11 People From History Who Knew A Good Prank When They Saw One

Thomas Edison worked at Western Union when he was 19 years old, and spent much of that time pranking his co-workers. One of his most well known pranks included wiring a bucket of water to a battery so anyone who took a sip would get shocked.

President Lincoln’s prank started out innocent enough, but almost ended in disaster. He told a couple of kids at a hotel that the inflated pig bladder they were playing with would be more fun if they heated it in the fireplace. This, unfortunately, resulted in the bladder exploding and sending coals flying across the room. When he and the kids tried to sweep the coals up, the broom caught fire and nearly burned the hotel down.

In Franklin’s “Poor Richard's Almanack” published in 1733, he predicted the day and time of his good friend Titan Leeds. When the date came and Leeds survived, instead of giving up the joke, Franklin wrote in the 1734 Almanack that Leeds had died and someone had stolen his identity. When Leeds finally died in 1738, Franklin published a piece that congratulated the man who had been falsely living as Leeds for the past five years.

FDR was a prankster in his childhood. One night when he was just 10 years old, he snuck into his nurses bedroom at night and slipped effervescent powder into her chamber pot. The next morning when she used it and it proceeded to steam, she thought there was something wrong with her health. The nurse never figured out exactly what was going on, but Roosevelt’s father did, and found it hilarious.

When he was in High School in 1931 JFK threw firecrackers in a toilet, blowing the lid off. Headmasters of the school were so upset by the prank, they called the perpetrators “muckers.” Instead of letting it get him down, the future president went on to start the “Muckers Club,” which included him and 12 of his closest friends.

Joseph Hayden once hired a large group of musicians for the strangest outdoor concert you’ve ever heard of. He had them scatter in random places in the neighborhood and at a specific time, had them play anything. When they started, it annoyed neighbors so much, they booed and even called the police. Most of the musicians were safe, but the drummer and the violinist were both arrested.

Da Vinci once created wings out of scales and then attached them to a lizard, convincing his friends it was a dragon he would carry around in his pocket.

Duchamp’s most famous work, and a major piece of the Dada movement started out as a joke. He entered the urinal into an art exhibition in 1917 and it ended up becoming “an icon of twentieth-century art.”

The Huckleberry Finn author started out as a reporter and tried his hand at satire, but unfortunately no one seemed to understand it. He wrote an article about a petrified man who was discovered once, and thought that since the man in the story was found thumbing his nose, people would understand it was a joke. Unfortunately everyone believed the story was true.

For someone who has access to a whole lab of materials, Curie’s pranks were incredibly mild. When she noticed a relative of hers drank quite a bit of milk, she started thinning it out over time until he noticed. Going for a bit more, another time Curie and her cousin once nailed that same relative’s shoes and furniture to the ceiling.

Woolf and her friends once dressed in turbans and caftans, painted their faces darker and told the British Navy they were Abyssinian princes. Their disguises got them onto the H.M.S. Dreadnought. They ended up running into Woolf’s cousin who was a naval officer on board. Either they weren’t very close cousins, or the disguises were incredibly good, because he didn’t recognize her. The friends said they would keep the prank a secret, but eventually word got out, and it was front page news.