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was scrapping the national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” in favor of a Euro anthem that would be sung in German. “There’s too much nationalism,” a spokesperson for the EU supposedly told the BBC. “We need to look for unity.”
    • In March 1998, the newsletter New Mexicans for Science and Reason published a story claiming that the Alabama state legislature had passed a bill changing the mathematical value of pi from 3.14159 to the “Biblical value” of 3.0. On April 1 a physicist named Mark Boslough came forward and admitted he wrote the article to parody legislative attacks on the teaching of the theory of evolution.
An average water droplet contains 100 quintillion molecules of water.
    • At about the same time that Pepsi made a worldwide change from its traditional white soda cans to blue ones in 1996, England’s Virgin Cola announced an “innovation” of its own: its red cans would turn blue when the cans passed their sell-by date. “Virgin strongly advises its customers to avoid ALL blue cans of cola,” the company said in an April 1 newspaper ad. “They are clearly out of date.”
    • In 1996 America Online published a report that NASA’s Galileo spacecraft had found life on Jupiter. The following day they admitted they made it up. “Yes, it is a hoax,” an AOL representative told reporters, “but it’s a good one, don’t you think?”
    • In 1993 the German radio station Westdeutsche Rundfunk in Cologne broadcast a report that the city had issued a new regulation requiring joggers to run no faster than 6 mph; running faster than that “could disturb the squirrels who were in the middle of their mating season.”
    • In 1981 the Herald-News in Roscommon, Michigan, printed a warning that scientists were preparing to release 2,000 “freshwater sharks” into three area lakes as part of a government-funded study.
    • In 1980 the BBC broadcast a report that London’s Big Ben was going to be remade into a digital clock and the clock hands would be offered for sale to the first listeners who called in. “Surprisingly, few people thought it was funny,” a BBC spokesman told reporters.
    • In 1993 San Diego’s KGB-FM radio station announced that the space shuttle Discovery was being diverted from Edwards Air Force Base to a local airport called Montgomery Field. More than 1,000 people descended on the tiny airstrip, snarling traffic for miles. “I had to shoo them away with their video cameras,” airport manager Tom Raines told reporters. “A lot of them were really mad.”
    • In 1981 England’s Daily Mail newspaper published a story about a Japanese entrant in the London Marathon named Kimo Nakajimi who, thanks to an error in translation, thought he had to run for 26 days —not 26 miles. The paper reported that there had been several recent sightings of Nakajimi, but that all attempts to flag him down had failed.
Many residents of Troublesome Creek, Kentucky, have blue skin.

WORD ORIGINS
Ever wonder where words come from? Here are some interesting stories .
    E XPLODE
    Meaning: Burst or shatter violently
    Origin: “This word has a history in the theater, where its meaning was once quite different than it is today. Originally ‘explode’ meant to drive an actor off the stage by means of clapping and hooting. It is made up of the Latin prefix ex- (out) and plauder (to applaud). The word still retains the sense of rejection, such as in the act of exploding a theory—exposing it as false—and, in general use, there is still noise associated with things which explode.” (From Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, Volume II , by William and Mary Morris)
    FILIBUSTER
    Meaning: The use of prolonged speeches to obstruct legislative action
    Origin: “From the Spanish filibustero , meaning ‘freebooter’ (which is derived from the Dutch vrijbuter) . It was first used in English to designate a pirate or buccaneer in the Caribbean. In the 1850s, the word was used to signify adventurers