Tegan Wusthoff ‘26, Photo Editor
As many know, April Fool’s Day is celebrated by many through telling jokes to and pulling pranks on others. The national day has been celebrated for hundreds of years with the earliest mention of it being from the late 1300s in the book The Nun’s Priest’s Tale written by Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer vaguely mentions something that would seem like April Fool’s Day, but unfortunately there are no true ties to the day and all of it is speculation at best.
A more concrete theory as to the origins of April Fool’s Day is the reforming of the calendar by Pope Gregory in France in 1500, taking place more than a century after the publication of Chaucer’s book. Many areas in France celebrated New Year’s on April 1, then the calendar got switched around, and the date for the new year became Jan. 1. With this change, some people still celebrated the holiday in April, and people who followed under the new calendar would make fools of them, calling them poisson d’Avril or “April fish.” Along with this, it is thought that pranks and jokes were played on the April fish. Finally, the earliest fully confirmed note of April Fool’s Day was in 1776 in Great Britain in an article from the Gentlemans Magazine.
Across time, this holiday is celebrated by many and people can really go all out for the special day. From corporations to news outlets to your ordinary person, thousands of foolish pranks have been pulled off spanning hundreds of years. For example, in 2008 the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) posted a documentary on flying penguins—which obviously are not real—to celebrate the silliness of the day. In 1950, The Progress, a Pennsylvania newspaper, published an issue with a picture of a flying saucer on the front page, wowing their readers.
The Dead Fairy Hoax is another hilarious prank pulled off by Dan Baines in 2007, when he managed to convince people he had found the mummified remains of a fairy and ended up making 280 British pounds selling the fake remains on eBay by auction. The piece was sold to an art collector to add to their collection. When Baines told the story of how he made the fake remains, many did not believe him: they thought he was trying to cover up some big secret, but most likely it was just a fun way to celebrate foolishness.
With many more April Fool’s Days to come, there will most definitely be more intricate and hilarious pranks down the road. Especially as technology advances, there will be plenty of ways to celebrate and pull some totally sick pranks on your good friends.
Lyon Life 