April Fool's Day Pranks in Alabama That Got Way Out of Hand!

Ever had a prank go wrong? These April Fool's Day pranks in Alabama got bigger than anyone ever imagined!

This Prank Was a Train Wreck! No, Really...

It all began on April Fool's Day 2019 when a local woman thought it would be funny to prank her friends on Facebook with this status:
“A train carrying some sort of toxic waste just derailed! They are evacuating everyone in Quinton and some of West Jefferson for at least two days!!!!”
Quinton is a small unincorporated town minutes from downtown Birmingham. As the post was shared, hundreds of calls began coming in to 911 and Emergency Services Agencies in Jefferson and Walker Counties. Several local agencies put hazmat teams on standby and began assembling disaster teams. Oh, and the governor had to be notified, too! As for the prankster? "The woman says she was sorry," reporters said later. Really, lady? That's it? Officials reminded the public later that these kinds of pranks are illegal and this prankster is probably lucky she didn't go to jail! To see the WBRC-6 news coverage about the incident that was aired later that day, click here.

Photo byDavid CainonUnsplash

Kenny's Bigfoot Hoax

Kenny Walker lives in the small town of Wilmer, Alabama near Mobile. On April 1, 2022, Kenny and his friend, Taylor, had plans to make an elaborate Tik Tok video as a prank. When that didn't pan out, he did what any red blooded Alabamian would do: he moved on to plan B and said he had seen a bigfoot. Kenny grabbed some random bigfoot images online and put together a convincing narrative about a terrifying bigfoot encounter. To give the story more credibility, Kenny added an endorsement by the Mobile County Sheriff's Office: "UPDATE: Mobile County Sheriff's Office just validated the photos, and the Finding Bigfoot Team has been deployed to Big Creek lake in Wilmer, Alabama. I will update as information comes in." According to Kenny, the post took on a life of it's own. It was even featured on several national news outlets!

Photo byJon SaileronUnsplash

Alabama Pi Factory

This infamous April Fools Day prank goes all the way back to 1998. It caused such a stir, however, that it may go down in history as the biggest prank involving Alabama, ever. It all started when Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Mark Boslough wrote a satirical article that was posted to a newsgroup forum (this was back in the day prior to social media's big boom). At the time, the debate of creationism vs. evolution being taught in public school was a hot topic of debate. In Boslough's state of New Mexico, that debate had been raging in the state legislature. Boslough took some of the arguments of his lawmakers and wrote the article - only he changed the state to Alabama, changed the names of the lawmakers, and made it sound as if Alabama had decided to change the mathematical value of Pi from 3.14 to 3 "to make it less uncertain and line up with biblical values." It was all satirical, of course, but as the article was copied and shared virally across the web, the part about "satire" was completely lost. People across the country were outraged that the Alabama legislature would possibly think the value of Pi could be changed (as it's a mathematical constant). Lawmakers were inundated with calls, emails and letters for quite a while. Thanks to the internet, the great Alabama Pi hoax went down in history as one of the greatest hoaxes ever.

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