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Silly Rules & Decisions
Here are some weird and illogical rules and
regulations and decisions imposed on the people in various regions.
Thankfully, they were just April Fool hoaxes or they would have had
drastic effects and might have resulted in rebellions, revolutions and
mass movements to dethrone such stupid and eccentric authority.
- In 1959, the Kokomo Tribune of Indiana announced that to cut the
costs, the city police would close each night from 6 pm to 6 am and
one can leave their messages on an answering machine, which will be
screened by an officer in the morning. It will also lessen the
pressure of work as many of the calls would be old by that time and
there would be no need to answer them. A spokesman for the police
commented that in the case there is an emergency call in the night,
they can go check the hospitals and the coroner in the morning and
know if anything has happened or not!
- In 1987, a Los Angeles disc jockey that Los Angeles Highway
System would be closed for an entire month for repairs from April 8.
The citizens were highly alarmed by the startling news for they
could not avoid the use of the highway to navigate through the city
and immediately the radio station and the California Highway Patrol
were flooded with thousands of frantic calls. The intense public
response stunned even the station, not to mention that the
California Department of Transportation didn't find it 'very funny.'
- In 1991, the London Times announced the cabinet's approval of the
plan of Department of Transport to alleviate overcrowding on the
M25, the circular highway surrounding London by making the traffic
on both carriageways travel in the same direction. Thus, on Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays the traffic would travel clockwise while on
Tuesdays and Thursdays it would travel anti-clockwise. On weekends,
traffic can go on as usual.
Many people voiced their protest. A spokesman for Labor Transport
warned that many people have 'trouble telling their left from their
right.' A resident of Swanley, Kent said that the scheme was
impractical because the villagers using the motorway to go for
shopping to Orpington, would have to drive just for two miles on
some days and 117 miles on others. Well, it was just a joke.
- In 1993, the China Youth Daily, the official state newspaper of
China had a government's decision as its first lead on the front
page, where Ph.D. holders were exempted from the one child limit
imposed by state to control population explosion. The story had a
disclaimer in the end identifying it as a joke. Yet, Hong Kong's New
Evening News and Agence France-Presse (an international news agency)
were taken in and reported it as a fact.
Intellectuals of the country thought the idea to be prompted by the
Singaporeans who encouraged their intellectuals to marry and have
children to ensure better crop of citizens for the next generation.
The Chinese government declared such hoaxes and April Fool's Day as
a hazardous tradition of the West while the Guangming Daily,
Beijing's main newspaper read mostly by the intellectuals, published
an editorial stating April Fool's Day to be a Liar's Day and having
bad influence.
- In the same year, Westdeutsche Rundfunk, a German radio station,
made an official announcement about a new city regulation for the
citizens of Cologne where the joggers going through the park could
not go faster than six mph to avoid disturbing the squirrels in the
middle of their mating season.
- The physicist Mark Boslough's article published in April 1998
issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter state
that the Alabama state legislature had passed a bill and voted to
change the value of the mathematical constant pi. It was to be put
to the Biblical value of '3.0' instead of the actual value
'3.14159'. The article reached the world over through the Internet
and soon the Alabama legislature was stormed with calls protesting
such an illogical move. The original article was actually a parody
on the legislative attempts to confine the teaching of evolution.
- In 1999, the Savings Bank of Rockville placed an ad in the
Connecticut Journal-Inquirer on 31st March to announce that they
would charge their customers $5 fee for the help of a live teller to
ensure enhanced 'professional, caring and superior customer
service.' Though, it was a joke, customers were highly agitated by
it and it was reported that one woman even closed her account with
the bank because of it. The bank ran a second ad revealing the first
one to be just a joke with the comment of bank manager that it had
actually committed the bank 'to not charging such fees.'
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