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Inspire

April Fool’s Day

April 28, 2012 by boomerstyle in Inspire with 0 Comments

King Charles IX of France

Birthname: Charles-Maximillien

Birthplace: Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

Born: June 27, 1550

Died: May 30, 1574

Reign: December 5, 1560 – May 30, 1574

The maple syrup’s full of ants.
A mouse is creeping on a shelf.
Is that a spider on your back?
I ate the whole pie by myself.
The kitchen sink just overflowed.
A flash flood washed away the school.
I threw your blanket in the trash.
I never lie…April Fool!

~Myra Cohn Livingston

A Royal Pain in the Arse

Shelli Carlisle

“Kick Me Hard.”

We’ve all seen someone with a note stuck to their bottom or back with this familiar slogan.  But do you know who you can thank for that swift kick?
The 16th century king of France, Charles IX. No, he didn’t actually go around taping notes to peoples bums. King Charles reformed the calendar of the day by introducing the Gregorian Calendar to all of France, kind of.
You see, the New Year had always been celebrated for eight days beginning on March 25 and ending on April 1.  Maximillien decided that January 1 was a more appropriate day to bring in the New Year. Here’s the catch; back in the day the only form of communication was by horseback.  Sometimes it would take months, even years for news to reach everyone. As a result some people never got the message or received it a very long time after it had been sent out.
These people continued to celebrate the New Year on the old date. Well, the enlightened ones referred to the unenlightened ones as being fools.  So the fools became the butt (no pun intended) of practical jokes.

Over time, the harassment evolved in to the tradition of prank playing.  It eventually spread throughout Europe and America. Today different nationalities sport their own brand of humor at the expense of their friends and families.

Around the World

The “kick me” sign can be traced back to Scotland, where April Fool’s Day is celebrated for two days.  Taily day is the second day of the celebration and is actually devoted to pranks involving other people’s derrières. They call an April Fool an April “gwok” – Scottish for Cuckoo. In France, the victim of a joke is called “Possion d’Avril!” Which refers to a fish being easily caught.  England’s fool is called a “gob.”

Pranks range from mild (there’s a bug on you), to more complicated gags such as the many on air hoaxes the media has pulled on the public. One of the most famous is a video from 1957 called Spaghetti Harvest.

 

The Spaghetti Harvest

The British Broadcasting Co. news reported that the very mild winter and the elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil had led to a bumper crop of spaghetti for Swiss farmers. The BBC went on to show footage of Swiss peasants pulling spaghetti off of trees.  Large numbers of viewers called the BBC wanting to know how they could get a tree and grow their own spaghetti.

Over the years other media pranks have included Taco Bell’s announcement that they were buying the Liberty Bell and changing its name to The Taco Liberty Bell.

A radio DJ announced on the air in New Zealand that a swarm of wasps a mile wide was headed toward Auckland. Burger King published a full page add in USA Today announcing the introduction of a Left-Handed Whopper specially designed for the 32-million left handed Americans.

And, in 1997, an email message spread throughout the world announcing that the internet would be shut down from March 31 to April 2 due to spring cleaning.

Even though April Fool’s Day is not an official holiday, people have been celebrating the art of prankstering all over the world for the past four centuries, thanks to a French King who had an itch to change a date.

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