No one knows for sure why people began pulling pranks on April 1, but we've been doing it for centuries. The first unequivocal reference to April Fools' Day was in a 1539 Flemish poem.
"It described a man who sent his servant on a series of wild goose chases on April 1," says Alex Boese, author and curator of Museum of Hoaxes. "Eventually, the servant caught on and complained that he'd been sent on a 'fools' errand today'."
The rest is history.
As fun as April 1st pranks can be, the perception is that it's not celebrated as often as it once was. Boese attributes that misconception to our childhood memories. "It's a holiday from people's childhood. They think of it as this former golden age of April Fools' Day," he said.
Some classic pranks :)
- I replaced all the money in the cash register with Monopoly money. The first sale the next day was shocking for the sales person -
- I'm a nursery nurse, and I pretended to be asleep in a rocking chair holding a baby. When my boss came in, I startled and threw the baby (a doll) up in the air -
- A pregnant girl took a pregnancy test and gave me the stick with the positive result. I told my fiancé I was pregnant -- he didn't believe me, because it was April 1. Then I presented the "evidence." The look on his face was priceless -
- My dad turned every clock ahead one hour. So I was in a panic thinking I had missed the bus, and my parents were yelling at me because they had to drive me to school. Then came the "April fools!" -
- My mom told me to get up and go to school. I got up and went. It was Sunday. -
- Once I sewed up my husband's sock just below the top. I sat back and watched him try to pull it on, to no avail. Finally, he figured it out. We laughed, but I laughed all day knowing that the fly on his underwear was also sewed closed! -
- My mother-in-law's birthday is April 1st. One year I made her a cake with a balloon inside. When she cut into it, the frosting exploded everywhere -
HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY!
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