The French claim authorship of April Fools’ Day, dating it to the late Middle Ages. Back then, those who celebrated the year’s beginning on 1 January under the new Julian Calendar made fun of those who still went by the old one. A paper fish was attached to the unsuspecting backs of Gregorian diehards and the festival became known as Poisson d’Avril. The joke has been somewhat lost in the intervening centuries, denoting either the start of the fishing season, the astrological symbol for late March, or some play on the phrase ‘taking the bait’.
The era of mass media has seen many of us become April Fools (or fish). While my family and I were living in Lausanne, Switzerland, La Feuille d’Avis de Lausanne always came up with a spectacular front-page April Fools’ joke, fooling us and most of the canton de Vaud. One of the best was a headline announcing that an Italian company was planning to install a revolving restaurant on the top of their side of the Matterhorn, complete with an engineer’s drawing.
The outcry at this desecration of this most sacred Alp was, apparently, countrywide. What made the ruse so convincing was that just such a restaurant had been built on the top of the Schilthorn, another famous peak, above the tiny town of Mürren in the Bernese Oberland. It was a feat of Swiss engineering and featured in one of the James Bond films. But the Matterhorn? This was beyond Swiss acceptability.
Another April Fools’ joke in family lore came through the BBC in 1957. The gist of the hoax was that, while the Swiss were harvesting their spaghetti trees, they had discovered a weevil and the crop had been devastated. Many listeners called the BBC to find out where they could buy spaghetti trees. The story had been accompanied by a doctored photo of spaghetti strands growing on trees that made the hoax even more believable. Richard, my British husband, remembered the hoax and, while on a trip to Italy on an April Fools’ Day, told the kids to keep their eyes peeled for spaghetti trees.
British pranking goes back further than the 20th century and are probably top the list for some of the best annual gags. Could it be because these jokes go back to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, contrary to French claims? The tale to which the first April Fools’ joke was attributed is ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, said to have happened, however, on 22 March, not 1 April. Many scholars argue that this is a copying error. We’ll never know – and since Chaucer’s vain cock in the Chanticleer is tricked by a fox, the joke may well be true.
In 1857, a British newspaper printed tickets admitting readers to the Tower of London to witness the ‘Annual Washing of the Lions’. I can just imagine the queues for that one. In 1965, the BBC reported that they had developed ‘smell-a-vision’. Many viewers called in to tell the station that their invention was indeed a success. Odour over the airwaves? Were Brits just smelling steak and kidney pie from the kitchen?
Taco Bell took out a full-page ad in the New York Times announcing they had purchased the Liberty Bell
Americans too have contributed some wild and wily April Fools’ jokes. In 1996, for example, Taco Bell took out a full-page ad in the New York Times announcing they had purchased the Liberty Bell to do their part in reducing the country’s debt. Burger King announced that on 1 April 1998, they would be serving left-handed Whoppers, in which the condiments would dribble out of the right side of the burger. Sales took off.
The profit motive was probably on some nerd’s mind when ThinkGeek, a now-defunct tech shop, came up with the Tauntaun sleeping bag. It was based on a well-known scene from The Empire Strikes Back, in which Luke Skywalker cuts open a dead animal and climbs inside it for warmth. There was so much demand for the cuddly bag that the company ended up manufacturing it.
Not all news on 1 April should be dismissed, however. There are a few tales of real news not being taken seriously because of the date. One was the earthquake and following tsunami that hit the Aleutian Islands on 1 April 1946, which killed 165 people in Hawaii. Something good did, however, come out of that disaster: the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was established so that islanders could trust when danger truly was at hand. That disaster is now known as ‘The April Fools’ Day Tsunami’. As is tradition, the fool often delivers a warning with his jest.
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