APRIL FOOLS

In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore made an announcement on BBC Radio 2. He said this: "At 9:47 a.m. today there will be a 'once-in-a-lifetime' astronomical event occurring." He said that listeners could experience it in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity.

Patrick Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, Radio 2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room. The date was 1st April 1976.