The 7 Ballsiest Pranks You Won't Believe Actually Worked
#3.
Man Becomes World-Famous Artist, Also While Not Existing
There are some artists that are so famous that everyone's heard of them, even people without the slightest interest in the art world. Michelangelo, da Vinci, Rembrandt, Nat Tate, Monet...
We... ah... we got nothing.
What's that? You've never heard of Nat Tate? Well congratulations, because by admitting that you have more credibility than a lot of people who make a living in the art industry.
Back in 1998, author William Boyd wrote a biography of Tate, an abstract painter who lived from 1928 to 1960. Tate was a troubled genius, who created brilliant paintings but eventually destroyed them all before committing suicide. The book included photographs of Tate and his work, as well as recollections about the man by other famous artists. Oh yeah, and the whole thing was a hoax.
The book was intended as a satire of the New York art community, but Boyd wasn't content to stop at that. He recruited the one group of people with more spare time and boredom on their hands than even our Georgia Tech student up there: celebrities.
He called up Gore Vidal, who promoted and endorsed the book and the claim of it being true, and David Bowie, who arranged a huge launch party for the book in New York on April Fools' Day. Invited were famous artists, collectors, historians and dealers.
A strict dress code was enforced.
So with that many experts on art in one place the scam was quickly revealed, right? Not quite. As Bowie read excerpts from the book everyone nodded sagely and talked about their familiarity with Tate's work.
Only a single newspaper editor realized it was a joke, because he was the only one who would admit to having never heard of Tate. So he did some real in-depth investigation and uncovered the truth. By which we mean he flipped through the book and discovered it had obvious flaws, like using names of supposedly famous art galleries which didn't actually exist.
The hoax made international headlines, the world had a good laugh at the too proud art community and David Bowie went back to leaving flaming bags of his shit on his neighbors' porches.
#2.
The $2 Billion Prank
So you've got some panicked people, embarrassed "experts" and a cursing dictator. But no real monetary damage, right? Well, this one makes up for that.
2004 was the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, an industrial accident at a Union Carbide plant in India that killed thousands and created lifelong health problems for many more. No, that wasn't the prank. That would have been horrible.
Families of victims were thrilled when a representative of Dow Chemical, the owner of the plant, appeared on BBC News and finally claimed full responsibility for the disaster. He announced that Dow would be liquidating $12 billion worth of assets to help pay for medical costs, clean-up and research into the dangers of their industry.
It was an amazing corporate gesture, and immediately created a huge stir in the business world. And, of course, it was bullshit. The Dow representative was actually Andy Bichlbaum, a member of a group called The Yes Men, who have a history of doing just this kind of thing. Of course, nobody realized that while he was chatting away with a BBC reporter, particularly the people holding Dow stock. When it looks like a company is claiming to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of people but planning to make up for it by giving away billions of dollars, well, that has a bit of an impact on the markets.
Compounding things, of course, was the fact that when the real Dow issued a press release saying that they did not in fact have any plans to help the sick people, it was pretty much impossible to clear things up without looking like jerks.
"...And furthermore, we intend to continue our 'kick customers right in the dick' policy. Any questions?"
By the time the whole affair was sorted out, the fake announcement had made international headlines and Dow stock plummeted in value by $2 billion. Billion. With a "B."
All because some guy at the BBC couldn't check some fucking credentials.
"You say you work for the State Department? Great, put this mic on."
#1.
A Military Prank Wins a World War
One of the largest scale and most expensive pranks in human history was kept secret for 50 years. The perpetrators were a team of artists in the U.S. Army, and the victim was Hitler. And what they did was more ridiculous than anything the zaniest of movie fraternities could have come up with.
After the American military landed in France after D-Day, they faced a German war machine that by this time was good and pissed off. Borrowing something straight out of Wile E. Coyote's playbook, they set out to baffle the Nazis with a completely separate army armed with nothing but fake inflatable tanks and other bullshit.
Yes, the tanks were literally inflatable.
What the Germans thought was a 30,000-man armored battalion was in fact a thousand artists (mostly art students recruited for the task) wearing fake uniforms, sending out fictional battle reports over the radio (complete with a war sound effects record playing in the background) all while trying to keep their tanks from getting knocked over by the wind.
They would then intentionally do a half-assed job of covering their tracks, so that German planes and scouts would spot them and report back about this huge-ass army waiting at the location. The Germans had to completely rethink their battle plan each time, while the real American forces were sneaking around, raising hell somewhere else.
How convincing were they? Well, it's thought they saved up to 30,000 allied lives purely with the power of bullshit. Oh, and some German units even surrendered to them. Which must have been pretty humiliating when they were marched past an armored division they could have taken out with a sharp stick.
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Wow #1 was ingenious.
ReplyYou should have provided a link to some of Nat Tate's "art." The stuff is freaking hilarious.
ReplyLooks like stick needs to be added to any nuclear rendition of rock, paper, scissors.
ReplyThe inflatable army trick wasn't just used by the US, they were set up all over the uk too.
ReplyWe thought of it first, because... USA!!!
this thing is so friggin old.
ReplyWay to make the Americans seem much more important in WW2 than they actually were, again.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesdude why are bothering to even type that out. no one really cares.
If it wasn't for us, you'd be eating sauerkraut and whistling das Deutschlandlied. Show some respect.
mhmmmmmmmm... Sauerkraut.
Hitler may be a necessary evil. Through his Reich scientist, cretion of the first liquid fueld rocket= NASA
ReplyBecause Patton was "murdered" we never saw Ww3 against Russia
Because Turner denied Maccarthur with tactically nuking N. Korea when he saw Hundreds of Millions of Chinese PLA advance...we got N. Korea
Now Russia is selling old BM-21 rocket's to Syria loyalists while U.S Fifth "Fighting" Fleet is artillery bombing those loyalist's in hopes of giving the Democractic "rebels" a chance for democracy... Oh the world we live in. Ha
That's right. We should nuke 'em all and let God sort 'em out!!
Would have been nice if the inflatable division section had also recognised that the combines allied forces of the USA and the UK had been using inflatable tanks, planes, boats, and more for over a year PRIOR to D-Day in order to encourage fake intelligence reports that led the Germans to believe that the invasion was going to happen hundreds of miles away, thus diverting massed defences. It was such a massive scale diversion that the intent was to trick the Germans into thinking the D-Day landings were merely a diversionary attack for the big push. Operation Fortitude. Stunning work.
ReplyThe last one has to be fake, right?
Replynope. s**t was totally real. Even put f*****g Patton with those inflatable tanks to make the hoax appear more credible (he did not like this, crazy mother f****r that he was).
Nope, I read about that somewhere else too. May have been on the history channel.
#4 reminds me of the Captain Tuttle episode of M*A*S*H.
ReplyGotta love that Captain Tuttle. Great man.
Actually, I think the writers of M*A*S*H took the idea from that story.
Excellent article. Almost cried laughing...
Reply"The Dark Side of the Moon" is another great hoax, though the makers out themselves at the end. (They were pranksters, not jerks.) The "documentary" claims to be American and provide compelling proof that the US faked the moon landings. It's full of actual interviews with highly-placed authorities, including Henry Kissinger and several American astronauts, and shots of American locations. But the whole thing was filmed in Paris by a French production company. The show gets subtly less credible as you go along, till by the end it's just nuts. Then they out themselves. It's meant to show viewers how credible any crack-brained conspiracy can look if it's presented as such. See the "making of" reel, too. Very funny, and ingenious.
ReplyLooked on the internet, couldn't find any connection but the William Boyd "Nat Tate" prank was in 1998 and the Tate Modern Art Gallery, London, opened in 2000 and states to be named after Sir Henry Tate, A sugar merchant. Anybody else thinking they may have just paniced at the last minute and rather than changing their name just looking for another famous Tate?
ReplyIt's basically an art gallery's job to B.S. legitimacy.
Henry Tate funded the building and donated a large collection of artwork to it. It's been named after him since the 30's.
"the Bhopal disaster, an industrial accident at a Union Carbide plant in India that killed thousands and created lifelong health problems for many more. No, that wasn't the prank. That would have been horrible."
ReplyThat would have been the greatest prank since smallpox blankets. You know nothing. NOTHIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
(^ There's no 'ng' or period to that because I am screaming that word out loud and I am never going to stop.)
douchebag
*yawn*
Some Day, the executives of Dow Chemicals are going to be slowly paralyzed, their internal organs ruptured one by one, their children's burnt at stake, the towns they were born in burnt and salted, then the workers who earn their living by working for Dow shot in the streets - normal office workers, daughters, wives. That day a small kid will crawl on all fours and ask me to help his mother, and I shall look into his eyes and utter No, and that will be a tribute to my hometown.
ReplyCool story bro.
Okay, Rorschach
I'd like to know how that guy was able to get his hands on both tests without being noticed.
ReplyHe probably just grabbed one 'for his friend'.
The questions were probably in a booklet, and you had to answer on separate sheets of paper.
An inflatable tank would make the awesomest pool toy ever.
ReplyBanksy should have been mentioned
ReplyForgive me if I seem perhaps pretentiously eloquent here, but nope.
If by Banksy you're referring to Exit Through The Gift Shop ... then maaaaybe.
The yes men was a great documentary. These guys are being called cruel by people that really have no idea what they actually accomplished. Most of the families that were affected by that fiasco were actually happy that they did it. They showed the world that people SHOULD be held accountable, and how easy it would be for them to be accountable, if they wanted to.
ReplyThe woman had a psychological disorder and was off her medication. She managed to slip away from the person in charge of keeping an eye on her. It was not necessarily a prank in the traditional sense of the word, but more the result of not being all there.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesIt sure is funny, though
And the planning involved is a bit impressive. Id like to believe that without the burden of a debilitating disorder, she might still have thought it up...
That makes it a little more understandable, 'cause up to that point I was thinking that if I were an employee at that store and had to clean all that chaos up and deal with those angry customers, I would've felt an overwhelming urge to slap her. But now I feel sorry for her.
The art one is my favorite. That is hilarious. I love that David Bowie and Gore Vidal were in on it. Hint for people: if something big occurs on April Fools' Day, that's probably a pretty good warning sign you're being pranked. And as the old saying goes, if something sounds too good to be true (i.e., the Burlington story), it probably is. The WW2 one was brilliant as well-way to humiliate the Axis.
Also, William Smith has WAY too much time on his hands.