Where did April Fool’s Day come from and why do we celebrate it?
Check out some of the biggest pranks ever pulled
APRIL Fool's Day is a celebration of mischief with a long and interesting history.
Here we take a look at why the annual tradition is filled with pranks and hijinks.
Where did April Fool's Day come from?
April Fool’s Day falls on April 1 – as it does every year.
The day, which is sometimes referred to as All Fool's Day, is celebrated by playing practical jokes.
Victims are then called April fools and people playing the tricks usually expose their mischief by shouting “April fool!”
Theories surrounding the origin of April Fool's Day vary, making it difficult to confirm which is true.
Many people believe the tradition dates back to 1564 when France officially changed its calendar to the modern Gregorian version.
This movied the celebration of the New Year from the last week of March to January 1, with those who continued to celebrate the end of the year on April 1 ridiculed as fools.
But the issue with this idea is that the adoption of the new calendar was a gradual process — happening over the span of a century.
There is also literary evidence suggesting that April Fool's Day was celebrated even before the switch.
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Why is April Fool's Day on April 1?
Another theory is that the first link between April 1 and playing tricks can be found in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales from 1392.
In The Nun's Priest's Tale a fox tricks a rooster named Chauntecleer on "syn March bigan thritty dayes and two.”
Many readers seemingly took the line to mean March 32 — or April 1 — while Chaucer probably meant 32 days after March (May 2).
A belief held by some is that April Fool's Day was the result of a desire to celebrate the start of spring.
How is April Fool's Day celebrated?
The first great April Fool of the media age, and one that caused much uproar, was featured in a 1957 episode of BBC documentary Panorama.
The jape was especially powerful as no one would have believed that such a dignified programme would play such a prank.
The show reported on Switzerland's “spaghetti farmers” tendeding long, thin fields of crops of the popular pasta.
The voiceover said "Many of you, I am sure, will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantations in the Po valley”, before adding that this year had seen a record crop thanks to "the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil".
Another notable joke was carried out by fast-food giant Burger King with their “Left-Handed" Whopper, in 1998.
Burger King ran an ad in USA Today announcing its new "Left-Handed Whopper," which was specially designed for left-handed burger-lovers by rotating all condiments exactly 180 degrees.
When Burger King revealed the ruse the next day, they revealed thousands of customers had requested the new sandwich at their restaurants.
In more recent years Google has become known for its sneaky April Fool’s jokes — including the unveiling of a pigeon-based search algorithm, a research centre on the moon and a broadband system that runs through the toilet.
Sadly they cancelled 2020's due to the coronavirus — but parents got in on the act by telling their kids schools had reopened.
Newspapers get in on the action too with satire-news stories.
In 2019, The Sun told everyone that the Royal Mint would be hammering out a new poop emoji 50p piece.
And in 2006 we pictured a penguin living in the River Thames.
One April Fool's Day 2021 prank was uncovered before the day.
Volkswagen announced on March 30 that it would be rebranding the name of it US operations to "Voltswagen of America" — but it turned out to be part of an elaborate joke as part of a marketing campaign.
The day also sees plenty of April Fool's memes pop up.