# The Spaghetti Harvest



## David Baxter PhD (Apr 28, 2019)

*Spaghetti-Harvest in Ticino*
_BBC_
April 1, 1957

The spaghetti tree hoax is a famous 3-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current affairs programme _Panorama_. It told a tale of a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the fictitious spaghetti tree, broadcast at a time when this Italian dish was not widely eaten in the UK and some Britons were unaware that spaghetti is a pasta made from wheat flour and water. Hundreds of viewers phoned into the BBC, either to say the story was not true, or wondering about it, with some even asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. Decades later CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled."

Spaghetti-tree hoax - Wikipedia




On April 1, 1967, Melbourne (Australia) station HSV-7's returned to the "Swiss spaghetti harvest" story.




This ad from San Giorgio Spaghetti in 1978 spoofed the original hoax:




And in 2009, Martha Stewart returned to the theme on her TV show:


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## H011yHawkJ311yBean (Apr 28, 2019)

The Pastafarians are Pastafurious.


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## Daniel (Apr 28, 2019)




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## Daniel (Apr 28, 2019)




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