Welcome to 1 April 2007. It's April Fools' Day, by the way, a day when people with nothing better to do will try to pull a fast one over other people. I've given up on playing pranks on my friends and family but don't think that I've lost my sense of humour. I haven't!
While scouring the on-line news agencies, I came across a story about someone trying to sell on the Internet hairs that purportedly belonged to the Egyptian pharoah, Ramses II.
According to Reuters, an archaeological team from Egypt was on its way to France to retrieve the 3,200-year-old strands of hair taken from the mummified remains of the pharoah. The Reuters report said that last year, someone had offered to sell the hair on the Internet for between 2,000 and 2,500 euros (US$2,668 and US$3,336).
I don't know why, but I was immediately put on my guard the moment I saw this story. Something told me to be suspicious of it. Could this be an April Fools' joke in the making? The release of this news-worthy story so close to April 1 is just too coincidental. But, some newspapers in the world have carried this story...including China's People's Daily Online. Let's see whether Reuters will say more about this story tomorrow.
By the way, a good April Fools' story will normally try to include some real facts as part of its report in an attempt to make the story realistic. This are the real facts added to the Reuters exclusive:
"Ramses's mummy was discovered in 1881 and shortly afterwards moved to Cairo's Egyptian Museum. In the early 1970s authorities noticed his body was deteriorating and sent it to Paris, where it was treated for a fungal infection."
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