I've been into reading about great hacks and pranks lately, because I received Nightwork : A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT [amazon.com] for Christmas.
Recently, there was a thread about Great Hacks and Pranks of Our Time on Slashdot [slashdot.org]. And in it, someone posted [slashdot.org] about The Great Rose Bowl Hoax [museumofhoaxes.com], which I had never heard of before.
Apparently, in 1961, there was a Rose Bowl game between the Minnesota Golden Gophers and the Washington Huskies. The Huskies cheerleaders had arranged for cards to be distributed to the stands so that during half-time, there could be a flip-card show. After receiving the signal from the cheerleaders, the cards would be held up in the air to show a huge "HUSKIES" for the television cameras, for example.
Well, some Caltech students figured out a way to have the cards distributed in a different order so that CALTECH would be displayed in the middle of the flipcard show. And it was broadcast on TV.
I pretty much laughed my ass off throughout the entire read.
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