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Editor’s Note: The deadline for our $50,000 Tuition Giveaway is January 31. Rather than nag you every day with a post that starts and ends with “TIME IS RUNNING OUT,” we’ve decided to keep the scholarship top of mind by re-running some of our favorite college-centric stories and quizzes.
What is it about the collegiate atmosphere that inspires pranks? Maybe it’s the lure of becoming a school legend, your hilarious exploits recounted ’round bonfires for years to come. Or maybe it’s just the natural result of putting too many smart, hormone-addled young folk together in one place. Whatever the reason, colleges (and to a lesser extent, boarding schools) are a breeding ground for awe-inspiring pranks — and here are some of our favorites. (Some of these entries appeared in the Mental_floss article “History’s Greatest Hoaxes” by Alex Boese, vol. 2, issue 6.)
1. The Explosives Were Just A Warm-Up
Alright, this is a high school prank, but it has all the hallmarks of a collegiate job (think of it as AP pranksterhood). Our very own John Green masterminded this elaborate, hilarious two-parter as a senior at his Alabama boarding school, and not only did it make he and his cohorts living legends at Indian Springs High School for years to come, it also became the basis for several major plot points in John’s debut novel, Looking for Alaska (soon to be a movie). Warning: some crude (but contextually appropriate) language.
2. Bonsai Kittens
“You no longer need be satisfied with a house pet having the same mundane shape as all other members of its species,” declared the website Bonsaikitten.com, which debuted in 2000. “With Bonsai Kitten a world of variation awaits you, limited only by your own imagination.” According to the website, you could treat a young kitten in much the same way that you treat a young juniper: by sealing a furry friend inside a specially-designed glass jar, you could force Fluffy’s still-pliable bones to conform to the jar’s shape. Special feeding tubes supposedly took care of all kitty’s nature-related needs (just make sure you drill an air hole!), and with a little careful pruning now and then, the rest would take care of itself!
Of course, the website was total hokum, devised by a group of bored MIT students and housed on the school’s servers. Even after the site was found to be of questionably authentic origin, however (it proved to be impossible to actually purchase said Bonsai Kittens), outraged emails kept pouring in. The Humane Society and PETA both denounced the site publicly, and in 2001 the FBI subpoenaed all information about the site they could get from MIT. No evidence of abuse was ever found, but even after Bonsaikitten.com had been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked as a prank, vitriolic emails from outraged animal lovers forced it site to bounce around from hosting service to hosting service for several years.
3. Lady Liberty Goes for a Swim
In February 1979, the Statue of Liberty appears submerged in the waters of Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota. It’s the brainchild of the infamous Pail & Shovel Party, a small group of (mischief-prone) undergrads running the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s student government that year. As part of their election campaign, they had promised to bring Lady Liberty to Wisconsin, which they do … sort of. The group spends three days constructing the statue of of papier-mache and chicken wire. When it appears peeking up from the lake, they claim it was flown in by helicopter from NYC, but after the rope snapped, it sent her crashing through the ice. So did they make their fellow students proud? Not exactly. The P&S party used $4,500 of student funds for the construction.
4. Hugo N. Frye, Father of the Republican Party
Hoping to make a statement about the superficiality of politicians, a pair of Cornell students in 1930 make special plans to honor one Hugo Norris Frye, father of the Republican party, at the school’s annual banquet. Problem is, he doesn’t exist. (”You go and fry” — get it?) They print up letterhead for the H.N. Frye Sesquicentennial Committee and mail letters to many notable Republicans, asking that they issue statements honoring the important, if little-known, patriot on the occasion of his 150th birthday. In response, they receive several letters of glowing praise for Frye — including one from the Vice President of the United States, Charles Curtis — which they read aloud to an amused crowd at their banquet. It would have been harmless enough, but when the story landed on the front page of The New York World, the victims were exposed — and they weren’t laughing.
5. Greasing the Tracks
The night before an 1896 football game with their arch-rival Georgia Tech, a group of Auburn students set out for the local train station. To greet the arriving Tech team, the Auburn kids decide to do a particularly impressive job of the old “greasing the tracks” prank, covering the rails around the station and well down the line heading out of town. When the Tech train rolls in the next morning, it can’t stop and reportedly slides for 10 miles, leaving the team an its accompanying fans well outside their intended destination. Forced to walk into town for the game, the players are so exhausted when they finally reach the field, Tech loses 45 to nothing.
6. The Crimson Sparks a Red Scare
A long-running rivalry between Harvard’s school papers, the Crimson and the Lampoon, came to a head with this 1953 prank. Crimson staffers play one of their favorite pranks by stealing the Lampoon’s Ibis, the large bird statue perched on top of their office. But this time, they send a letter to the Soviet consul in New York to report that the editors of the Lampoon wish to offer the Ibis as a symbol of friendship, billing the bird as “sort of an American peace dove.” The Soviets accept, and the Ibis is handed off to a confused U.N. delegate in a formal ceremony. Not wanting to be outdone, the Lampoon retaliates with a letter of their own. With help from then-editor John Updike, they write to Joseph McCarthy, insisting the prank clearly proves the Crimson’s communist leanings and calling for a full investigation.
Comments (68)
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Maybe I’m misreading the kitten prank, but can I say “sick f*cks!”
posted by Scott on 12-13-2007 at 9:58 am
As a UW-Madison graduate, I read much about the Pail and Shovel Party (although I just graduated so it was long before my time). It seems like the whole group qualified as a great prank.
The name came from how they vowed to give tuition back to student by dumping pennies on Bascom Hill (where the Chancellor’s office is) and letting them scoop it back with a Pail and Shovel. One year the same hill was decorated with like 10,000 plastic flamingos.
Here’s a part that should be included in the Statue of Liberty thing – a couple days after they completed construction a vandal set fire to it. Although I don’t recall offhand if that was the first or second time they made it.
posted by Kevin on 12-13-2007 at 10:26 am
Nerd alert: The guy behind the Statue of Liberty prank was Jim Mallon, who later went on to become one of the masterminds of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.
posted by Ed on 12-13-2007 at 10:48 am
Meant to mention the MST3K link, but it slipped my mind. Thanks for getting my back!
posted by Kevin on 12-13-2007 at 11:02 am
Thank goodness that the Bonsai Kitty site was a prank! My friend had it on her blog a few years ago and it freaked all of us out!! A very well thought out website, indeed!
posted by Kate on 12-13-2007 at 11:09 am
My parents have pictures of the statue of liberty thing! It looked awesome!
posted by Emily on 12-13-2007 at 11:10 am
I still like the Harvard/Yale rivalry prank whereby one of the schools was given posters by members of the ‘pep squad’ which they subsequently used to spell “We Suck!” at the rivalry game.
brilliant.
posted by Ashley on 12-13-2007 at 12:28 pm
I remember the Bonsai Kitty thing, and one of my friends trying to start a petition. She wrote this very passionate email to all of us about it, and I nearly felt bad telling her she’d been just a little too gullible.
I heard about another Jim Mallon prank involving hundreds of pink lawn flamingos.
posted by Katherine on 12-13-2007 at 12:45 pm
I love the Bonsai Kitten website. It’s fun to read all the hate mail from people who didn’t figure out that it was a joke.
posted by Ken on 12-13-2007 at 1:26 pm
Another interesting tidbit about the Auburn- Ga Tech train incident: Legend has it that the Tech players had to walk all the way into town wearing nothing but their pajamas. And to this day everytime Tech comes to the plains Auburn hosts a “Wreck Tech” parade and parades through town in their nightclothes. I had the pleasure of doing so my freshman year at Auburn, and even though Tech beat us, its still a good time.
War Eagle.
posted by Taylor on 12-13-2007 at 2:31 pm
I participated in the squirt-gun-point kidnapping of the president of my alma mater. All classes were canceled that day and we held a carnival instead. Glorious!
posted by Coeli on 12-13-2007 at 3:36 pm
The kitten´s mushed face is one of the cutest things I have ever seen… I want a Bonsai Kitten!
posted by GTT on 12-13-2007 at 6:03 pm
The bonsai kittens were such an obvious hoax!! That isn’t even physically possible, people are very gullible!
posted by Melissa on 12-13-2007 at 6:35 pm
Another great university prank … In 1962, a group of engineering students at the University of Western Ontario (London, ON) removed the toilet seats from all the men’s washrooms on campus. The best part of the prank is that after paying a fine, the students got to keep the seats.
posted by Stephen on 12-13-2007 at 8:16 pm
I got those Bonsai Kitten petitions all the time too. It got annoying, and people never believed the site was fake. I believed it at first though, how gullible of me!
posted by Regina on 12-13-2007 at 8:56 pm
The closest I can I come to a college prank story is my father’s. He helped in the old “Carry somebody’s Volkswagon up a flight of stairs” prank. The owner had to get the football team to carry it back down.
posted by Tdave on 12-14-2007 at 1:39 am
Speaking of Bonsai Kittens, wasn’t there some site that asked for donations for a rabbit, and if enough donations weren’t given the website owner would eat the rabbit?… Of course, it was a hoax, and when you clicked the link to donate you were directed to a page where you could buy t-shirts and such
I also heard of a prank (I’m not sure of the authenticity of it, but it’s a novel idea anyway) where a group of high school students in a rural town got 4 pigs all greased up and painted the numbers 1,2,4, and 5 on the side of each pig and then released them at the beginning of the school day… classes were canceled the rest of the day as they searched for the third pig
posted by Corry on 12-14-2007 at 6:35 pm
The most famous prank in Finland happened in the sixties.
Wikipedia describes the recovery of wasa ship
“The first lift began on April 8, 1961, and on the morning of April 24, Vasa was ready to break the surface for the first time in 333 years. Press from all over the world, TV cameras, 400 invited guests on barges and boats, and thousands of spectators on shore watched as the first timbers broke the surface.
— Among the more infamous contaminations was a statue of 20th century Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi, which was placed on the ship as a prank by students of Helsinki University of Technology just days before the final lift.”
posted by Paavo Ojala on 12-19-2007 at 12:31 pm
Just wanted to contribute another Auburn University prank. My grandfather, W.W. Garrett, class of 1909, had a friend who earned his college tuition by keeping the clock in Samford Hall wound (Samford Hall at that time wa the tallest building on the campus. My grandfather and an unnamed accomplice stole a cow from the nearby School of Agriculture and led it up the steps to the bell tower, where it was discovered the next morning at 5 am when their classmate came to wind the clock. Since a cow can be led up stair but not down, I’m not sure how they got the cow out of the tower. No one discovered the identity of the culprits until my grandfather admitted to the crime at his 50th college reunion. The biggest regret of my years at Auburn is that I never did anything that remotely approached that stunt.
posted by David Patton on 12-23-2007 at 3:06 pm
In response to the Indian Hills prank, we had a similar prank done by the Jewish Mafia in Solon, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland). We had a designated Senior Lounge and the class of 98 chose to hire a stripper and have football players stand in the columns of the senior lounge to block administrative staff or teachers from stopping the strip show. She got down to her g-string before the vice principal leapt over a player to get to the girl. no one was ever punished.
posted by Karen on 12-29-2007 at 4:02 pm
I love that Auburn/Georgia Tech story. My favorite parade that I ever participated in as a member of the AUMB was definitely the Wreck Tech Parade in 2005. Like Taylor mentioned, all across campus you could see people wearing All Auburn All Orange t-shirts and pajama bottoms, including us band members. Pity the game didn’t turn out to be quite as enjoyable – it was the first defeat I’d ever had to experience at Auburn, having been spoiled my freshman year with the 2004 undefeated season.
posted by Steven on 1-2-2008 at 1:58 pm
My dad’s fraternity brothers thought it would be a great prank to take all the pledges out into the countryside and drop them off, leaving them to walk back to the frat house. Little did they know my dad had spent every summer in that same countryside. Dad was back at the house before the brothers finished dropping off the rest of the pledges, lol.
posted by Nancy on 1-23-2008 at 5:03 pm
the rabbit prank was “save toby”, and i fell for it. i called my fellow rabbit rescuers in tears.
it was posted at one time on ebay, where the prankster received some actual bids until ebay yanked it. its still floating around the ‘net somewhere, too.
posted by bionic bunny! on 2-7-2008 at 4:45 pm
Karen-
I went to Solon High School! Not a place you see referenced lot. I was still in middle school in ‘98, but my sister was a sophomore or junior and I remember hearing about it. Small world…
posted by lauren on 2-14-2008 at 12:05 pm
ha that some anal poop. I like to like it. it’s nice anal poop for me and you for you. yay for it. ah
posted by Mr. Anal Poo on 2-23-2008 at 11:46 am
***taken from wikipedia***
The most notorious and legendary prank in Rice history was the turning of William Marsh Rice’s statue in the Academic Quadrangle in April 1988. After several months of detailed planning, a group of Wiessmen succeeded in lifting the bronze statue (using a hoist mounted on an A-frame), rotating it 180 degrees, and setting it back down undamaged on its stone pedestal.[11] The university hired a contractor to turn Willy’s statue back to its original position. While the students’ apparatus cost only a couple of hundred dollars, the contractor used a hydraulic crane, charging several thousands of dollars, and managed to bend one of the pins in the process. The student pranksters were fined the cost of the job, but they raised more than enough funds by selling t-shirts bearing the blueprints of the A-frame structure. This jack instantly gained national publicity for Rice. Today the turning of the statue stands out as the epitome of a successful jack: creative, elaborate, highly visible, and harmless. In later years, legends evolved that the students were protesting a planned tuition increase or that the stunt symbolized the Founder turning his back on the administration in Lovett Hall. In fact, the prank was merely that–a prank.
posted by Joe on 2-28-2008 at 2:35 am
I just wished to comment on Prank #4 – I am proud to say that I helped build “Lady Liberty”. I was a member of the Pail and Shovel Party, a U.W. student from 1975 – 1979, and helped assemble the dear old girl.
She was a beautiful sight to behold.
posted by Rick on 3-12-2008 at 1:12 pm
I attended Grace University in Omaha, NE, where harmless pranks were tolerated (and sometimes enjoyed) by the faculty. The best we ever had happened in 2004.
Over the course of a Saturday and Sunday, the boys of Admin Four (one of the dorm halls), snuck into the chapel, unbolted the heavy wooden theater-style seats from the floor, turned them around, and bolted them back down backwards. So when the student body showed up for Chapel the following Monday, all the seats were facing the back of the auditorium. (Mind you, these are seats that were joined by metal posts; you could only remove them together as one long row!)
During the “backwards chapel,” the VP of Student Services, Dr. Burkholder, declared that it was truly a classic prank in the school’s history, and invited the perpetrators to stand and be acknowledged by the school. Half a dozen of them did so, to thunderous applause – and were promptly informed that they would be spending the rest of the afternoon putting the seats back.
posted by Andrea on 3-12-2008 at 10:00 pm
This all reminds me of the Austin Seven van that was placed on top of the Cambridge University Senate House. Not a trivial matter by all accounts, not least because of the 450 ft of rope involved. (Google for, “a van that went up in the world”)
posted by Matt on 4-9-2008 at 11:18 am
I seem to recall seeing a TV news story in the 80s about a VW Beetle suspended from the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver, BC. It was suspected UBC Engineering students were involved.
posted by Ashe on 4-12-2008 at 8:09 pm
I hate to be a stickler for details, but in John Green’s story he said that he went to Georgia to buy the fireworks. The problem is that they don’t sell fireworks in Georgia (but they do in Alabama!?).
Gotta call b.s. on this story. It’s lame anyway.
posted by Ken on 7-25-2008 at 11:05 am
The Engineering students at the University of Saskatchewan hung a car under a bridge a few years back with the message.”car for sale , need money for tuition.”
posted by fallon on 7-30-2008 at 2:59 am
There’s a legendary favorite at my old high school. There’s a wax statue of John Wooden in the hallway which is very creepy, and insulting in my opinion as the poor guy is still alive and well. There is also an old 50s restaurant in town that has a stuffed gorilla outside, sometimes dressed in a suit or something. Somebody, and I wish I knew who, switched the dummy with the gorilla, and students came to school to see a gorilla in a sweatband inside the glass case. Supposedly this was pulled off three years in a row, but all I know is that now such an attempt would result in immediate expulsion. What noble minds we have.
posted by Rebecca on 8-14-2008 at 10:19 am
John Greene might be the worst story teller of all time. worst 10 minutes of my life wasted by that video
posted by Mark on 8-23-2008 at 12:05 pm
here’s a good prank:
my friend’s roommate had a cat. one day, my friend starts cleaning the litter box after each, err, deposit. The roommate, accustomed to doing this chore himself, notices that a few days have passed and the litter box is ‘unused’. He expresses concern and even takes kitty to the vet. Obviously there are no problems, but the “problem” continues for a few more days: no poop.
finally, after a week and a half, my friend “backs one out” directly into the litter box.
when the roommate comes home and sees the massive dump that “kitty” finally made, he freaks out and even goes running to check the poor feline’s butt. Kitty sure was bewildered by the unnecessary probing.
Ah, priceless!
posted by erik on 9-11-2008 at 6:36 pm
I remember hearing of a prank where a group of Harvard Students posing as ‘yale glee club’ members went to a Yale/Harvard Football game and passed out pieces of cardboard on the Yale side of the stadium which read “we suck”. I remember of seeing a movie of it online but that had to take some really great planning to pull off.
posted by Ben W. on 9-17-2008 at 9:37 am
As a senior prank at my high school the seniors released crickets in the cafeteria. Our school chirped for months.
posted by Lindsay on 9-23-2008 at 9:43 am
Not so much of a prank but I still get a kick out of this.
When Robert E Lee was the president of Washington College (post civil war) the schools custodian was minorly injured in an explosion. The cause of the explosion, a pair of students were having their firewood stolen, so their bored into a piece, filled it with black powder and placed it back into their woodpile on the pretense that whoever had a small bang in their fire was the thief. Well they used way too much powder and really blew things up. By the way, the culprit was the custodian. Instead of hauling wood farther than necessary, he was taking from the students woodpile to fill others.
posted by dbus on 9-24-2008 at 7:06 pm
I know this isn’t the greatest prank ever, but it amused me:
The powers that be at Freed-Hardeman University decided that we really ought to have a campus Christmas tree. To that end, they made a hole in the brickwork in the commons, at the top of the steps where everyone passes. They installed a tree stand and brought in a huge tree…however, they apparently didn’t look at it very well first. It look like a giant upside down pineapple.
Then, the only decorating they did to the tree was white lights…strung vertically. Now, it looked like a pineapple with a hair net. The students were, of course, amused.
One morning just a few days before finals, we walked by the tree to find that someone had added to the decoration with toilet paper. So, we had a tp’d green pineapple with a hair net. :)
I don’t know who did it; the girls from my dorm and I were accused because we had been out dancing around it singing something-or-other a little after midnight the night it happened (too much cookie dough and the dorm Christmas party), but we didn’t.
posted by freebird on 9-26-2008 at 5:44 pm
The only prank I ever pulled in college was on a personal level: The friend of a friend had been ousted from his dorm room because his roommate had a girl over (who was not his girlfriend), so I called his answering machine and left a message for his roommate as “Lydia” claiming that my period was late and we needed to talk immediately. I even cried at the end before hanging up.
I did see a fountain on campus filled with bubble bath once, but it was gone by 9 a.m.
posted by Joanna on 10-1-2008 at 1:45 pm
some great pranks listed here kuddos to anyone who did one…however, regarding the numbered pigs prank, that was featured on the tv show “90210″.
posted by Dana on 11-11-2008 at 8:55 pm
I must say, the “Bonsai” kitten website is sick.
posted by KamiAteYourSoul on 11-13-2008 at 8:58 am
My dad and some of his frat brothers pulled one at MTSU in the 70’s. An old theater that had tiered seating was showing Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, and they smuggled a chicken into the upper tier seating. During the scene where the crows attack the children, they threw the chicken off the balcony into the main seating below. May dad said they cleared the theater and his main regret was “I never did get my chicken back.”
posted by Ender's Mirror on 11-27-2008 at 9:51 pm
Harvey Mudd College has a long history of pranking. So much so that they have a page on their website of guidelines.
Cal Tech has produced some famous pranks and even has moeny available from the Associated Students budget.
Wikipedia has a page on the Cal Tech that includespranks and Ditch Day which have been listed in three books.
posted by Richard Dietzel on 1-14-2009 at 2:48 am
One I remember that hasn’t been mentioned happened in 1982, after that famous Cal-Stanford football game that ended with the five-lateral TD play and the Stanford trombone player getting run over. A few days later, the Stanford school newspaper staff was able to get a template of the Cal front poage and printed up copies with a fake story that the Pac-10 Conference overruled the refs and awarded the game to Stanford. They then went over to Berkeley and distributed the fake newspapers on the Cal campus.
posted by Mike C on 1-20-2009 at 5:26 pm
Half-time at a Harvard/Yale football game; “the big game”, only MIT techies thought they would get a little attention for their school too. In the midst of the tooting and twirling of marching bands, a small explosion and an automatic (of course) blowing up of a large baloon in the center of the field, sporting “MIT”. Anyone else remember this and the year?
posted by Tom M on 1-20-2009 at 7:20 pm
Rick, is the Wisconsin story accurate when it says P&S promised to bring Lady Liberty and then claimed it fell through?
I was at Wisconsin in the ’80s, and I never saw the prank represented or remembered as anything other than a (SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN’T SEEN “PLANET OF THE APES”) reference to the last scene from “Planet of the Apes.”
posted by Brachinus on 1-21-2009 at 10:41 am
The Yale “We Suck” prank is the most ingenius prank of the past 50 years. It is all that a college prank should be. Read Wikipedia.
posted by Bob on 2-27-2009 at 12:01 am
Wasn’t just the universities.
Back in the ’70s when HP was still a fun place to work, we pulled of a classic prank.
The site had just gotten one of the first computerized switchboards, with lots of cool features. One of the features was ring-back where if a line was busy, you could dial a code and your phone would ring when the line was free.
One night, several of us took the lab manager’s phone off the hook, and then dialed his number with the ringback code from every phone in the R&D lab.
Next morning the lab manager came in and noticed his phone was off the hook. When he hung up, every phone in the lab rang. The second ring was cut off when the master fuse blew. Phones were out all morning.
posted by Jayn_j on 3-6-2009 at 12:51 am
I heard of one prank that UCLA pulled off against their crosstown rivals – on the day before a UCLA-U$C football game, the UCLA marching band was competing at the Colosseum. At the end of their routine, the marching band spells out the UCLA script logo, and when they all take their bow, they puncture the small packets of bleach around their ankles. This left the UCLA logo bleached onto the field for the game the following day.
posted by Jeremy on 3-22-2009 at 11:06 pm
The best prank I was involved in, started out as they all do as a joke after some idiot Seniors at St. Peters school in N.Z. were caught stealing alcohol from the House Masters office. They took the bottles with them and tried to hide them in the dorm (retards).
Anyway after the way we saw how this upset our House Master my mates decided to go one better. He had put a new proper lock on the door, so we had to plan it better than our predecessors. We climbed up the drainpipe (second story), We took the liquor cabinet apart and carried all the pieces out onto the farm (school is in the middle of a huge farm).
In the morning we all got mustered while he ranted and raved about what had happened and that he was going to call the police. Which he did, and they could not figure out how the whole thing had been taken with the door locked.
We got drunk for months on the buried bottles.
posted by LRS on 4-1-2009 at 3:44 am
After I left boarding school I joined the Navy, who frowned upon pranks so I was stuck with practical jokes.
Best one was….
My mate had saved up for a Ducati bike, its cost a lot of dosh and he was super proud of it, driving around the base and showing everybody it who didn’t care.
So we told him that model was famous for the motors going and it would make a loud screaming noise just before it went. We even told him someone in the U.S. had both his legs blown off when he was going too fasts and the motor actually blew up. (having the internet has ruined making up stories like that).
We then super glued a whistle to the bottom of the bike after spray painting it black.
Anyway he took off and we expected him to turn right around so we could have a laugh. After about 10 mins we figured it hadn’t worked or fallen off so we went for a drink. Anyway he came back about 6 hrs later pushing his bike almost in tears and swearing to kill the salesmen.
Apparently our whistle trick did not work until he got to the motorway and got over 100km. At that point he thought it would blow up and take his legs off, pulled over and pushed it all the way back to the base (about 12 km).
When we told him the truth he didn’t think it was funny and tried to punch me in the head and didn’t talk to me for weeks ?
posted by LRS on 4-1-2009 at 8:23 pm
Cute prank at my small town highschool by the chemistry teacher and his geeky students. Everyone liked to take the attendence slip down to the office so they could walk the halls and socialize. One day after the lucky student was given the honor of an afternoon walk to the office, the teacher had everyone squeeze into his adjoining office to wait for his return. Nothing more to the story except giggling students hiding and a puzzled nerd alone in a chemistry lab, I said it was cute, not ingenious.
posted by J.Mo on 6-9-2009 at 3:27 am
I think the most ballsy prank was when college students (allegedly from Tulane University – although that gives them too much credit) freed LSU’s live bengal tiger, Mike IV.
From Mike The Tiger.com: “On November 28, 1981, about 1:00am, Dr. Bivin got a call from the LSU police. “Mike’s out,” they said. “Mike who?” he asked. The police responded, “Mike the tiger. He’s out in the middle of North Stadium Drive.” It seems some pranksters had cut the chain to the outer door and the lock to the inner door, releasing the dangerous cat. Mike was wandering around the north end of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. He ended up in the Bernie Moore Track Stadium. Mike attacked a small tree along the way and appeared to be enjoying himself. After three tranquilizers, Mike was returned to his cage and awoke the next morning with no ill effects.”
To coax that 600 lb. tiger out of his cage either took some serious balls or some total idiots – but then ‘total idiots’ may give more creedance to Tulane.
Luckily no one was eaten!
posted by D McG on 6-18-2009 at 10:29 am
I joined a fraternity at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1978. During our initiation, pledges were each required to carry a certain number of condoms with them and produce them on demand if asked.
A buddy and I went to a local pharmacy to get them for all of the pledges (they were kept behind the counter back then). When I asked the pharmacist for six dozen condoms, his first response was to ask “can I come with” ?
posted by David McPheeters on 6-22-2009 at 9:34 pm
there are more collage hoaxes and in greater detail on the museum of hoaxes webesite
posted by Jesi on 7-11-2009 at 4:57 pm
the greatest prank of all time in my opinion was this broadcast about invaders from mars. Apparently back in the day people were very gullible and the report scared practically almost every citizens of the united states. The report just happened to a play on the radio and yet it freaked out so many gullible people.The time of when this prank happened, I don’t know.
posted by Anna on 8-10-2009 at 12:24 am
That wasn’t a broadcast about invaders from mars. It was a radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. People didn’t realize it was an oral reading of the book, thought it was real, and totally freaked out. Not a prank – just a stupid move.
posted by Sylvia on 8-19-2009 at 12:12 am
I remember Bonsaikitten from the beginning and loved it from the moment I saw it. Genius, and pooh pooh on those who are still mad 9 years after they’ve known it was a hoax. As a cat owner, I admit squishing my cat’s face in my hands, piling stuff on top of him (stuffonmycat.com, anyone?), flattening his ears, etc, all for a giggle, and all whilst he happily and obliviously purrs.
posted by Spencer on 8-20-2009 at 5:20 pm
I went to conservative college that had men’s dorms on one side of campus, and women’s on the other. The men had to walk up a hill past a tennis court to get to the cafeteria.
We girls found a dead raccoon on the side of the road, collected it, took it back to school, stored it for a few days, then when it was particularly rank smelling we got it out, dressed it up, and set it up in a beach scene on the side of the tennis court.
We got up extra early the next morning and watched all the guys have to walk past it on the way to breakfast.
Needless to say, they weren’t happy about it. It smelled awful, and the Dean was pissed. No one ever found out it was us though. My good friends still talks about how mad he was, and he had to clean it up. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was involved.
Good times, smelly, but good..
posted by Tiffany on 8-25-2009 at 9:29 am
John Green’s prank might have been funny had someone else tell it. Wow, he couldn’t tell a funny a story if he tried. I basically half listened to his ramblings while I read the rest.
posted by That Jeff on 8-26-2009 at 8:57 pm
A note on the Statue of Liberty prank: the statue was recreated this past winter on the Madison campus. I’m not sure who did it, but it puzzled a lot of people.
posted by Julia on 9-28-2009 at 5:42 pm
You missed a great one where MIT students planted a weather balloon under the turf at Harvard Stadium. It inflated with helium by remote control during “The Game” (Harvard vs. Yale, played at Harvard in odd-numbered years) rising from the field to display a large banner lettered “MIT.” This was at least 20 years ago, I don’t have the specific year.
posted by Dick Kimball on 10-6-2009 at 3:12 pm
Greasing the rails. Why didn’t Snidley Whiplash think of that!
(Seriously, there are so many ways that could have ended tragically!)
posted by Galvo on 10-30-2009 at 12:30 am
The MIT balloon at the Harvard-Yale game was in 1982. If you go to the website http://hacks.mit.edu/ or to wikipedia you can see lists and lists of pranks (known as “Hacks” at MIT)that happened at Harvard Yale football games, and there have been a lot of good ones since the balloon hack.
My personal favorite at MIT was the famous “No Knife” exhibit at a contemporary art gallery in the student center. In one corner stands an overturned trash can. Resting atop it is a lunch tray holding a single place setting minus a knife. In 1985, hackers managed to get these goods installed as a real exhibit. A gallery label read, in part, “The sterile lateralism of the grouped utensils (sans knife) conveys a sense of eternal ennui, framed within the subtle ambiance of discrete putrefaction.”
No critic of the exhibition ever realised that “No Knife” was a hack. So subtle, yet the perfect hack!
President Obama even was in on the hacking tradition when he spoke at MIT last month. He joked that he was late because the motorcade was parked on the dome. The top of the MIT dome is the usual place for lots of hacks (cop cars, R2D2, a fire engine, you name it).
posted by Heather on 11-11-2009 at 5:05 pm
A prank from my alma matter (the University of Guelph).
We have a large cannon in the centre of campus that was rumoured to have been used during the War of 1812. Although it is now tradition to paint the cannon for important events, it has a long history of being part of a series of prank wars between the engineering students and the Aggies (agriculture students). In my personal favourite it was lifted in top of MacNaughten (a lecture hall) and pointed to face in the direction of the president’s house.
posted by j on 11-11-2009 at 5:14 pm
Oh my goodness…what a RELIEF!!
Honestly, my teenhood has been scarred because I read about Bonsai Kittens back in 2001 and for the past 8 years I thought, call me gullible, it was a real, cruel, horrible, F-ed up thing that some sick people did. You don’t know how relieved I am right now…wheeeew. Now when I’m taking a long drive or I’m bored in school or at work, my mind won’t wander to that horrible act that I believed to be true.
I can truly sleep easy tonight.
posted by C. Oh on 11-13-2009 at 10:01 pm
I had tons of fun in college with my then roommate. We especially liked to pick on this one guy who thought himself a “ladies man” and who would often proposition us. Eww. I mean, he really was a creep.
One morning before a rain came in, we TP’d his precious sports car with 10 whole rolls. After the rain came, the TP clung to his car like paste.
Another time we stole the right side of every pair of of his shoes. It drove him nuts for a week.
One night, we went into his room (his roommate couldn’t stand him either so he always let us in) and stapled his underwear to the ceiling. It was awesome because his tighty-whiteys were seen through the window by the entire campus.
We once rigged a rope to the ceiling, so that when he opened his door, a giant water balloon swung into his face.
But he always knew it was us and once waited in ambush by our door to attack us with shaving cream. We were able to get away, which was too bad for him, because we returned the favor by writing on his window “Get your STDs here!” again, for all the campus to see.
posted by Christine on 11-20-2009 at 1:16 pm