Spaghetti-tree hoax

A recreation of a scene from the report, showing a woman harvesting cooked spaghetti from the branches of a tree

The spaghetti-tree hoax was a three-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current-affairs programme Panorama, purportedly showing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a "spaghetti tree". At the time of the report's broadcast, spaghetti was relatively unknown in the United Kingdom, and a number of viewers contacted the BBC afterwards for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees. Decades later, CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled".[1]

  1. ^ Ahmed, Saeed (1 April 2009). "A nod and a link: April Fools' Day pranks abound in the news". CNN. Retrieved 25 January 2010.