The best practical joke I ever witnessed was played by some guys in an office on a co-worker. In the time leading up to the Los Angeles Olympics they created letterhead for the United States Olympic Committee and notified one of the fellows who work in their office that he had been selected to carry theOlympic Torch through Atlanta. Subsequent letters and packages included instructions a running suit, with the Olympic Rings and his name embroidered, and an official-looking patch he would be able to use on his other running gear.

This guy was completely taken in and notified his family and his wife's family that on a specific day and time he would be the recipient of the Olympic torch as it was passed to him. The guy that supervise the office finally realized how bad it would be if this guy actually showed up and let the cat out of the bag.

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Originally posted by XLT:
this was a good one

http://hoaxes.org/af_database/...gory/1974aprilfools/

I was in Sitka last year, and the residents are very proud of this one. The rest of the story, as I understand it, was that it took 4 years to pull this one off because Mt. Edgecumbe is frequently shrouded in clouds this time of year. After he finally got a clear day on April 1st, he gave the Police and Fire Departments a heads up, but forgot to tell the Coast Guard, and they were not happy. As a result, he ended up in jail, but the residents of Sitka who took it in stride took up a collection and bailed him out a couple days later.

In 1992 NPR covered Richard Nixon's announcing his candidacy for president. The had real legal scholars and reporters, saying stiff like since he never finished his second term he was eligible, he had the perfect skill set to deal with a dissolving USSR, ect
Rich Little was at his finest "I never did anything wrong and I promise not to do it again". I was stunned, coworkers went wild.

My favorite was George Plimpton's article in Sports Illustrated back in 1985 about Sidd Finch, the hard throwing pitching prospect.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/10...ious-case-sidd-finch

I fell for this one yesterday coming back from ester dinner. Was listening to the station and heard the summary in the background. I was pretty pissed, thinking “why can’t gov just leave shit alone.
Then I read the details. Nicely done.

https://thefox.iheart.com/feat...on-begins-this-week/

A coworker of mine was going to get some donuts and bring them in to the station but chickened out at the last minute. The thing is, they were MAYONNAISE filled not cream filled. There is a small donut shop where they make these once a year for people who want to play a practical joke. It would have been funny but he figured he would have had a long career ahead of him. We joked about it at the station and said it would have been a long year as not many of us like mayo.

Tesla is bankrupt!

In what we assume is a morbid April Fool's joke, late on Sunday Elon Musk decided to have some "fun" with his 20 million Twitter followers and unknown number of investors, and after previewing earlier in the day that he will have "Important news in a few hours …", the Tesla CEO tweeted that "Tesla Goes Bankrupt Palo Alto, California, April 1, 2018 -- Despite intense efforts to raise money, including a last-ditch mass sale of Easter Eggs, we are sad to report that Tesla has gone completely and totally bankrupt. So bankrupt, you can't believe it."


There was more "humor" - in a subsequent tweet, Musk tweeted that "There are many chapters of bankruptcy and, as critics so rightly pointed out, Tesla has them *all*, including Chapter 14 and a half (the worst one)."


Musk concluded joking that after the bankruptcy, he "was found passed out against a Tesla Model 3, surrounded by "Teslaquilla" bottles, the tracks of dried tears still visible on his cheeks. This is not a forward-looking statement, because, obviously, what's the point? Happy New Month!"...


... a clear explanation that this is all in the April 1 realm of fiction... for now.

And while to Musk it may all be a joke, to Tesla bondholders (and recently shareholders: TSLA stock plunged 22% in March, its biggest drop since December 2010) it is anything but, because as we showed last week, the price on Tesla's 2025 bonds tumbled after a downgrade by Moody's deep into junk territory, warning the company may have to raise another $2 billion...

Tesla

... sending the bond yield - and thus risk - above that of Ukraine.



Meanwhile, the real joke is that Tesla continues to burn record amount of cash and has now gone through over $8 billion in just the last 4 years.



... which even Goldman recently warned may deteriorate substantially as Tesla deliveries are set to decline and miss guidance.



Finally, what would assure an instant end to Musk's sense of humor, is if Tesla's clients who had - not very prudently - given the company over $850 million to hold on their behalf as deposits for some future pipe dream, decided to have a "run on the bank", and pull their deposits, unleashing an overnight liquidity crisis.



For the sake of Elon Musk, "Teslaquilla", and all those who still believe in the Tesla dream not to mention Martian colonization, we can only hope it does not get to there.

Meanwhile, assuring that today's joke is tomorrow's reality, on Sunday, the NTSB said it was "unhappy" that Tesla made public information about the crash of its Model X vehicle on Autopilot that killed the driver last month.

Specifically, it looks like the NTSB is not happy with Tesla's claim that its autopilot is not at fault for the recent deadly Model X crash:

"The NTSB is looking into all aspects of this crash including the driver's previous concerns about the autopilot," said O'Neil. "We will work to determine the probable cause of the crash and our next update of information about our investigation will likely be when we publish a preliminary report, which generally occurs within a few weeks of completion of field work."

Last week, the company said that a search of its service records did not "find anything suggesting that the customer ever complained to Tesla about the performance of Autopilot. There was a concern raised once about navigation not working correctly, but Autopilot's performance is unrelated to navigation."

The good news is that if the Tesla fairy tale does indeed end in a fiery Chapter 7, or "14 and a half", as increasingly more predict it will, at least Elon will have provided the schaudenfreuders with enough ammunition to last them several lifetimes.

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