In Remembrance of Bad April Fool's Days Past

First, let me assure you that the photos below are fake. (Not the bananas, though.) Okay, although it’s long gone now, nine years ago the BonsaiKitten.com website debuted. The idea? Shape a kitten's growth like a bonsai tree.

“You no longer need be satisfied with a house pet having the same mundane shape as all other members of its species. With Bonsai Kitten a world of variation awaits you, limited only by your own imagination.”

By sealing a kitten inside a glass container, it would grow into the shape dictated by its confines. If anything stuck out, the gardener simply pruned it. But hey, this wasn't cruel; the container had an airhole and everything!

While Bonsai Kittens were in bad taste, nothing can top (or bottom) the joke that Saddam Hussein's oldest son, Uday played. As related by John Green:

Between 1998 and 2000, Uday's newspaper published a different April Fool's Day story each year, including one that jokingly told the Iraqi people that their food ration would be increased to include bananas. The people were like, “Oh thank God, I'm so hungry,” and then Uday was like, “Just kidding,” and then the people were all like, “Oh, ha ha! That was a good one, Uday. It's nice to know that you're not too busy with your 1,200 automobiles to share a joke with the commoners now and again.”