The History of April Fools' Day
Last Modified: 01/04/2019
A new calendar system is said to have started the tradition of playing pranks on the first day of April.
- 1April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is the one day of the year...
- 2...when you are allowed to mercilessly prank your friends, family and coworkers.
- 3How exactly did this day come about?
- 4We don't actually know for sure what started the celebration of April Fools' Day.
- 5References can be found as early as the 1500s...
- 6...but these accounts are infrequent and not very detailed.
- 7The most popular theory is that it began around 1582 in France...
- 8...during the reformation of the calendar.
- 9Before France adopted the Gregorian calendar,...
- 10...they celebrated New Year's for eight days,...
- 11...beginning on March 25th and ending on April 1st.
- 12When they switched calendar systems, the eighth day moved from April 1st to January 1st.
- 13Because they didn't have Internet, phones, social media and a mail system,...
- 14...a lot of people didn't hear about this change until years later.
- 15Those that did not hear about the change continued to celebrate New Year's in April.
- 16Others refused to celebrate it out of rebellion.
- 17Those that had been informed of the change and adjusted their calendars...
- 18...began to make fun of these fools who are uninformed or rebellious.
- 19These harassment evolved into a tradition of playing pranks on the first day of April,...
- 20...and this spread to other countries.
- 21However, April Fools' Day was already established in England...
- 22...which didn't switch calendar systems until 1752.
- 23Also, people were already engaging in pranks and lightheartedness around this time of year,...
- 24...long before the French switched their calendar systems.
- 25Such is in the case of the ancient Roman festival of Hilaria.
- 26Other celebrations of April Fools' Day have slightly different traditions...
- 27...depending on the country you are in.
- 28But they all have the similar theme of pranking or humiliating individuals.
- 29In France, they try to tape an image of a fish to your back without you noticing.
- 30And in Portugal, they throw flour at you.
- 31In England, you are only supposed to pull jokes until noon.
- 32If you pull a joke after noon, you are called an April fool.
- 33In the United States and Britain,...
- 34...even popular media outlets and companies have been known to get involved in the fun.
- 35In 1996, Taco Bell announced that it had purchased the Liberty Bell from the city of Philadelphia...
- 36...and was going to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell.
- 37In 1992, NPR claimed that Richard Nixon will be running again for President.
- 38British publication The Guardian famously pranked the public in 1977,...
- 39...when they said that a semicolon-shaped island in the Indian Ocean had been discovered.
- 40This hoax is credited for launching the trend of April Fools' Day pranks by British tabloids.
- 41So hopefully, you now know a little more about the history of April Fools' Day.
- 42Or, at least what we think the history of it is
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