April Fun

Wow! Yesterday I got news that I won the big million dollar lottery!! April Fool!! Haha Ok, If didn't win the lottery and it is not quite April 1st, but today I thought I would write about April Fool's Day. It is an odd tradition that most people do not truly understand. It may be the most popular "unofficial holiday" of all. By that I mean it's not really a holiday (no one gets off work or school, the banks and post office are open, there are not April Fool greeting cards sold at stores etc....), but people act as if it is.
They just love to play practical jokes on April 1st. I had to research the origin of April Fool's Day because I never had been educated about it before, and I never was curious about it enough to look for myself. But I did look before writing this blog and, in short, what I found is that it began in the humorless nation of France (they do like themselves too much to have a sense of humor about themselves) around 1853.
Apparently it came about because of a change in the calendar, from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Because communication at that time was bad or very slow, many people did not know of the change of calendars and still celebrated New Year's Day on April 1st. Thus, those unaware of the new calendar were labeled as "April Fools" and were sent on "fools errands" or made the butt of jokes.
Beware if some idiot (like me) tells you he won the lottery, or if he says your E mail came in blank or with naked pictures as the letter head. It's all harmless fun and most people like being the subject of the harmless jokes on April Fools Day. Even the media and big corporations sometimes play April Fool's jokes on us. Here are some examples of classic public April fools jokes.
1) The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest- In the 1950's a British newscast created a stir among the gullible viewers that April Fool's day when it reported that the spaghetti crop in Switzerland was huge because of the great weather and the eradication of the "spaghetti weevil".
2) Liberty Bell Sale- In 1996 the Taco Bell fast food chain said it had purchased the Liberty Bell from the U.S government and was renaming it the "Taco Liberty Bell" Outraged citizens stormed the national park where the bell is displayed to protest the sale.
3) Arm the Homeless- One Aril Fool's day the Phoenix, Arizona New Times published a false story announcing the formation of a new charity called 'The Arm the Homeless Coalition' that instead of feeding clothing and sheltering homeless people, would give them guns and ammunition.
4) Instant Color TV- This April Fool day prank goes back to the pre color TV days. In Sweden, a Tv technician specialist appeared on the stations to announce that all the viewers could easily and instantly convert their sets to color Tv. They merely had to pull a nylon stocking over their TV screen, and they would begin to see their shows in color Hehe He even "demonstrated" how to do it as he announced the discovery.
5) Alabama Gets Rid Of pi- Just a few years ago one Alabama newspaper said a legislator had introduced an April 1st resolution that the entire legislature passed outlawing pi. It changed pi in Alabama from the math constant of 3.14159 tot eh "Biblical value' of 3.0. Of course citizens read the story and believed it,. the news also got on the Internet and caused a fury everywhere in the world.
6) Left Handed Whopper- In 1998 Burger King took out an April 1st full page ad in the U.S. Today newspaper that announced the introduction of the "Left-Handed Whopper" hamburger sandwich. specially designed for the 30 million Americans who are left handed. You guessed it..not only did thousands of idiots go to Burger King to order the left-hander, many others demanded a right-handed burger be sold too
7) Planetary Alignment Gravity Decrease- Those clever Brits came up with a great one one April 1st in the 70's, A noted astronomer announced on BBC radio that at exactly 9:47 am a once-in-a-lifetime asr astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience themselves at home. He said that Pluto would pas behind Jupiter at that moment, temporarily suspending gravity. Further, if one was to jump in the air when the planets aligned , he would experience the floating sensation of a gravity absent environment. Believe it or not hundreds of people later called into BBC to describe how they floated at that moment. One woman even reported that she and 11 friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.....I suspect alcohol may have floated those ladies too.
Happy April Fool's Day!!