WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? TRY THE ROYAL NAVY.

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A little over 100 years ago, the HMS Dreadnought was the biggest and baddest ship in the British Navy--or for that matter, on the entire planet. A whole class of battleships was named after it, and it inspired a revolution in battleship design all over the world favoring huge vessels wielding gargantuan guns with a bore diameter of twelve inches or more. In fact, even today the term "dreadnought" is a synonym for something of extreme size and invincibility that would be all over you like scum on a pond if you were to attempt to mess with it.

Also a little over 100 years ago, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes and other persons less famous belonged to an informal British intellectual club called the Bloomsbury Group. In 1910, Woolf and five other Bloomsburites sent a telegram to the commander of the Dreadnought indicating that his vessel was going to be visited by Abyssinian royalty. Woolf and her confederates showed up at the ship in oriental garb and blackface paint and were welcomed aboard with an honor guard, naval band, and red carpet. They spoke amongst themselves with an invented language punctuated with frequent exclamations of "Bunga! Bunga!" They eschewed all offers of food, explaining through an "interpreter" (who was part of the group) that the meals had not been properly prepared. In reality, they were afraid that their makeup would come off in the process of eating.

No one suspected a thing until someone called the newspapers after the visit was over. The British Navy was incensed, probably most of all by the fact that a female had been aboard one of their ships. King Edward was also not happy. British seamen were not particularly thrilled, either, when they would be on shore leave and citizens would yell "Bunga! Bunga!" at them. Purportedly, the Royal Navy caught two of the perpetrators and caned them but declined to do so with Woolf, as she was a girl.

Someone in the Royal Navy nonetheless eventually developed a sense of humor. During World War I, the Dreadnought sank a German submarine. The British Admiralty sent a congratulatory message to the ship which simply stated, "BUNGA BUNGA."

I originally read about this prank in mental_floss, a publication I highly recommend.