Before we get to the topic of the day, I'd like to warm things up with a joke, teach you an English expression, and then we'll do a pronunciation exercise. Does that sound good? Let's start with the joke. Here it goes. Where does the girl with one leg work? Any guesses? IHOP. Now, if you're scratching your head thinking, what's IHOP?

IHOP stands for the International House of Pancakes. It's a popular breakfast chain in the United States. And they're famous for pancakes, of course, waffles, eggs, and bacon. It's IHOP. The joke plays on the word hop because someone with one leg might hop instead of walking if they do not have a prosthetic leg.

So I hope no one takes offense to this. Humor in English often plays on puns and double meanings. Please just take this lightly. I'm not here to make fun of anyone. So let's hear the joke one more time. Where does the girl with one leg work?

IHOP. So yeah, we will be talking about the expression to pull someone's leg. We'll go through the definition of each individual word first, then I'll share some examples. To pull is the act of holding on to something and moving it forward.

When you pull on something with force, we say that you yank it. You yanked that out of my hand. You pulled it with force out of my hand. Someone's is a possessive pronoun. In this expression, we'll alter this pronoun based on whose leg is being pulled. In other words, who is being tricked or fooled.

And last but not least, leg is a limb on which animals and people stand. Tables, chairs, and other types of furniture might also have legs. Now, the expression to pull someone's leg means to trick someone in a playful way. Basically, you make someone believe something that is not true. You're not trying to hurt them.

The lie is usually harmless, and the point is to have a little laugh. The phrase, to pull someone's leg, originated in England in the 1800s,

Back then, it had a much less playful meaning. Thieves would literally pull someone's leg to trip them on the street, making it easier to steal their money or valuables. Over time, though, the expression took on a more humorous meaning and now just refers to fooling someone.

On April Fool's Day, people around the world love to play pranks and pull each other's legs. Now let's go through some everyday examples to hear how this expression is actually used in conversation. Example number one. When I was a kid, my uncle Kevin told me that if I eat a watermelon seed, a watermelon would grow in my stomach.

To remove it, I would have to go to the hospital and have a lengthy surgery. In other words, a long surgery. I believed him for a good while. Actually, until my mom informed me that he was pulling my leg. He was tricking me. He was playfully making me believe something that wasn't true. A watermelon? No.

to my knowledge, will not grow in your stomach if you swallow a seed, although I can't make any promises, so don't try it at home. In short, my Uncle Kevin successfully pulled my leg. Example number two. My brother-in-law, Moises, recently told me about when he pulled my sister-in-law's leg. My sister-in-law's name is Sylvia.

When their son, Artur, was still using diapers, Moises decided to melt a chocolate bar inside of one of them to make it look like poop. When Sylvia got home from work, Moises walked up to her pretending to be fed up, really angry. He had the open diaper in front of him with the melted chocolate bar on it,

and was saying, this is ridiculous. How many times a day do I need to change diapers? While he was fake complaining about the situation, he slowly started eating the melted chocolate out of the diaper. To the horror of my sister-in-law, of course. He pulled her leg. He made her believe that he was eating baby poop when he was really eating chocolate.

Example number three. My whole life, I've loved playing pranks on people. When I was in college on April Fool's Day, I decided to make cupcakes and instead of putting frosting, so sweet frosting, I should say, on top of these cupcakes, I put colorful garlic mashed potatoes.

In the end, I ended up giving these decadent chocolate garlic potato cupcakes to about 12 people, and they all took huge bites out of them. The looks on their faces were classic. They were so disgusted. They were grossed out. And on that day...

I laughed quite a bit. I managed to pull a lot of legs. In other words, I managed to deceive a lot of people. I made them all believe that my cupcakes would be delicious when they were not. I would like to point out something here. My daughter doesn't quite understand the difference between lying and pulling someone's leg. In English, lying is

sounds wrong. It sounds like you're doing something cruel to somebody else by manipulating the truth or by just saying something that's not true. It has a very negative connotation. Whereas pulling someone's leg is

it sounds okay. It sounds like there's good nature in the act, that the person who is doing the pulling is playful or likes a good joke. Once again, these are harmless. So I do want to point out that there is a difference between lying and pulling someone's leg. Yeah, I think that nuance needs to be learned.

All right, it's time for the pronunciation exercise. We'll use the statement, stop pulling my leg. In other words, stop trying to trick me. Stop pulling my leg. Repeat after me. Stop. Stop pulling. Stop pulling my leg. And the conjugation, in the past, I pulled your leg. You pulled your leg. She pulled your leg. It pulled your leg. He pulled your leg.

We pulled your leg. They pulled your leg. You'll notice that the emphasis is on the second word, which is a verb, pulled. This is very common in English. Verbs are often stressed within sentences. The word that follows the verb is your.

Your is not a content word, so it does not receive emphasis. It almost sounds like we're swallowing it. Pulled your. Pulled your. It's not pulled your. You can connect them. Pulled your. Pulled your. I pulled your leg. That's it for the pronunciation exercise. I hope you found this first part very useful.

So let's move on to the topic of the day, which is the greatest April Fool's Day pranks. This episode is brought to you by Universal Pictures. From Universal Pictures and Blumhouse come a storm of terror from the director of The Shallows, the woman in the yard. Don't let in. Where does she come from? What does she want? When will she leave?

Today's the day. The Woman in the Yard. Only in theaters March 28th. April Fool's Day is on April 1st, so you can understand why I chose this episode for the feature. In preparation for today's fun fact, I dove into history's greatest hoaxes, and let me tell you there are hundreds of them.

I sifted through, so I went through, outrageous stories to bring you three truly shocking ones that I think you would enjoy. In the next 15 minutes, I guarantee you'll be thinking, what? That actually happened? No way. Now, a hoax is

is a joke, but it isn't any old joke. It's a clever and often elaborate trick played on the public, sometimes for laughs, sometimes to make a point, and sometimes just to see if people will fall for it. From prank phone calls and fake bombs during World War I, to invented islands, to imaginary animals,

It's clear the world has a long-standing love affair with trying to fool each other. It's not just the United States. Now, normally, this section is dedicated to fun facts or history and culture related to the United States. However, there is an exception for today. Two of the pranks are going to be from England and Scotland because the stories can't be missed.

We'll start with those, and last but not least, I will share one of the biggest April Fool's pranks in American history, which took place in Alaska. You might be wondering, where did April Fool's Day come from? The very first recorded April Fool's Day dates back to 1698, when a funny London newsletter announced that lions were

yes, the big cat, would be washed in the moat surrounding the Tower of London. A moat is a deep, wide area, typically filled with water that surrounds a castle to protect it. So this newsletter announced that lions would be washed in the moat, so in that water.

Curious citizens showed up, eager to witness the royal lion bath. After all, who wouldn't want to see that? But when they arrived, surprise, there were no lions. There was no splashing in the moat. The entire event had been made up as a playful joke or a hoax, and it's a very early example of someone pulling the public's leg.

They pulled everyone's leg. So let's start with the first prank I chose to talk about, which took place in England. On April 1st, 1989, what appeared to be a UFO, or an Unidentified Flying Object, UFO, landed in a field in Surrey, England.

The mysterious-looking spaceship had been seen by many while it was in flight. Frightened homeowners and drivers on highways had informed the police about it well before it landed. The police were confused, like, what is this object? And so they continued to track its flight path and followed it to where it landed safely in a field.

The police at the scene approached the aircraft, slowly, unsure of what to expect. That's when a door opened on this UFO and a little man walked out, dressed from head to toe in silver. In shock and very afraid, the policeman ran in the opposite direction.

In the end, though, this was a joke. The spaceship hadn't come from outer space. It was just a hot air balloon built by a hot air ballooning enthusiast named Richard Branson, who was a prankster. He liked to play pranks on people. And he was also the chairman of Virgin Records. So the story got a lot of news coverage.

The little man who walked out of the UFO, in other words, the hot air balloon, was a person of short stature that he had hired to play the part of the alien. Kind of crazy, huh? Many people were fooled by this joke and even the police. My question for you is, what would you have done if you had been in this situation? Hmm.

Now, I would like to add something here. In the original audio, I used the term midget instead of a person of short stature. Midget is now considered outdated and offensive. So if you want to be politically correct, it would be better to say a person of short stature, a person with dwarfism,

That's more specific and medically accurate. Yeah, apparently it's also okay to say little person. According to the LPA, the Little People of America, they definitely sound more respectful than midget. Okay? The second April Fool's joke comes from Scotland.

Just before April Fool's Day in 1972, a group of excited scientists from Flamingo Park Zoo in Yorkshire packed their gear and headed north to the legendary waters of Loch Ness, Scotland. You've heard of Loch Ness, I'm sure. It's the location of the elusive Loch Ness monster, also known as Nessie.

And these scientists wanted to prove that Nessie truly does exist. They had a plan. Using a specially developed bait, they hoped to lure or attract the creature to the surface. One morning, while eating breakfast at their hotel, the manager burst in with shocking news. A hump had been spotted in the loch, or in the lake.

Naturally, the team was thrilled. They sprang into action. Out on the water, just 300 yards from shore, they saw it. Something brown, massive, and floating. Their hearts were pounding. They launched a small boat and approached. It looked like, well, a monster.

So there were onlookers, people who were watching them as they hauled the massive body through the water. Witnesses described it as 12 to 18 feet long, weighing over a ton, with a scaly fish-like body, a massive head, and large protruding teeth. Don Robinson, the director of Flamingo Park Zoo, seemed genuinely stunned.

He was so surprised. I've always been skeptical of the Loch Ness Monster, he said. But this is definitely a monster. No doubt about that. Word spread like wildfire. Within hours, the world was informed of the discovery of the Loch Ness Monster. Nessie had been found. But before the scientists could enjoy the glory of discovering the Loch Ness Monster...

Local Inverness police intervened. It turns out that under a 1933 parliamentary act, no unidentified creatures could be removed from Loch Ness. So these English scientists were not allowed to take Nessie. They cooperated and delivered the creature to the Scottish scientists for further study. That's when the truth started to surface.

It turns out the monster was no monster at all. It was a bull elephant seal native to the South Atlantic. So how in the world did it end up floating in Loch Ness? That's when John Shields entered the picture. John Shields was a 23-year-old zookeeper from Flamingo Park.

Apparently, an elephant seal at the zoo had died recently. John, who was a prankster, he enjoyed pulling pranks on people, saw it as an opportunity to trick his colleagues into believing that it was the Loch Ness Monster. Before dropping it into the lake, he had plucked its whiskers out, bashed in the cheeks with rocks, and froze the body for a week.

Then under the cover of night, he dumped the corpse, the dead body, into the loch. Into the lake, in other words. News of the fake Loch Ness Monster came out on April 1st, 1972. All right, we're going to end in Alaska.

So shortly after this incident with the Loch Ness Monster, on April 1st, 1974, residents of Sitka, Alaska were in panic. Mount Edgecombe, a 3,200-foot-tall volcano on a nearby island, had smoke rising from its peak.

Since the volcano hadn't erupted in over 4,000 years, it had been labeled as dormant. But now residents were certain that the volcano would blow. Many of the people who saw the volcano smoking called the Coast Guard and the police in panic. The Coast Guard was the first to react. They rushed over to the island on a chopper or on a helicopter.

and examined the origin of the plumes of smoke. Once at the top of the crater, on top of the volcano, they looked for signs of lava, but didn't see any. They could, however, catch a glimpse of tires burning down below. Then they spotted a giant sign made from black footprints in the snow next to the crater's opening. April Fools!

PayPal lets you pay all your pals, like your graduation gifters. Who's paying for the mattress topper? You mean the beanbag chair? Aren't we getting a mini fridge? Can we create a pool on PayPal? It lets us collect the money before we buy. Oh, yes, that's smart. Glad we can agree on something. Easily pool, split, and send money with PayPal. Get started in the PayPal app. A PayPal account is required to send and receive money. A balance account is required to create a pool.

That's right. As an April Fool's joke, the prankster Oliver Porky Bicker made people believe that a volcano was going to erupt. He had been planning this fake eruption of the volcano since 1971, three years earlier. But he was waiting for a perfectly clear day to make this prank come to fruition. So how did he do it?

Well, he couldn't do it alone. He had stored around 70 old tires in an old airplane hangar. And then on the day of the prank, he and a group of friends worked together to transport the tires, kerosene, smoke bombs, and rags into a helicopter. Then they dropped them all into the crater. Once in flames, they just waited for everyone to panic.

What's perhaps shocking about this story is not only that Porky would be willing to put so much effort into pulling such a prank or playing such a prank, let alone having the guts to go through with it, but that he actually informed people before he did it. He let his wife know he had informed the police.

And thirdly, the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration. He didn't want to get into trouble, so he let everyone know beforehand, other than the public and the Coast Guard. Surprisingly, when he told the government, they were cool with it.

And after the prank was pulled, it got international recognition as a great prank. The residents of Sitka, although they felt fooled, were not even angry. They just thought it was a good joke. So interesting. Although I wasn't around in the 1970s, I get the impression that things were a lot more lax back then.

In other words, a lot more relaxed, a lot more lax. I definitely wouldn't try this nowadays, especially because there are news reports right now all over talking about a volcano that is expected to blow, expected to erupt in Alaska, not Mount Edgecombe. What's the name of it? Let me check. Mount Spur.

Now that's it for this episode. I'm very curious to hear about the practical jokes you have played on people. Have you ever pulled someone's leg? Have you ever played a prank on someone? Let me know. You can find me on Instagram at American English Podcast. If you would like the bonus material that goes along with this episode,

You can find the link to season two or all premium content in the episode notes. Until next time, bye.

Thanks and hope to see you soon.