UPDATE: April Fool's Day Hoaxes

Updated April 2

And now, a reality check. Conan O'Brien is "through" as Mashable CEO. Check the attached video.

Sunday was April Fool's Day, and and everyone expected to either play a joke on someone, or have one played on them. According to wikipedia.org, the earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness can be found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392).

This looked like one. Here's a story/video by TV host Conan O'Brien that posted to mashable.com around midnight April 1. The gist is that O'Brien has bought Mashable, a leading site for technology and social media news, and ousted CEO Pete Cashmore. (See attached video.) Yeah, right.

Oh by the way, "tweets" will shrink to 133 characters, according to NPR. ;)

Also, we'd like to recall some other famous hoaxes.

Remember Sidd Finch, made famous by a Sports Illustrated article in 1985? Not only was it SI the premier sports publication of its era, but the article was written by well-known writer George Plimpton.

As referenced in wikipedia.org, the story told of a New York Mets pitching prospect who had a 168-mph fastball, who was attempting to decide between a sports career and one playing the French horn. Finch grew up in an English orphanage and was adopted by an archaeologist who later died in a plane crash in Nepal. After briefly attending Harvard University, he went to Tibet to learn "yogic mastery of mind-body," which was the source of his pitching prowess.

The Mets played along with the hoax, even providing a uniform for Joe Berton, a junior high school art teacher from Oak Park, Illinois, who posed in pictures as "Finch" (usually with his face turned from the lens).

And in the Internet era, there have been April Fool's Day hoaxes. Check this list from the LA Times. Remember Gmail paper?

And here is a list of .

So, what is the most elaborate April Fool's Day hoax ever played on you? Or the one you played on someone else? Share memories in the comments.

Compiled by Steve Burns.