Bbc Facts

On April Fool’s Day, 1976, the BBC convinced many listeners that a special alignment of the planets would temporarily decrease gravity on Earth. Phone lines were flooded with callers who claimed they felt the effects.

A 29-year-old London stockbroker secretly organised 8 trains that smuggled 669 Jewish children out of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939 - forging documents, bribing officials, finding British families - then told nobody for 50 years. In 1988, the BBC invited him to sit in a studio audience without explaining why. The host asked anyone who owed their life to Nicholas Winton to stand. The entire row behind him rose. He had no idea they were there.