April Fools Day, 1st April April Fools’ Day, also called All Fools’ Day, is, in most countries the first day of April. It received its name from the custom of playing practical jokes on this day—for example, telling friends that their shoelaces are untied or sending them on so-called fools’ errands. Although the day has been observed for centuries, its true origins are unknown and effectively unknowable. It resembles festivals such as the Hilaria of ancient Rome, held on March 25, and the Holi celebration in India, which ends on March 31. Some have proposed that the modern custom originated in France, officially with the Edict of Roussillon, in which Charles IX decreed that the new year would no longer begin on Easter, as had been common throughout Christendom, but rather on January 1. Because Easter was a lunar and therefore moveable date, those who clung to the old ways were the “April Fools.” Others have suggested that the timing of the day may be related to the vernal equinox (March 21), a time when people are fooled by sudden changes in the weather. There are variations between countries in the celebration of April Fools’ Day, but all have in common an excuse to make someone play the fool. In France, for example, the fooled person is called poisson d’avril (“April fish”), perhaps in reference to a young fish and hence to one that is easily caught; it is common for French children to pin a paper fish to the backs of unsuspecting friends. In Scotland the day is Gowkie Day, for the gowk, or cuckoo, a symbol of the fool and the cuckold, which suggests that it may have been associated at one time with sexual license; on the following day signs reading “kick me” are pinned to friends’ backs. In many countries newspapers and the other media participate—for example, with false headlines or news stories. Some Examples The Swiss Spaghetti The news report on BBC television was produced as an April Fools' Day joke in 1957, and presented a family in the canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland gathering a bumper spaghetti harvest after a mild winter and "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil". Footage of a traditional "Harvest Festival" was aired along with a discussion of the breeding necessary to develop a strain to produce the perfect spaghetti noodle length. Some scenes were filmed at the (now closed). Pasta Foods factory on London Road, St Albans, in Hertfordshire, and at a hotel in Castagnola, Switzerland. Panorama cameraman Charles de Jaeger dreamed up the story and the editor of Panorama, Michael Peacock, told the BBC in 2014 how he gave de Jaeger a budget of £100 and sent him off. The report was made more believable through its voice-over by respected broadcaster Richard Dimbleby. Peacock said Dimbleby knew they were using his authority to make the joke work, and that Dimbleby loved the idea and went at it eagerly At the time, 7 million of the 15.8 million homes (about 44%) in Britain had television receivers. Pasta was not an everyday food in 1950s Britain, and it was known mainly from tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce and considered by many to be an exotic delicacy. An estimated eight million people watched the programme on 1 April 1957, and hundreds phoned in the following day to question the authenticity of the story or ask for more information about spaghetti cultivation and how they could grow their own spaghetti trees; the BBC told them to "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best The islands of San Serriffe
In 1977, the Guardian published a travel guide to the mysterious island grouping of San Serriffe. The two islands, Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse, formed the shape of a semicolon. If that wasn’t enough to raise your suspicions, the part detailing education on the island read: “in addition to the mainstream subjects a San Serriffe teenager may well be offered pearl-diving as an A level choice”. Defying Gravity In 1976, renowned astronomer Patrick Moore appeared on BBC Radio 2 and announced that at 9:47am, we would feel what he called the ‘Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect’. He said that at that exact moment, the planets would align and gravity on Earth would get a tiny bit weaker, so if you jumped in the air at exactly the right moment, you would almost float. Evidently this was a load of rubbish, but it doesn’t stop the pseudo-science from being recirculated every so often by people who fall for it. Pi in the Sky Do you find the value of pi impossible to remember? Well then, this one’s for you. In 1998, news circulated that the state of Alabama was to pass a law that would redefine pi to the ‘Biblical value’ of 3, and it made people furious. When people started to write in to the Alabama state department to ask why they would do such a thing, it was revealed that physicist Mark Boslough (renowned for his humorous takes on science education) had started the rumour as an April Fools prank. Big Ben Becomes Digital Due to ongoing renovations, it’s been a while since we’ve heard the bongs of Big Ben. However, it’s been even longer since the BBC Overseas Service (now called the World Service) tried to convince the world that it would change to electronic beeps. In 1980, they announced to listeners that not only was the iconic clock face going digital, but that the first people to get in touch could win the hands of the clock. Unfortunately, this did not go down as well as they’d hoped and the BBC was apologising for weeks after the joke was made. Some people just clearly didn’t see the funny side Television In 1962, Swedish national television broadcast a 5-minute special on how one could get colour TV by placing a nylon stocking in front of the TV. A rather in-depth description on the physics behind the phenomenon was included. Thousands of people tried it. Smell-O-Vision: In 1965, the BBC purported to conduct a trial of a new technology allowing the transmission of odour over the airwaves to all viewers. Many viewers reportedly contacted the BBC to report the trial's success. In 2007, the BBC website repeated an online version of the hoax, as did Google in 2013, in tribute. In 1969, the public broadcaster NTS in the Netherlands announced that inspectors with remote scanners would drive the streets to detect people who had not paid their radio/TV tax. The only way to prevent detection was to wrap the TV/radio in aluminium foil. The next day all supermarkets were sold out of their aluminium foil, and a surge of TV/radio taxes were being paid. Great Blue Hill Eruption prank: On April 1, 1980, Boston television station WNAC-TV aired a fake news bulletin at the end of the 6 o'clock news which reported that Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts was erupting. The prank resulted in panic in Milton, where some residents began to flee their homes. The executive producer of the 6 o'clock news, Homer Cilley, was fired by the station In 2008, the BBC reported on a newly discovered colony of flying penguins. An elaborate video segment was even produced, featuring Terry Jones walking with the penguins in Antarctica, and following their flight to the Amazon rainforest. In 1988, Capital Radio in London gave all their breakfast-show time-checks one hour early, panicking listeners who needed to get up for work. The following year, when April 1 fell on a Saturday, they broadcast the usual weekday programme, together with rush-hour travel news, again worrying people into thinking they should be getting up. In 1998, UK Presenter Nic Tuff of West Midlands radio station pretended to be the British Prime Minister Tony Blair when he called the then South African President Nelson Mandela for a chat. It was only at the end of the call when Nic asked Mandela what he was doing for April Fools' Day that the line went dead. Archers Theme Tune Change: BBC Radio 4 (2005): The Today Programme announced in the news that the long-running serial The Archers had changed its theme tune to an upbeat disco style. In 2010, the UK newspaper The Independent reported that the Circle line of the London Underground was being considered as a new location for a particle accelerator by CERN. The National Geographic announced via Twitter in 2016 that they would no longer be publishing photographs of naked animals. In 2021, The Guardian UK newspaper reported that UN officials would review plans to construct a new canal called "Suez 2" along the Egypt-Israel border, prompted by the obstruction caused by the Ever Given, container ship, running aground.The story was picked up by media in Turkey, before it was marked as a fool at noon by the newspaper.
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