1. April
April fool? This strange news was really meant seriously
What Til Schweiger said almost exactly ten years ago about the “Tatort” opening credits, many crime fans initially took it as an April Fool’s joke. However, the actor meant business.
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Pranks on April 1st get on the nerves of many people. But the abstruse message from that time is not meant as an April Fool’s joke. Here’s some news that was pretty outlandish, but true.
Attention, the time of the annoying April Fools’ Day is approaching. At the end of March, the danger of becoming an easy victim of a mean duckling increases. By April 1st at the latest, she could actually snap her calves. Many mediums then try to trick their readership. Associations, clubs or agencies want to give the press an April Fool’s joke.
Be particularly careful with reports that sound too bizarre to be true. But they are not always invented! These subsequent messages had at least a kernel of truth.
Til Schweiger and the “Tatort” opening credits
In the crosshairs: On March 29, 2012, some people got stuck in their throats with laughter. Because the then new TV commissioner Til Schweiger wants to say goodbye to the legendary “Tatort” opening credits. “It’s really outdated now,” he says. “And then I will fight for my first “crime scene” to have a different opening credits.” When it becomes clear that this was not meant as a joke, the excitement is great. Schweiger rows back, the cult sequence remains.
Incredible job ad from the Catholic Church
Radical religious reform? Shortly before April 1, 2020, the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Bonn is advertising a professorship for the exegesis of the New Testament. “The professorship will be occupied by a priest,” says the job advertisement. Appropriately qualified women are strongly encouraged to apply. But despite incredulous eyes: the male domain does not falter. The entry is corrected, wrong text module. In Catholicism, the priesthood continues to be reserved for men.
The identikit that resembled a famous rapper
Manhunt with a celebrity bonus: After a robbery in Buxtehude near Hamburg, the police are looking for a bearded man with a baseball cap on March 29, 2017. This causes amusement because the phantom photo looks confusingly similar to rapper Bushido (“Berlin’s Most Wanted”). He thanks Instagram “for the style tip”. No April Fool’s joke, assures a police spokesman. It turns out that the authority actually used a photo of the musician as a basis.
Women’s underwear in the military
Newspaper duck with shipwreck: CNN and BBC report on a supposedly strange case from Switzerland: According to the media companies, servicewomen will finally be able to wear women’s underwear from April 1, 2021. Nonsense, but not an April Fool’s joke, says army spokesman Kaj-Gunnar Sievert. Rather, only new functional underwear is tested. The spokesman emphasizes that women’s underwear was also available from previous purchases.
Really now? This message from the CDU was meant seriously
Who laughs last: Some people don’t feel like cheering on April 1, 2021 – especially not in the CDU. Board member Serap Güler called it “by far the best April Fool’s joke”. On the same day it became known that a Thuringian district association wanted to nominate the controversial former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, as a candidate for the CDU Bundestag – which then happened. In the September election, the CDU lost more than ten percentage points in its constituency, and the SPD won the mandate.
Football fans as cardboard comrades
Times are changing: after two years of the pandemic, a sight like this would probably only bring a weary smile to most people today. On March 30, 2020, on the other hand, some people believed it was a joke: To create a better atmosphere during ghost games in the Bundesliga and to save professionals and TV viewers from looking at empty stadium seats, fans of Borussia-Mönchengladbach want figures with the Set up life-size likenesses of the followers. The action is a complete success, weeks later more than 20,000 cardboard comrades are said to have stood in the stands.
Scotland Yard and the alcohol
Whimsical partners: The police can be supplied by liquor manufacturers and hospitals can be equipped by a fetish shop? No joke! Corona has produced really incredible news. When Scotland Yard announced a collaboration with breweries and gin distilleries on March 30, 2020, some thought it was a bad joke. In fact, the police in London are signing supply contracts with the alcohol industry due to shortages of disinfectants. And an online fetishist retailer is donating all of its disposable surgical gowns it stocks to a UK hospital.
Watch a video from our archives: An unusual package delivery occurred in the US state of Delaware. A 13-year-old wrote a mischievous delivery instruction. The parcel carrier complied with the funny request.