Many years ago, while attending a Junior College in Southern California (trying to decide what I wanted to be) I opted for a Journalism degree. This meant taking classes and being part of the school's newspaper staff. In the week before April 1st I wrote a story about a discovery on the school's campus of helium ore. Know how helium was mined in Texas (and the then Soviet Union) I spun a tale of helium ore deposits under the campus that were linked to the mines in Texas by helium ore veins.

It was a brief story and the author was "Loof Lirpa"! After finishing the story I placed it in the Editor's In-Box and left for the day (a Friday). Upon my return to class the following Monday I was challenged by the Instructor with a, "Did you write this?!" I said yes, it was just an April Fools piece for the editorial page. At which point I was firmly told to make sure that such pranks were plainly marked! It seems that over the weekend the student-Editor moved my "story" from the back page to the front page with a headline proclaiming, "Helium Deposits Discovered Under Campus!"

While they had not gone to press, they did have the pages set-up at the print shop and at the last minute someone figuered out the the author's name was "April Fool" backwards!