POTTED HISTORY OF APRIL FOOL’S
Today’s April Fool’s — a day with an illustrious history of pranks and teases, and no one’s totally sure why, writes Cherie Howie.
US president Donald Trump declaring war on North Korea — not funny.
Ekant Veer and his wife changing their Facebook relationship statuses from “married” to “it’s complicated” — fewer people harmed, but still not funny.
But disgraced politicians rising again, spaghetti growing on trees, Burger King toothpaste and seeing double on Auckland’s skyline?
That’s funny and harmless and you can expect a whole bunch of carefully crafted pranks and hoaxes today, April Fool’s Day.
Veer, a University of Canterbury associate professor in marketing, April Fool’s Day connoisseur and most definitely happily married husband, says his hope is everyone takes the day in the manner it’s intended — as an annual chance to have a bit of harmless fun. Emphasis on harmless.
“The best ones are the ones that cause very little harm. They might cause a bit of emotion and hysteria but not necessarily overtly offensive ones. If Donald Trump decides to ... declare war on North Korea on April 1 and then go ‘Ha ha, it’s just a joke’, that’s actually not that funny.”
Same goes for the trick he and his wife always talk about playing on unsuspecting friends and family — changing their Facebook relationship from “married” to “it’s complicated”.
“We realised it might be a little too mean for the extended family. They’d start getting worried and we’d have to say.”
April Fool’s gags that really worked balanced perfectly between ridiculous and believable, and the mechanics of the mind filled in the rest.
“There’s a lot of confirmation bias in it. People want to believe them.”
We have been pulling the wool for quite a while, although no one is quite certain how long.
According to History.com, some historians think the day — also known as All Fools’ Day — traces as far back as 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.
Those failing to grasp the new year now began on January 1 became the target of jokes, such as having paper fish put on their backs and being called “poisson d’avril” (April fish), believed to symbolise easily caught fish.
Other historians link the day to ancient Roman festival Hilaria, where people dressed in disguise, or speculate a connection to the Northern Hemisphere spring equinox, a time of unpredictable weather, according to History.com
In modern times, it was mid-last century, as mass media cemented its influence over widespread populations, that the tradition took hold, Veer says.
The BBC has a lot to answer for. Hit Google for the top April Fool’s jokes and the famously strait-laced broadcaster’s 1957 spaghetti tree harvest is consistently named No 1.
The three-minute hoax report of a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti prompted a massive response from wannabe growers.
CNN would later call the fake spaghetti harvest “the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled”.
It wasn’t the first media- produced April Fool’s prank — the annual celebration of silliness has proved perfect fodder for radio hosts for decades, including 1ZB’s then Auckland Breakfast host Phil Shone, who warned listeners in 1949 that a mile-wide wasp swarm was descending on the city.
Listeners were warned to wear socks over trousers and leave honey-smeared traps outside. Some were so alarmed they flooded police and the Department of Agriculture with calls.
News reports quote police, who twice called the station asking for the broadcast to stop, describing the joke as “silly”.
Maybe, but it did no harm to Shone’s career — he notched up another decade in the flagship show.
Still, it’s the spaghetti prank that really stands out for Veer. “That was probably the start of mainstream media getting into it. It wasn’t just you playing a prank on your friend. It started to become newsworthy.
“People were trying to cause mass hysteria. And when you see that mass hysteria, that’s kind of funny to people, whether it’s in a positive or a negative way.”
There is no doubt April Fool’s pranks can spark mass hysteria, which is usually harmless but can occasionally overstep the mark.
Among the most famous, and frightening, was a fake eruption of Mt Edgecumbe in Alaska.
In 1974 residents spotted clouds of black smoke coming from the caldera of the long dormant volcano.
A retrospective on the prank published 40 years later by Juneau newspaper Capital City Weekly explained local prankster Oliver “Porky” Bickar waited three years for a clear April 1 to fly hundreds of old stockpiled tires into the crater and strike a match.
Auckland residents can probably relate — former All Black and orange juice mogul Marc Ellis pulled a similar stunt at Rangitoto in November 2007.
The flower power decade was a good one for gags.
The BBC was at it again on April Fool’s Day in 1976 when astronomer Patrick Moore announced during a Radio 2 interview that an alignment of the planets would make it possible to float if jumping in the air at 9.47am.
Many claimed to have taken flight.
The British were again targeted three years later when the
Guardian published a seven-page supplement devoted wholly to San Serriffe, a nation said to be made up of a group of semi-colon shaped islands and dominated by its two main islands, Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse.
It even supposedly had a Kiwi link, after the supplement’s designer based the fictional islands on New Zealand, according to US website Museum of Hoaxes.
“The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching