When Did April Fool's Day Start? First, ancient cultures used to celebrate New Year’s Day around April 1. Although the day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery. This version of the answer to the question how did April Fools’ Day start points to this difference. How Did April Fools’ Day Start? One of the first April Fools’ pranks occurred in 1698, when citizens of London were tricked into attending the lion-washing ceremony at the Tower of London, a ceremony that did not actually exist. One theory about April Fools day says that it originated from the festival “Hilaria.” Those are some of the theories of April Fools day but not all of them. On the same day, rival network NBC debuts its own ...read more, On April 1, 1946, an undersea earthquake off the Alaskan coast triggers a massive tsunami that kills 159 people in Hawaii. Why do we play Prank Calls or Wind-Ups on April 1st - No one really knows when this custom began & it's been kept for hundreds of years! Meanwhile, a French theory traces the origin of April Fools' Day back to the amount of fish that could be found in rivers when they had just hatched in early April. April Fools’ Day is one of the weirdest days celebrated all over the world. The closest point in time that can be identified as the beginning of April Fools' Day is 1582, in France. This moved the New Year from Spring (around April 1st) to January 1st. 9 Outrageous Pranks in History, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-fools-tradition-popularized. Those that did so were regarded as “April fools.” However, France traditionally celebrated the new year on Easter, not April 1st, so the theory does not explain why the first day of April became what it is today. Today, this day is known as ‘Roman Laughing Day’ in Rome. Another is that it falls near the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere, which statistically has unpredictable weather, thus making many people look foolishly unprepared. On April Fools Day 1974, a man hauled 70 tires into the crater of a dormant volcano in Alaska and set them on fire, terrifying nearby residents into thinking the volcano was erupting again.– Source 7. Some believe that April Fools’ Day started because of the Vernal Equinox, the start of spring. The Romans get together on the streets, sing and dance, organize masquerades and play games. ...read more, At the peak of his career, Marvin Gaye was the Prince of Motown—the soulful voice behind hits as wide-ranging as “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” and “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology).” Like his label-mate Stevie Wonder, Gaye both epitomized and outgrew the crowd-pleasing sound ...read more. What we do know is that the writer John Aubrey wrote about “Fooles holy day” in 1686 and that three years later, on April 1, many Londoners were tricked into going to the Tower of London to see “the washing of the lions,” a thrilling ceremony…that turned out to be completely fake. In 1582, Pope Gregory introduced a new calendar called the Gregorian calendar. The origin of the April Fish in France is quite obscure. In accordance with one other folklore principle, April Fools’ Day started within the 13 th century, when the residents of Gotham started appearing loopy so as scare off King John’s males, who had come to go to the city to evaluate whether or not the king ought to purchase the land and switch it into grounds for looking, studies Historic U.Okay. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" In April 1911, eight ...read more, On April 1, 1993, race car driver and owner Alan Kulwicki, who won the 1992 National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) Winston Cup championship by one of the tightest margins in series history, is killed in a plane crash near Bristol, Tennessee, where he was ...read more, On April 1, 1945, after suffering the loss of 116 planes and damage to three aircraft carriers, 50,000 U.S. combat troops, under the command of Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner Jr., land on the southwest coast of the Japanese island of Okinawa, 350 miles south of Kyushu, the ...read more, On April 1, 1970, President Richard Nixon signs legislation officially banning cigarette ads on television and radio. Some funny Pranks are… Read More Origin and History of April Fools’ Day – Who created April Fools’ Day But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The most popular theory about the origin of April Fools’ Day involves the French calendar reform of the sixteenth century. But why does this tomfoolery take place every year on April 1? These pranks included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as poisson d’avril (April fish), said to symbolize a young, “easily hooked” fish and a gullible person. The change moved the New Year up to January 1. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may be revealed as such the following day. © 2021 A&E Television Networks, LLC. In the middle of the night, 13,000 feet beneath the ocean surface, a 7.4-magnitude tremor was recorded in the North Pacific. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? For April Fools Day in 1957, the BBC created a hoax in which they convinced the nation that spaghetti was grown from “spaghetti trees” in Italy and Switzerland. Historians suggest that this holiday originated during this era because the shift to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian Calendar meant a change in the date of New Year’s Day celebrations. April Fools’ Day spread throughout Britain during the 18th Century. In France, April Fools’ Day is known for the “poisson d’avril” (April Fish). A 30-second lesson on why April 1 is considered April Fools' day. Those who forgot the change and attempted to celebrate New Year's (previously celebrated on the 1st of April) on the wrong date were teased as \"April fools.\" — -- Almost everyone has fallen victim to an April Fools’ Day joke. But that’s just one theory behind the gimmicky day. There are a few theories on why we play tricks on April 1; Calendar confusion, Roman mythology and fish have all been linked to the custom of April Fools tricks. 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