Spaghetti-tree hoax

The spaghetti-tree hoax was a hoax news report made by the BBC on April Fools' Day in 1957. The hoax showed a family in Ticino, Switzerland picking spaghetti from a "spaghetti tree".
About eight million people watched the hoax on April Fools' Day in 1957. At the time, spaghetti was rare in the United Kingdom. It was also sometimes considered a delicacy there. The next day, hundreds of people called the BBC to see if spaghetti trees were real and how to grow them. The BBC told callers to put some spaghetti in a can of tomato sauce and "hope for the best".
The BBC showed the hoax on a television programme called "Panorama". A reporter named Charles de Jaeger made the hoax. He remembered how his teachers said his classmates would think spaghetti grew on trees. He got a budget of £100 to make the hoax. The hoax was reported by a trusted reporter named Richard Dimbleby. In 2010, CNN said it is the biggest hoax ever made by a trusted news organisation. It is also one of the first hoaxes on television.