Photo: Mercedes-Benz
More than a decade ago, in 2007, the Guinness Book of World Records wrote down the 34.4-meter-high artificial tornado in the Mercedes-Benz Museum as the "strongest artificially generated tornado in the world." In 2019, it will be used for indoor skydiving. Or will it?
On Friday, just a short weekend away from April Fools Day, the Germans said that the 144 powerful air jets that were designed to clear out smoke in the 42-meter-tall atrium in the event of a fire will be used to make “persons weighing up to 120 kilograms hover weightlessly in space.”
For the chance to experience skydiving indoors, people will have to pay EUR 104 to rent the helmet, protectors and overalls and wait for their turn on the days when the museum is closed, on Mondays, “due to the powerful air flow and the noise level.”
“Normally, indoor skydiving takes place in vertical wind tunnels, in the flight chamber of which people can fly weightlessly in the air flow. Such systems, however, have nothing on the dimensions of the largest artificial tornado in the world in the Mercedes-Benz Museum,” says the carmaker in an official statement, which you can find attached below.
“The vast vortex moves the air of the entire exhibition space of the museum, comprising around 210,000 cubic metres of enclosed space.”
To accompany the announcement, the carmaker also released three rather poorly photoshopped images, showing just how this tornado skydiving thing works in the enclosed environment, with no safety net.
So there you have it. With this clever little joke sprinkled with traces of truth, Mercedes-Benz has officially kicked off the April Fools bonanza.
Expect to see more such news in the weekend ahead, and also on Monday, and we dare you to see how many fake news like this you can spot.
If the tricks pulled by the carmakers are good enough, we might even put together a best-of at the end of next week.
For the chance to experience skydiving indoors, people will have to pay EUR 104 to rent the helmet, protectors and overalls and wait for their turn on the days when the museum is closed, on Mondays, “due to the powerful air flow and the noise level.”
“Normally, indoor skydiving takes place in vertical wind tunnels, in the flight chamber of which people can fly weightlessly in the air flow. Such systems, however, have nothing on the dimensions of the largest artificial tornado in the world in the Mercedes-Benz Museum,” says the carmaker in an official statement, which you can find attached below.
“The vast vortex moves the air of the entire exhibition space of the museum, comprising around 210,000 cubic metres of enclosed space.”
To accompany the announcement, the carmaker also released three rather poorly photoshopped images, showing just how this tornado skydiving thing works in the enclosed environment, with no safety net.
So there you have it. With this clever little joke sprinkled with traces of truth, Mercedes-Benz has officially kicked off the April Fools bonanza.
Expect to see more such news in the weekend ahead, and also on Monday, and we dare you to see how many fake news like this you can spot.
If the tricks pulled by the carmakers are good enough, we might even put together a best-of at the end of next week.
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