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March
31, 2006
April Fools Day Facts
Interview
with Alex Boese, author of
Hippo Eats Dwarf
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Mike
Carruthers:
April
1st is April Fools Day, so how did that all start?
Alex Boese:
The leading theory relates it to a calendar change that
happened in the 16th Century when the beginning of the year
was changed from April 1st back to January 1st.
Hoax expert,
Alex Boese, author of the book,
Hippo Eats Dwarf…
A lot of people
apparently didn't get the news about the calendar change so
they kept celebrating the beginning of the year on April 1st
and they became known as the April fools.
It's not exactly
clear when people started playing pranks on April 1st but Alex
says…
The very first
April Fools Day joke that we have a written record of is the
so-called washing of the lions at the tower of London. Supposedly
visitors to London were told that there was going to be a washing
of the lions at the tower and they were invited to attend this.
Of course there are no lions at the tower of London so they
would show up to see this and the joke would be on them, Ha,
Ha April Fools.
And what is Alex's
favorite April Fools prank?
The classic is
the Swiss spaghetti harvest from the 1950's in which the BBC
announced that the Swiss had a bumper spaghetti crop and they
showed this video footage of these Swiss peasants pulling spaghetti
down from spaghetti trees- this completely fooled hundreds of
people in Britain.
You can link
to Alex's website
from ours; somethingyoushouldknow.net-
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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