April Fool’s Day

Kristine Tuecke

The Gleaner

April Fool’s Day

April Fools Day is Saturday, April 1. It’s a day where people pull pranks on each other.

April Fool’s Day got started in the 1700s, when English pranksters started going around and pranking people. It’s also referred to as All Fools Day.

The reason behind this holiday is still unknown. The british also thought April Fool’s Day was when the new year started because no one ever told them when they switched the calendar to the new year beginning Jan. 1st. The holiday spread across Britain in the 18th century. In scotland, April Fool’s Day is two days. In Britain, people thought it was funny to put “kick me” signs on the back of the other people.

Today,  April Fools Day is a day for hoaxes. Newspapers, radio, TV stations, and websites participate  in the April Fool’s traditions of reporting fictional claims that have fooled others.

In the late 1950s, when the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were harvesting noodles from trees, a lot of people were fooled. Sports Illustrated tricked many readers when they made up a fake story in 1985 about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch. In 1996, the Taco Bell restaurant chain announced they had purchased the Liberty Bell and renamed it the Taco Liberty Bell. Burger King also advertised the “Left-Handed Whopper,” in 1998 and left the customers clueless as they requested the fake sandwich.

I interviewed a friend who would like to remain Anonymous said, “For April Fools Day they are going to bring in vaseline to put on the girls bathroom toilet seats.” These are all fake stories about advertisements and magazines that wanted to pull an April Fool’s Day prank on the people of America, and many of them succeeded.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giraffe_head_1a_(7110736311).jpg
People believe that the giraffe April story was a hoax but it is actually real.