pranklopedia_sample pgs_Final2.indd - Workman Publishing

ha l l
the prankster
of fame
Hugh Troy
The Human Rhino
Hugh Troy was an artist who illustrated children’s books. He also excelled at the
art of pranking. He pulled one of his best hoaxes while he was a college student
in Ithaca, New York, in the 1920s. He knew a certain professor who had a wastebasket
that was made out of a rhinoceros foot. One day after a big snowstorm, Troy and
a friend borrowed the wastebasket and used it to make a trail of rhino footprints
across the snow. When they got to the edge of a frozen lake, they cut a big hole in
the ice so it looked like the rhino had fallen in. The story that a rhino had drowned
in the lake soon spread all over Ithaca. Because the town’s water supply came from
the lake, some people even stopped drinking water--until Troy revealed that he was
the rascal behind the rhino.
Troy had some advice on how to invent
your own pranks. He said that rather
than consciously trying to think up a prank,
you should just be open to ideas that come to
you as you observe what’s around you.