April Fools' Day

April Fools' Day

The history of April Fool’s Day (also known as All Fool’s Day) can at best be called hazy.  April Fools' Day  is on the  first of April every year. It  is a day when people can play tricks, practical jokes and hoaxes on each other. No one really knows the exact origin of this day. The writer Mark Twain famously said: “This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we  are  on  the  other  three-hundred  and  sixty-four  days.”  In  some countries, you have until noon to play your jokes. If you play a trick on someone after midday, you are the April Fool. In other countries, April Fools' Day lasts  the whole day. On  this day, you never know what  or  who  to  believe.  Even  newspapers  and television  stations play  April  Fools'  jokes  on  their  readers  and  viewers.  Sometimes people actually think the real news is an April Fools' joke.

In France, “April fools” were called “Poisson d'Avril”, which is French for “April Fish”.  This began because people thought fish were easy to catch since they could be fooled into taking the bait on a hook. Children would tag a paper fish on a person’s back to mark them as an “April Fish”. When the person discovered the fish, the prankster would yell “Poisson d'Avril”.

The BBC showed a documentary of people in Switzerland cutting spaghetti from spaghetti trees. Lots of people contacted  the BBC asking how they could grow their own spaghetti  trees!  Another good one was the  “left-handed  burger” advertised by Burger King on April 1st, 1998. They  said  all  of  the juice  would  drip  out  of  the  right  hand side of  the  burger.  Many customers asked the Burger King staff for the  traditional  right-handed burger. Other classic jokes include the BBC’s 1965 new of “Smell-o-vision” and Google’s 2008 invitation for people to apply to be astronauts to live on the website’s  new base on Mars.  If you believe that, you’ll believe anything!