April Fools’ Day, explained earnestly

april fools dayIt’s April Fools’ Day, so you’re probably devoting more brainpower than you’d care to admit to potential hoaxes that your friends and co-workers – heck, even your favorite news organizations – might pull on you.

But why April 1, of all days? How did we come to associate the first day of the fourth month of the year with an opportunity to take advantage of the more gullible among us? The short answer is nobody really knows.

The longer answer: The first clear and widespread mentions of April Fools’ Day occurred in the 18th century. But even then, people wondered about its origins.

“Whence proceeds the custom of making April Fools?” one correspondent wrote in the British Apollo magazine in 1708.

By that point, the custom was already well-established across parts of Europe, enough that people there regarded its origins as long-lost history. No one is sure how, exactly, a tradition so potent could have sprung up without more frequent mentions in the written record in the centuries preceding.

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5 Comments

  1. April 2, 2016

    It’s the one day of the year that people are sufficiently sceptical about what they read online….

  2. Danziger
    April 1, 2016

    @ tele marcologie fermé grand jelle à et metter un baby BITTER en jelle à pour stop MALPALAY MOUN.

  3. Francisco Etienne-Dods Telemaque
    April 1, 2016

    Aryou want know how dis boy here Francisco so fool: is cause him born pan April fool day oui! Elizabeth and Facts machine, Kid On Block too, and all Wesley people.

    As a matter of fact everybody in Dominica born on April first that is why Skerrit that Indian doctor boy can fool them the way he does eh.

    • Face the Facts
      April 2, 2016

      You can never comment without involving others in it. If you were born on April Fool’s Day, my birthday is far from that. Let those you mentioned speak up for themselves.
      Francisco, I always get compliments and told I am a highly intelligent person; by no means a fool. My father has told me so. Other family members say the same including associates. We are not foolish people. My father is an intelligent person. I am a product of his as I always say. :lol: :lol: :lol:
      Only fools call others fools in this sense of the word. It takes one to know one and to misconstrue what they state, always being critical, as the pot calls the kettle black. You are no exception. Time for a change.

      • Francisco Etienne-Dods Telemaque
        April 3, 2016

        If you were not a true confounded fool you would not have responded anyway, because Facts, nor kid on block is your name

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