It's Bob and Doug, eh, hoser

As every schoolkid knows, Edison invented the telephone in 1876, because he wanted to call a girl he had met in Kankakee, Illinois.

But did you know that it only took eight years for schoolkids to invent prank phone calls? The first mention of a fake call was mentioned in "Electric World" magazine in 1884:

A Grave Joke on Undertakers.—Some malicious wag at Providence, R.I., has been playing a grave practical joke on the undertakers there, by summoning them over the telephone to bring freezers, candlesticks and coffins for persons alleged to be dead. In each case the denouement was highly farcical, and the reputed corpses are now hunting in a lively manner for that telephonist.

Of course, the modern version of that one is calling an undertaker and asking to speak to "Myra Mains." Or calling Bekins Moving and Storage under the name May Flower Van Lines. Or calling the French Embassy as "Lafayette S. Cadrille."
Or calling a plumber and saying your name is "Lee Keysink."

(If this is starting to sound like pranks I might have pulled, well.)

But we who used the phone for amusement now can feel better. Those Dad Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken "landed" in the Gulf of Mexico (why don't we say they "waterered" in the Gulf?) on Sunday, they were just bobbing around with time on their hands...and a satellite phone. They had to wait for a pickup ride in a boat, so....

"Five hours ago we were in a spaceship bobbing around making prank satellite phone calls to whoever we could get ahold of," Hurley said later at a press conference. "Which was kind of fun, by the way."

Whom did they call? So who did they call? At least a few familiar names, according to Space.com. NASA flight director Anthony Vareha said, "I received one of these calls at the flight director console. It started with an opening line like 'Hi, it's Doug and Bob, and we're in the ocean.' I think my response was, 'Yeah, I can see that.'"

Behnken's wife is a fellow astronaut named Megan McArthur, and she also got a call. "On my phone it said 'Spam Risk.' Glad I answered anyway!" she tweeted.

Please note that Hurley and Behnken did not order a pizza or call a bar and ask for Hugh Jass or ask a tobacconist if he had Prince Albert in a can.  But after their nine-week space jaunt, the path is clear to launch SpaceX in September to send a crew of six to the International Space Station.

And if among six people, no one can call some random number and say you're calling from the phone company and a guy is outside on the pole working on the lines, so DO NOT ANSWER the phone for the next fifteen minutes or he will be seriously shocked and then as soon as you hang up, you call them back and shriek like a banshee, then this is not the country where I grew up. Or not.