[PW] Marco Polo and pasta

[S M Colowick]

I just read about this hoax in the Southwest Airlines in-flight
magazine (the March issue, I think). I don't know if the spaghetti
spot was ever shown on U.S. TV. My friend was pretty adamant about
having seen the pasta trees in a feature-length film about Marco Polo,
but she definitely could have been confused.

The Southwest article described several famous April Fool's stories
and raised the question as to who puts on better put-ons, the US or
British media. My favorite hoax described in the article was the
Guardian's 1977 travel supplement featuring the island nation of San
Seriffe, which consists of the islands Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse.
"The Guardian reported that its phones rang all day as people called
up requesting more information about the island."
(http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/San_Serriffe/)

smc

On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 8:41 AM, Dennis Lien <Dennis.K.Lien-1 at tc.umn.edu> wrote:

> No Marco Polo aspect, but the "spaghetti growing on trees" film is
> a famous hoax from 1957:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_tree
>
> Maybe the friend's memory conflated a viewing of this with one of
> another Marco Polo film, or maybe somebody did a parody of the hoax...?