“April fool banaya toh unko gussa aaya” sung by Mohammad Rafi is a popular song of the Hindi film ‘April Fool’ (1964) produced and directed by Subodh Mukherji. The film stars Biswajeet and Saira Banu in the principal roles. Ashok, the hero of the film, is a slacker who chooses 1st April to play pranks with Madhu, the heroine, and at last both fall in love with each other.
There is also a wider dimension behind the origin of the history of the day. The celebration of the day is considered by many to have a connection with the vernal equinox that falls on March 20 or March 21, the first day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Mother Nature with her unpredictable weather during the period fools people. April Fools’ Day is also believed to have well resemblance with Hilaria celebrated by the Romans as a feria sativa on vernal equinox in honour of Goddess Cybele. The festival was devoted to merry making and rejoicing.
April Fools’ Day reference may be discerned in the French term ‘Poisson d’Avril’ i.e. ‘April Fish’ that appeared in several late-medieval 15th century French poems including in the works of the poets like Pierre Michault and Eloy d’Amerval. In a comical poem “Refereyn vp verzendekens dach/ Twelck den eersten April te zyne plach” written by a Flemish writer Eduard De Dene in 1561, a nobleman is found sending his servant back and forth in absurd errands to help prepare for a wedding feast. At last the servant recognizes the prank that his master is trying to pull on him as the day is 1st April. The origin of April Fools’ Day is also ascribed to the Dutch victory over the Spanish duke Alvarez de Toledo. On 1st April in 1572, the town of Den Briel was captured by Dutch rebels from the Spanish troops leading to the independence of the Netherlands from Spain. A line of a short rhyme taught to Dutch students to commemorate the historic day is thus: Op 1 april verloor Alva zijn bril which means “On April 1st Alva lost his glasses”. Here ‘Bril’ which means glasses in Dutch is also the homonym of Den Briel. There is a funny legendary story in Augsburg in Germany that is said to have been the origin of the custom of playing pranks. On April 1, 1530 a meeting of lawmakers was supposed to occur in Augsburg in order to unify the state coinage. Unscrupulous speculators, who had been informed about the meeting beforehand, began to trade currencies in preparation, to make profit from the change. But the meeting was not held because of time considerations and the law could not be promulgated. As a result, the speculators who had bet on the meeting occurring lost their money and were ridiculed.
The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax on 1st April, 1957 is one of the most popular April Fools’ Day jokes in history. The BBC news show Panorama broadcast that by the grace of mild winter and virtual disappearance of spaghetti weevil, there was bumper spaghetti harvest. Richard Dimbleby, the anchor of the show, narrated the details of the crop. When people wanted to know about the plantation of the crop, the BBC diplomatically replied to place spring spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best. Even the director-general of the BBC was the subject to the playful hoax as he later admitted that he also checked in an encyclopaedia to find how spaghetti actually grew.
Another April Fools’ Day hoax that created a great sensation among a large number of people in the US was the Taco Liberty Bell hoax. On April 1, 1996, the Taco Bell Corporation circulated a full-page advertisement in six major newspapers reading that it had purchased the Liberty Bell to reduce the country’s date. The bell was renamed Taco Liberty Bell. Thousands of enraged people called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia to exhibit their anger. At last, they calmed down when Taco Bell announced that it was all a practical hoax.
On April 1, 1992, Talk of the Nation programme of National Public Radio broadcast that Richard Nixon was expressing his desire to be the President of the USA once again. His campaign slogan was “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again”. The announcement was accompanied by audio clips of Nixon delivering his candidacy speech. The announcement passed a shock wave among the audience. Finally, the host of the show John Hockenberry revealed that it was a prank and the voice of Nixon was impersonated by Rich Little, a comedian.
A mathematical hoax in the year 1998 created much excitement among mathematicians. The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter covered an interesting article. It suggested that the Alabama legislature had voted to change the value of pi from 3.14159 to the ‘Biblical value’ of 3.0. Hundreds of protesters vehemently protested the legislation. The original was penned by Mark Boslough, a physicist.