April 1, 1957: BBC broadcasted a report on its current affairs program, Panorama, about a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from spaghetti trees.
This was when Italian dishes were not widely available in the U.K. Some Brits did not know spaghetti is a pasta made from wheat flour and water.
Hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC, either to say the story was not true or were wondering about it, asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees.
Decades later CNN called this broadcast “the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled.”
You can watch this harvesting now on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27ugSKW4-QQ
It’s in the Museum of Hoaxes: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/the_swiss_spaghetti_harvest
