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Did you know? · No. 14 · Fun fact ·

HTTP 418 began as an April 1 coffee-pot joke—and is now reserved

A status-code card showing “418” and the line “A joke code now reserved for HTTP.”

Status code 418 was born in RFC 2324, “Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol,” published on 1 April 1998. Its joke protocol said a teapot asked to brew coffee should return “418 I'm a teapot.” The RFC was Informational, not an Internet standard.

The joke stuck. RFC 9110, the HTTP Semantics standard published in June 2022, marks 418 “Unused” and reserves it in the IANA HTTP Status Code Registry. That means it cannot currently be assigned to other applications, though the standard allows future reassignment if circumstances require it.

For a real website, playful codes make debugging harder and may confuse tools or visitors. Use an HTTP response that describes the situation: 404 when a page is not found, 410 when it is intentionally gone, and 503 when service is temporarily unavailable.

Try this on your site

Review your custom error routes this week. Return 404, 410, or 503 where they fit, and give visitors a clear, helpful error page.

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