San Serriffe is a fictional island nation created for April Fools' Day, 1977, by staff members of Britain's Guardian newspaper. An elaborate description of the nation, using puns and plays on words relating to typography (such as "sans serif"), was reported as legitimate news, apparently fooling many readers who did not understand the joke and did not understand that there was a reason that the island was also known as Hoaxe. In more recent years knowledge of typography has spread through widespread use of computers, and so the jokes are much more likely to be spotted.
The first version of the hoax appeared in the British newspaper The Guardian on April 1, 1977. A seven-page supplement was 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 island was reused for similar hoaxes in 1978, 1980 and 1999.
The original idea was to have it located in the Atlantic Ocean near Tenerife, but due to the ground collision of two Boeing 747s there a few days before publication, in the original Guardian newspaper report it was moved to the Indian Ocean, near the Seychelles Islands.
San Serriffe was one of the most famous and successful hoaxes of recent decades; it has become part of the common cultural heritage of literary humour, and a secondary body of literature has been derived from it.
