Ten April Fool's Day pranks that bombed

April 1 might be a get-out-of-jail-free-card for "kick me" signs and Saran Wrap-ed toilets, but when a prank goes sour, saying "April Fool's" (or even "you got punk'd") doesn't always cut it. Take, for example, the juror who told his fellow deliberators false information about a case—only to have the judge declare a mistrial. Or the South Carolina DJ who, at the height of boy-band fanaticism in 1999, announced a ticket giveaway for an entirely made-up last minute 'N Sync concert, only to watch the station's phone lines flood with the furious mothers of near suicidal teens. The justice system and 'N Sync: two things you just don't joke about. In honor of our favorite holiday, Radar rounded up ten April Fool's pranks that didn't go quite so well as planned.

1. Explosive Humor

After September 11, 2001, comedians wondered when it would be okay to crack a joke again. And in 2006, one AirAsia passenger took it one step further, asking, When will it be okay to walk on a plane and say you have a bomb again? The answer is never. In 2006, the 31-year-old man boarded a flight bound for Tawau, and as the plane was taxiing, alerted a flight attendant of the make-believe bomb in his bag. The plane was evacuated, searched to no avail and the man was sent off for psychological evaluation. The verdict? April Fool's! Although it was April 2, the joker was apparently still in the holiday spirit. The authorities, however, were not. These days, the man is on trial facing life imprisonment under the country's Aviation Offense Act. Had he executed his plan a day earlier, he may have only gotten a slap on the wrist. He would, however, still have been an idiot.

2. Up, Up, and A Whoops

When not running his empire, Virgin honcho Richard Branson likes him a hot-air balloon. The airline mogul and real-life Austin Powers has crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific in the largest gas propelled basket available and has prominently featured the anachronistic aircraft on his failed Fox reality show, Rebel Billionaire. But a few years earlier, he commissioned a balloon strung with lights to resemble a flying saucer and had it hover over Hyde Park in London.

The year was 1989, and Branson was about to pull off the biggest PR stunt the UK had ever seen. Unfortunately, his "spacecraft" was blown off course and landed in a field on the outskirts of the city, a full day early. As the UFO descended, local armed forces were called in to hold back the screaming crowds. And because it was only March 31, when a midget dressed like E.T. who had been hired by Branson exited the balloon and approached the legion of police on scene, it wasn't so funny. Branson was later hauled into court, but that didn't stop him from trying the stunt again in 1992—this time over Orlando. Unfortunately, a fog obscured his balloon's landing and—not unlike the response to his reality show—no one much noticed or cared.

3. Your Dad's Dead.... Rimshot!

There's one rule when it comes to pranks: Don't make kids cry. An Australian children's entertainer learned that the hard way when he pretended to collapse and die on live TV in front of a dozen horrified tots. Two Indiana DJs upped the ante when they decided to start a celebrity death rumor, repeating several times on air, "our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of Don Mattingly." Their plan was to announce that the baseball player nicked himself shaving, but before they could get to their punch line, Mattingly's two sons, 12 and 16, got word from their schoolmates that their dad—who was in Japan at the time—was dead. The DJs apologized to the kids, but the damage was already done.

4. Have a Nice Uday

It wasn't all public floggings and rape rooms in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Thanks to Saddam's late son Uday—who owned the country's newspaper, the Babel—April Fool's offered a light reprieve from the workaday horrors. In 1998, he published a front-page article announcing: "U.S. President Bill Clinton declared it was time to lift the embargo imposed on Iraq in 1990." But when the articled continued on the following page, it read "It is the beginning of spring. Many happy returns." Doh! The following year, the paper reported on its front page that Russia had made nuclear threats on the U.S., and then continued the article by saying, "Iraqis, you only have yourselves!" They were fooled again in 2001 with an April 1 cover story promising Pepsi, bananas, and chocolate to be added to the country's meager food rations. Your laughter sounds like hunger pangs!

5. Buyer Beware

On April 1, 2002, the British luxury department store Harrods sent out a press release stating chairman Mohammed Al Fayed's plans to take the company public. Shares, available until noon that day, could be purchased by contacting Loof Lirpa (for amateur quizmasters that's April Fool's spelled backwards). But the publicity stunt, intended to attract media to its new website, was picked up as a legitimate story by the Wall Street Journal. And the Journal didn't take its duping lightly. On April 5 they published an article entitled "The Enron of Britain?" warning investors to be cautious of the department store giant. Not exactly funny, but certainly revenge. Not to be outdone, Harrods filed a lawsuit against the newspaper, citing the paper had "caused serious damage to Harrods' worldwide reputation." But the joke was on Harrods: the company lost the libel battle and spent almost a million dollars on legal fees.

6. Beat My Wife, Please!

Barring his phalanx of blonde concubines, Hugh Hefner prides himself on maintaining a classy porn enterprise—with the utmost respect for women. So when the Romanian version of Playboy published an article entitled, "How to Beat Your Wife Without Leaving Marks," in 2000, Hef went red in the face. The step-by-step guide promoted spousal thrashings and offered instructions like, "You take a (kitchen) chopper that will be applied slowly to the wife's liver. Once the chopper is fixed there, you only have to hit her with the stick."

The pre-Borat satire was ahead of its time, but the topic hit too close to home in a country where more than half the women killed in 1999 were victims of abuse, according to the interior ministry. Deputy editor Mihail Galatanu defended the piece as a parody, explaining that his spousal abuse guide "cannot work." But his subtext-heavy response served only to incite hoards of angry demonstrators, including employees from publishing giants Hearst and VNU, who took part in the first ever march against domestic violence in Romania. As a result, Hef had to pledge support for women's shelters and his CEO daughter Christie was forced to release an apology: "This article flies in the face of Playboy's 46-year history of strongly opposing any visual or editorial depiction of violence toward women."

7. Knocking 'Em Dead

It's not just an urban legend. April Fool's kills. In the past five years alone, careless pranks have caused at least two deaths. In 2006, a Pakistani mother died of a heart attack when crank callers told her that her son had died in a mysterious accident. Her son came home a few hours later to find his deceased mom. And in 2003, a Romanian woman told her husband of 10 years she was leaving him for another man. She thought it would get a rise out him. It did. He had a heart attack and died.

8. Oy, It's Tradition!

On April 1, 1959, Israeil radio announced in eight different languages that all of the country's reserve troops had to report for duty. Two army generals responsible for the prank were subsequently fired, but they paved the way for the country's officials to subsequently mine delicate diplomacy issues for laughs every spring: In 2000, the Israeli Labour Party released a statement that its secretary general, Ra'anan Cohen, was invited by a Libyan delegate to a conference, despite the fact that the two countries were categorically opposed to peace talks. Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Khadafi picked up on the joke, calling it an "April Fool's Lie."

A few years before that, in 1986, Israeli radio reported that Lebanese Shiite Muslem militia leader Nabih Berri was wounded in an assassination attempt. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin's parliamentary meeting was disrupted to announce the news, and the country braced itself for retaliation. The joke was traced back to an intelligence officer who received a soft punishment of 35 days in detention. The prank did little for Lebanese/Israeli relations. A spokesman for Berri told the Los Angeles Times: "If that's what makes them laugh."

9. Needle and the Damage Done

There was a time when broadcasting monumental buildings crumbling to the ground on live TV actually seemed like a funny idea. In 1989, a local Seattle comedy show called Almost Live interrupted their regular programming to show an image of the Seattle Space Needle tipped on its side amidst a massive pile of debris. On the upper left hand corner of the footage were the words April Fool's Day, but viewers were too busy preparing for the end of the world to notice. Seven-hundred callers jammed the Needle's phone lines and 911 switchboards. After arriving to find a perfectly stable Needle, authorities were dumbfounded. Police Sgt. Ronald Wilson told the Oregonian: "It was overwhelming, we had people calling from across the state.''

10. Going Loco

The perfect recipe for hijinks: loads of time, unbridled creativity, and limited accountability. No wonder universities are a hotbed for April Fool's gags. But in 1995, when the University of Northern Colorado's student paper, the Mirror, printed a mock article about the school's president getting a sex change, not everyone was laughing. According to the story, president Herman Lujan was going through with a transgender operation in order to take a job at a woman's college. Most recognized the article as a joke, albeit an inside one.

But that wasn't what got editor in chief Thomas Martinez in trouble. It was the fabricated quotation from a student in the article that read: ''I am glad he is leaving ... he should take the rest of them Mexicans with him.'' The university was already rife with racism (UNC is no Berkeley), and the Chicano student movement expressed outrage, planned a protest, and a called for the resignation of the editor and several of the paper's staff members. Martinez, himself Hispanic, apologized, explaining that his intention was to raise awareness about ignorance. Unfortunately for Martinez, the year was 1995, the year the syndicated Jon Stewart Show was about to be cancelled, the Onion was still in Wisconsin, and satire as social reform was the purview of The Jerky Boys.