The Lovely Island of Sans Serriffe
Source: Wikipedia
San Serriffe is a fictional island nation created for April Fools' Day, 1977, by Britain's Guardian newspaper.[1] An elaborate description of the nation, using puns and plays on words relating to typography (such as "sans-serif" and names of common fonts), was reported as legitimate news. Because typographic terminology had not yet spread through widespread use of desktop publishing and word processing software, these jokes were easily missed by the general public, and many readers were fooled.
A seven-page hoax supplement appeared in The Guardian on 1 April 1977, published in the style of contemporary reviews of foreign countries, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the island's independence, complete with themed advertisements from major companies. The original idea was to place the island in the Atlantic Ocean near Tenerife, but because of the ground collision of two Boeing 747s there a few days before publication it was moved to the Indian Ocean, near the Seychelles Islands.
There is much more to this article plus follow up articles in the years since publication of the April fools edition.
You can read more about it: HERE
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