P94 2b
April Fool’s Day is a celebration that takes place in different countries around the world. It happens on April 1st every year and is a day when many people play all kinds of tricks and jokes on each other.
One April Fool’s Day, a reporter in England announced that there would be no more spaghetti because the spaghetti farmers in Italy had stopped growing spaghetti. Many people ran to their local supermarkets to buy as much spaghetti as they could. By the time people realized that the story was a hoax, all of the spaghetti across the country had been sold out. Another famous trick in England was when a TV show reported the discovery of special water. They said this water would help people lose weight and that one customer had already lost a lot of weight in just four months. By the end of the day, more than 10,000 people had phoned the TV station to find out how to get this water.
Many April Fool’s jokes may end up being not very funny. A famous TV star once invited his girlfriend onto his show on April Fool’s Day. He asked her to marry him. The lady was so happy because she really wanted to get married. However, when she said “yes”, he replied, “April Fool!” That little joke didn’t have a very happy ending. The TV star lost both his girlfriend and his show.
One of the world’s most famous tricks, however, happened in October rather than April. In that month in 1938, actor Orson Welles announced on his radio program that aliens from Mars had landed on the earth. He described where they had landed and told how they were moving across the United States. Welles made it sound so real that hundreds of people believed the story, and fear spread across the whole country. By the time police officers
announced that the story was a hoax, thousands of people had left their homes.
Section B , 2b
愚人节是一个世界上许多不同国家都会庆祝的节日。它在每年的4月1日，这是一个许多人会互相开各种玩笑或恶作剧的日子。
有一年的愚人节，英国的一位记者宣称，由于意大利农民停止种植意大利面条，以后将不再有意大利面了。许多人都跑到当地的超市尽可能多地买意大利面。等人们意识到这是一个恶作剧的时候，全国所有的意大利面条都被卖光了。在另一个著名的恶作剧中，英国一家电视节目报道发现了一种特殊的水。他们说这种水可以帮助人们减肥，有位消费者仅4个月就减掉了很多体重。（结果）在当天结束之前，超过1万人打电话到电视台，询问如何得到这种水。
许多愚人节玩笑的结局并不那么有趣。一位著名的电视明星曾在愚人节邀请他的女朋友上他的电视节目。他向她求婚，那位女士是如此的高兴，因为她真的想结婚了。然而，当她说好的时候，他却回答：“愚人节傻瓜”！这个小玩笑的结局并不愉快。电视明星失去了他的女朋友，而且他的节目也被取消了。
然而，世界上最出名的恶作剧之一却发生在10月而不是4月。在1938年的10月，演员奥森.威尔斯在他的电台节目中宣布来自火星的外星人已登陆地球。他描述了他们在哪里登陆，还告诉大家这些外星人正在如何穿越美国。威尔斯让他的话听起来如此逼真，以至于数以百计的人相信了这个故事，恐惧在整个国家蔓延。等到警察宣布这个故事是恶作剧时，已经有数以千计的人离开了他们的家园
。
