April Fools’ Day is the day that jokers and pranksters try to pull the wool over each other’s eyes in a bid to make each other laugh.
Every year April Fools’ Day falls on April 1. In 2022, that is a Friday. The most important rule for the day in the UK is that all hoaxes must be done by noon.
The tradition is believed to date back to the 16th Century, though the origins of the festival are hotly debated. The most popular theory for the jovial day relates to the reform of the French calendar in the 16th Century.
Read More: Ant and Dec's April Fool's Day prank goes viral - and gives some fans a 'mini heart attack'
The changing of the calendar meant that the start of the year moved from the end of March to January 1. Those who were reluctant to accept the change, and continued to celebrate New Year during the last week of March and April 1, were seen as fools and had jokes played on them.
One of the pranks included having paper fish stuck to their backs, which was known as Poission d’Avril or April Fish, as it is still known to this day. Newspapers and TV organisations get into the spirit of the occasion, bidding to outdo each other with elaborate hoax stories to fool readers.
In 1957 the BBC famously tricked the public into believing spaghetti was grown on trees with a spoof documentary and in Sweden in 1962 many were fooled by a false ‘experts’ claims that black and white TVs would become colour if viewed through stockings.
