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April Fools' Day

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April Fool's Day or All Fools' Day is a holiday celebrated in many countries on April 1. The day is celebrated by the execution of hoaxes and practical jokes of varying sophistication with the goal of publicly embarrassing the gullible.

History

Some sources say that the special meaning of April 1 originates in the French change to the Gregorian calendar ordered by King Charles IX of France in 1582. Before that, New Year was celebrated from March 25 to April 1. With the change of the calendar system, New Year was "moved" to January 1. People who forgot or didn't accept the new date system were given invitations to nonexistent parties, funny gifts etc. This was known in France as poisson d'avril (April fish).

Hoaxes

Some media organisations have either unwittingly or deliberately propagated many hoaxes. Even normally serious news media consider April Fool's Day hoaxes fair game, and spotting them has become an annual pastime. The worldwide spread of the Internet has also assisted the pranksters in their work.

Some particularly well-known April Fool's Day hoaxes include:

  • Kremvax: one of the early Internet April Fool's day hoaxes.
  • San Serriffe: The Guardian printed a supplement featuring this fictional island.
  • Smell-o-vision: The BBC purported to conduct a trial of a new technology allowing the transmission of odour over the airwaves to all viewers. Despite the fact that no such capability existed, many viewers reportedly contacted the BBC to report the trial's success.
  • Spaghetti trees: The BBC television program Panorama ran a famous hoax in 1957, showing the Swiss harvesting spaghetti from trees.
  • Metric time: Repeated several times in various countries over the year, this hoax claims that the time system will be changed to some system where one subdivision is some power of 10 smaller than the next.

External links:

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