Mark Twain once said about this holiday: "The first of April is the day when we remember who we are all the other 364 days of the year." It is difficult to add anything to this apt statement, but you can try to show off your wit and follow a long-standing tradition to play a prank on someone - for example, show an unusual photo and invite to the zoo to look at the "zebra-nose" - a new animal obtained by crossing a zebra and a rhinoceros …
Belated New Year
It is generally accepted that this fun and carefree holiday of draws originated in France. The fact is that until 1564 New Year was celebrated on April 1. But Charles IX decided to change this tradition and ordered the countdown of the days of the new year from January 1, as it is customary to this day.
However, many news reached the citizens with a delay, sometimes for several years, so for some time some citizens continued to organize New Year's festivities from March 25 to April 1. Their more knowledgeable fellow countrymen made fun of them and called them "April fools", presented comic gifts and amazing things. Of course, after a while order was restored, and they began to celebrate the New Year once a year, but the tradition of laughing on April 1 at their neighbors, relatives and colleagues has been preserved to this day.
Some believe that the holiday has more ancient roots and is an echo of the celebration of the spring solstice, which in many countries was accompanied by jokes, pranks and funny pranks.
However, these versions did not satisfy all historians, so Joseph Boskin, a professor at Boston University, offered another explanation. According to his research, once the court jester of the Emperor Constantine, Kugel, boasted to the owner that he could manage the country no worse than him. Constantine liked this idea, and he allowed Kugel one day a year, namely April 1, to take over the imperial powers. This post by the professor of history was published in 1983 and picked up by all US newspapers. Only later did it become clear that the professors also have a sense of humor: the venerable scientist simply played a trick on the journalists, and they readily fell for the bait.
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Don't get hooked
In France and Italy, you can get hooked on this day in the truest sense of the word. One of the favorite April Fools' pranks is to sneak up on a person and quietly hang an elegantly made fish on his back. Paper and plastic, painted or white, assorted fish on hooks decorate on this day the backs of the hairy Italians and French, who are called "April fish".
Why fish? On the one hand, April passes under the zodiacal constellation Pisces, but there is also a more original hypothesis. Once a certain man, obviously wealthy enough, decided to play a trick on the fishermen and threw smoked herring into the river: "Here's a fish for April 1st!" What this man was guided by will forever remain a mystery, but thanks to his sense of humor, the image of a fish firmly entered the April Fools' jokes.
In general, the French and Italians prefer to arrange kind and graceful jokes that will not cause any grief to the object of the drawing, but, on the contrary, will cheer up. For example, your umbrella "from nowhere" can get colorful confetti, and when you open it, there will be a small but colorful rain.
Tail day
Scottish jokes are less pleasant in this sense. The fact is that the day of the fool, or the day of the cuckoo, as it is called there, is celebrated not one, but two days. The second day has a special name - Tail Day, and all the jokes of this day are dedicated to a specific part of the human body. Instead of the traditional French fish, you can find on your back a piece of paper with the words "Kick me!" Also, a fairly popular prank is special pads that make obscene sounds when an unsuspecting person sits on a chair.
There is another national peculiarity in this holiday - in Scotland and Great Britain, it is customary to hold all the draws before noon. Jokers who indulge in pranks after 12 noon risk acquiring a reputation as not very smart and correct people. It is possible that holding jokes only in the first half of the day originates in those days when mostly children were joking, and tired parents were forced to introduce a time limit so that the jokes did not go too far. According to Flemish tradition, on this day, children could lock their teachers and parents in a room, demanding a tasty ransom.
Trust but verify
But nowadays the media have the greatest opportunities in terms of draws, and I must say, they actively use this. Perhaps not all jokes can be called successful, but some are truly masterpieces.
The most famous draw in this sense belongs to the BBC TV company, which in 1957 broadcast a message about an unprecedented pasta harvest in Switzerland. Against the background of peasants harvesting boiled pasta in the fields, the announcer said that the main achievement is that this year the pasta grew the same length, which is an undoubted success of the long-term work of breeders. The editors received a lot of calls: some expressed surprise that pasta grows horizontally, and not vertically, which would be more natural, and about 200 people were interested in where they could buy seedlings …
We have fewer such "mugs", but still found. In 1998, Europa Plus announced that drivers who installed shock absorbers in winter should drive up to the studio to change their oil from winter to summer. Three people arrived.
An amusing April Fools' joke was invented in Amsterdam. The media reported that a special system was installed under the canal bridges that measures the decibels of passing boats. If they make a lot of noise, special installations spray them with water so that the police can identify them and impose a fine on them.
Our journalists did not remain in debt either. Ten years ago, the Izvestia newspaper published a photograph of a TU-134 passenger aircraft with the letter “U” on board. The commentary to the photo stated that student flights were being introduced in the country.
Scientists joke
With the advent of digital technology, the processing and editing of photographs can be performed much better, here and the possibilities for drawing are incomparably wider. A photo of the Zebronos taken in this way was published in 2000 in a local newspaper in the city of Lille in France. Employees of the local zoo invited residents to look at a new animal, obtained by crossing a zebra and a rhinoceros.
The lack of awareness of the population in matters of biology is often used for April Fools' jokes. Thus, in the April 1995 issue of Discovery magazine, a report was published by the "respected biologist" Dr. Epril Pazzo about the discovery in Antarctica of a new species of living creatures - hot-headed naked borer worms. Due to the high temperature of the head, they say, they can, melting the ice, make moves in it, and thus hunt. Having melted the ice under the penguin, the worms wait for it to fall into the hole and pounce on it. Also, Dr. Pazzo suggested that the polar explorer Philip Poisson, who disappeared in 1837, fell victim to worms, because he looked like a penguin in his clothes. The article received more responses than in the entire history of the journal.
And, taking advantage of the fact that in various states of the United States it is possible to introduce local amendments to the laws, the Alabama Science Bulletin published an article in 1998 that from now on in their advanced state the number of Pi will be equal to three. There was no limit to the indignation of the whole world, as well as to the number Pi itself …
In order not to go too far in your jokes, you need to know when to stop. For this, there are very simple rules: the joke must be funny and not offensive. Before playing a joke on someone, try this joke on yourself - can you laugh with the joker if you yourself become the object of the joke. If yes, then joke and laugh for health, because laughter prolongs our life and makes it brighter.
Natalia Ivanova