Strange

Real news or April fools?

by Amy Judd | April 1, 2008 at 08:29 am

336 views | 4 Recommendations | 2 comments

So in the spirit of what April 1st is all about - we at NowPublic have decided to put together a collection of stories hitting the news wires today that could be real, or could be fake. It's up to you to decide...

No one is really too sure how April 1st became April Fools Day, but it is considered a day that for people to perform pranks and plan hoaxes all over the world.

It is likely a relic of the once common festivities held on the vernal equinox, which began on the 25th of March, old New Year's Day, and ended on the 2nd of April.

Though the 1st of April appears to have been observed as a general festival in Great Britain in antiquity, it was apparently not until the beginning of the 18th century that the making of April-fools was a common custom. In Scotland the custom was known as "hunting the gowk," i.e. the cuckoo, and April-fools were "April-gowks," the cuckoo being a term of contempt, as it is in many countries.

One of the earliest connections of the day with fools is Chaucer's story the Nun's Priest's Tale (c.1400), which concerns two fools and takes place "thritty dayes and two" from the beginning of March, which is April 1. The significance of this is difficult to determine.