Guten Tag! En supermints clam fly de goworschnickel! Am flapping hoovermull, und oer de Yancik meester vrong!
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Oh boy, it must be April Fools day once more. Did you know that on this date in 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower fell for a joke played on him by Congress? Yep, the old Army general signed a bill creating the Air Force Academy. Congress thought the Army-Air Force thing would cause ol' Dwight a chuckle, but the joke turned out to be on them as they had to fund the new school once the bill became law. The Air Force Academy as we now know it began as an April Fool's prank!
Other little known facts about April 1st in our preposterous history of this day...
In 1948, as a result of further experiments in the Manhattan Project, and at the recommendation of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the U.S. Congress ratified a bill suspending gravity for one day each year. Although President Truman signed the bill into law, the Supreme Court cited precedent in ruling the new law unconstitutional. Majority opinion stated: "An established physical law cannot be superseded by Federal legislation simply because Congress wants to" The court also cited Oppenheimer for contempt of Congress. Chief Justice Svenbom stated: "Oppenheimer should be ashamed of himself for taking advantage of simpletons, even elected ones."
In 1913, the largest steam locomotive yet made left the yards in Philadelphia to much fanfare. Its maiden voyage was interrupted in Nebraska by large snow drifts on the tracks due to an April blizzard. Unsubstantiated reports that a local artist took the liberty of painting "Titanic" on the snowbound coal tender should not be taken seriously. However, survivors of last year's terrible maritime tragedy called the unidentified Nebraskan a "cornhusker".
In 1900, the Bureau of Standards in Washington D.C. changed the country to a new system of weights and measures for the next millennium. The new system approved by the bureau replaces common measurements with a more simplified set of measures. For example: the former units for liquid measure, liters, are now based upon the gallon. The Secretary of Weights, or SoW, explained the reason for the change: "The new system utilizes seemingly random units of conversion such as 2 cups = 1 pint, 2 pints = 1 quart, and 4 quarts = 1 gallon. Simple really, not like all that decimal point moving we had to do in the old system." When asked when conversion tables would be published to ease the transition the SoW explained that his scientists had all gone home with headaches. "But we hope to have them ready soon!" he said.
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