What the heck is April Fools Day all about?

[953 nut 51,899]

        April Fools tradition popularized

On this day in 1700, English pranksters begin popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools’ Day by playing practical jokes on each other.

Although the day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery. Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. These included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.

April Fools’ Day spread throughout Britain during the 18th century. In Scotland, the tradition became a two-day event, starting with “hunting the gowk,” in which people were sent on phony errands (gowk is a word for cuckoo bird, a symbol for fool) and followed by Tailie Day, which involved pranks played on people’s derrieres, such as pinning fake tails or “kick me” signs on them.

In modern times, people have gone to great lengths to create elaborate April Fools’ Day hoaxes. Newspapers, radio and TV stations and Web sites have participated in the April 1 tradition of reporting outrageous fictional claims that have fooled their audiences. In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees; numerous viewers were fooled. In 1985, Sports Illustrated tricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sid Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour. In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.

[stevasaurus 22,237]

Clowns to the left of me and jokers to the right. 

 

[953 nut 51,899]

Here are a couple more classics;

Some of the best April Fools’ Day pranks used the airwaves and newspapers to fool audiences, cause uproar and even ask the question: Well, if it’s on TV or in the paper it must be true, right?

Check out some of the more infamous hoaxes pulled by mainstream media and try not get duped this April Fools Day:

BBC’s “Spaghetti ­Harvest”

The BBC documentary show “Panorama” aired a three­-minute segment on April 1, 1957, about a family farm’s annual spaghetti harvest in the Alps of Switzerland. This particular pasta farm was much smaller than the typical pasta farms of Italy, and due to a mild winter, the spaghetti harvest was earlier than usual. The narrator describes the ability for uniform lengths of pasta to grow off of trees was the product of expert farming. The annual harvest is then celebrated by a traditional supper of what else? Pasta!

“For those who love this dish,” the narrator says, “there is nothing like real, homegrown spaghetti.”

People fell for the pasta prank, and hundreds of people called into the BBC to find out how to grow a spaghetti tree. This was one of the first April Fools’ Day hoaxes to utilize the relatively new medium of television to pull the prank.

Nixon For President (Again)

An institution like National Public Radio surely wouldn’t sacrifice journalistic integrity for the sake of a ruse, right? The April 1, 1992, broadcast of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” program broke news of former President Richard Nixon throwing his hat into the presidential race. The show even aired “exclusive” audio of the former POTUS announcing his campaign and saying “I never did anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.”

Calls of shock and outrage flooded NPR stations, and eventually, the show admitted that the story was a hoax, and the Nixon’s voice was actually comedian Rich Little.

► The 15th Annual New York City April Fools Day Parade

On April 1, 2000, television crews from CNN and the Fox affiliate WNYW arrived at the intersections of 59th Street and Fifth Avenue at noon, expecting to cover a non-existent parade.

According to the press release they'd received, the 15th Annual NYC April Fools Day Parade would march down the avenue to Washington Square Park. It would feature "Beat 'em, Bust 'em, Book 'em Floats created by the New York, Los Angeles and Seattle Police Departments, portraying themes of brutality, corruption and incompetence," and a "Mayor Rudy 'Doody' Giuliani" lookalike throwing elephant dung at passersby.

Longtime media prankster Joey Skaggs had been issuing fake news releases for the non-event recognizing "the day designated to commemorate the perennial folly of mankind" since 1986.

(Last year, he hooked the Chinese news agency Sinovision, which ran a 4-minutepreview before April Fools' Day.)

The tradition continues this year, with an announcement of the 31st annual parade.

[stevasaurus 22,237]

We are surrounded..Richard!!  Stupid people are everywhere.    I'm having trouble, but I am just trying to blend in. 

[squonk 38,987]

3 hours ago, stevasaurus said:

Clowns to the left of me and jokers to the right. 

 

 

I knew it!   

[ericj 1,576]

i'm a little late to the party, but didn't orsen wells pull off his alien invasion on april fools day

 

 

 

 

eric j 

[953 nut 51,899]

Do an internet search and you will find that it goes on forever. Last year @nylyon pulled an April Fools on us, told us he was selling the site, had planned to use it but couldn't find it. 

[Coadster32 793]

Nor sure if war of the worlds was on April 1st. or not.

[953 nut 51,899]

10 minutes ago, Coadster32 said:

Nor sure if war of the worlds was on April 1st. or not.

If memory serves me it was on Halloween, too many brain cells have died to remember everything.  

[ericj 1,576]

8 hours ago, 953 nut said:

If memory serves me it was on Halloween, too many brain cells have died to remember everything.  

now that you mentioned it you maybe right on that, sorry old sge is getting the better of me some days  

 

 

 

 

eric j