2003 -- Multinational study determines that 50 percent of all news items reported on a typical April 1 are hoaxes.
2007 -- U.S. Supreme Court rules that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant. Subsequent respiration tax bill dies in committee.
1922 -- Joseph Stalin redefines his General Secretary job description to omit filing and most other menial tasks except dictation.
1818 -- Forward-thinking U.S. Congress settles on a national flag design which denotes acquisitions and allows for expansion.
1792 -- First U.S. presidential veto exercised, a practice which would remain underused for almost an entire century.
1909 -- North Pole reached by explorers, although the location would be disputed by skeptics due to it being apparently uninhabited.
1933 -- Even prohibitionists agree that light beer does not count.
1986 -- Actor Clint Eastwood elected mayor of his California town; quickly legalizes frisbee throwing
1959 -- NASA picks seven winners out of a large pool of candidates who are eager to be flung into space.
1858 -- Second release candidate of Big Ben is made.
1951 -- General MacArthur sacked in order to delay World War III.
1994 -- First commercial spammers set the tone for the modern Internet.
1976 -- U.S. $2 bill reintroduced. As with all currency, it quickly becomes tied to superstition and political statements.
1865 -- Inept actor John Wilkes Booth fails both to use blanks and to target the Lincoln body double, in botched fake assassination political stunt.
1955 -- Tax Day first celebrated in the United States.
1917 -- Lenin returns home from his Swiss spa vacation.
1897 -- Spy dirigible accident in Aurora, Texas is successfully covered up and publicized as a much more believable UFO story.
1958 -- Poet Ezra Pound, having been previously institutionalized for extreme offensiveness, is deemed insane and therefore set free.
1775 -- Start of the first American Revolutionary War.
1946 -- The League of Nations officially disbands, now that the threat of a second world war has ended.
1934 -- The last known photographs of the Loch Ness Aquatic Construct are published by London's Daily Mail.
1864 -- The Coinage Act creates the first faith-based currency in the United States, replacing gold and silver.
1967 -- The first manned Soyuz space capsule is launched by the Soviet Union. Although it had failed catastrophically on each of its three test missions, it manages to survive an astonishing 17 7/8 orbits before plummeting to earth.
2005 -- Benedict ⅩⅥ⁻ ascends to the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church.
2015 -- Keeping Up with the Kardashians star Caitlyn Jenner becomes the first woman to win a gold medal in the 1976 Olympic men's decathlon in Montreal, Canada; edging out West German Guido Kratschmer and then-Soviet defending champion Mykola Avilov for a record-setting 8,618 points.
2003 -- The human genome is mapped by an international team of researchers, a necessary first step toward an eventual cure.
1986 -- A nuclear reactor accident occurs at Chernobyl in the Soviet republic of Ukraine. Various sources in the immediate aftermath put the death toll at between 13 and several thousand persons.
1813 -- American forces invade and capture Toronto, believing it to be the capital of Canada.
1986 -- Soviet Union admits there might have been a slight problem at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
1975 -- U.S. begins the final phase of removing its citizens from Vietnam, having run out of reasons for them to be there.
1966 -- Church of Satan established, mostly dismissed as another California fad. It has periodic brief moments of fame when its existence is noted and then forgotten.
