Six People Who Went to Great Lengths for their Pranks

With so much press about Easter and Passover, you might not realize that April Fool's Day is Monday. Covering someone's cubicle with tinfoil changing your co-worker's desktop image pale in comparison to the pranks of some folks. Mental_floss looks at six elaborate pranksters and their elaborate schemes. One of them was President Lyndon Johnson, who loved a prank -especially since he could get away with them. One he employed many times involved an amphibious car he kept at his ranch in Texas.

He would invite his visitors to take a drive around the ranch with him in the blue convertible. When they got to a steep hill at the edge of a lake, Johnson would let the car pick up speed. Then he’d yell, “The brakes don’t work! The brakes won’t hold! We’re going in!” As the car entered the lake, the passengers would panic—until they realized that rather than sinking, they were motoring across the lake. One victim of the prank, Special Assistant to the President Joseph A. Califano, Jr., recalled that his boss teased him later for trying to save his own skin instead of the president’s.

Read about the other pranksters in a list at mental_floss.