What the Public Is Good For

Wikipedia has often been ridiculed for not being a reliable source of information, as it is open to edits from the public. I've never found reason to agree with such detractors, especially now that I've seen one of these free-wheeling edits for myself. This one made it to the front page of Wikipedia, ladies and gentlemen, and I'm sure it made for many a bored person's entertainment. Enjoy.

Ima Hogg was an enterprising circus emcee who brought culture and class to Houston, Texas. A storied ostrich jockey, she once rode to Hawaii to visit the Queen. Raised in government housing, young Ima frolicked among a backyard menagerie of raccoons, possums and a bear. Her father, "Big Jim" Hogg, in an onslaught against fun itself, booby-trapped the banisters she loved to slide down, shut down her money-making schemes, and forced her to pry chewing gum from furniture. He was later thrown from his seat on a moving train and perished; the Hogg clan then struck black gold on land Big Jim had forbidden them from selling. Ima had apocryphal sisters named "Ura" and "Hoosa" and real-life brothers sporting conventional names and vast art collections; upon their deaths, she gave away their artwork for nothing and the family home to boot. Tragically, Ms. Hogg (a future doctor) nursed three dying family members. She once sweet-talked a burglar into returning purloined jewelry and told him to get a job. Well into her nineties, she remained feisty and even exchanged geriatric insults with an octogenarian pianist. Hogg claimed to have received thirty proposals of marriage in her lifetime, and to have rejected them all. Hogg was revered as the "First Lady of Texas", and her name and legacy still thrive today.

Ah, April Fool's Day. Thank you, Wikipedia, for making me feel like an idiot. Now can you please direct me to whose house I should burn down?

Then I did some more research, and I guess this is actually all historically accurate. I don't know whether to feel more duped for thinking it was an internet prank on Wikipedia, thinking it was Wikipedia's prank on me, or for insisting that this had to be some kind of prank when it's all actually real.