Funny News Headlines

About

Funny News Headlines are unintentionally humorous titles of news stories in print, broadcast or on the web, which are often shared on online humor communities.

Origin

On November 12th, 2000, the website HeadlineHumor.com^[3] was launched, which highlights notable examples of funny newspaper headlines, classified ads and signs.

Spread

On February 1st, 2001, the website for the Forum for English Language Teachers in Ireland^[2] posted a page titled “Funny Newspaper Headlines,” featuring examples of unintentionally humorous news headlines. On October 28th, 2003, the humor website Fun With Words^[1] posted a compilation of notable ambiguous headlines gathered from various newspapers. On September 24th, 2007, Redditor liberal_one submitted an image of an article with a placeholder headline to /r/reddit.com,^[6] where it gathered more than 930 votes (75% upvoted) prior to being archived (shown below).

On July 14th, 2009, Redditor theprizefight posted a photo of a television news report featuring a squirrel with a yogurt container on its head with the headline “One squirrel , one cup” (shown below, left). Prior to being archived, the post received upwards of 2,500 votes (90% upvoted) on the /r/funny^[5] subreddit. On June 23rd, 2010, Redditor krodnoc submitted a photograph of a newspaper headline about a woman who attacked her ex-girlfriend while wearing a sumo wrestler suit to the /r/pics^[4] subreddit, where it gained over 800 votes (94% upvoted) before it was archived (shown below, right).

On December 22nd, 2011, BuzzFeed^[7] highlighted 50 funny headlines from the past year. On May 24th, 2012, The Huffington Post^[9] published a compilation of poorly written headlines containing obvious statements. On April 22nd, 2013, the Internet humor blog Pleated Jeans^[8] highlighted 23 funny headline examples.