The Fool
These fun and interesting facts and stories about April Fool's Day are loaded with serious connections to the curriculum. Take some time out to have some fun! In addition to the links below, check this page for PBL21 ideas and resources for April Fool's Day!
Excellent ways to celebrate April Fool's Day at school!
The Origin of April Fool's Day, by the Museum of Hoaxes
April Fools Day - where it began and why it persists around the world.
Urban Legends Reference Pages - April Fool's Day
Classic Literature - 5 top books about fools in history:
Answer.com has a page on April Fool's Day - take time to scroll down the page to the articles on origins, etc.
Origins of April fool's Day - History, Tradition and Foolishness
April Fool's Day Pranks
Excellent ways to celebrate April Fool's Day at school!
The Origin of April Fool's Day, by the Museum of Hoaxes
April Fools Day - where it began and why it persists around the world.
Urban Legends Reference Pages - April Fool's Day
Classic Literature - 5 top books about fools in history:
Answer.com has a page on April Fool's Day - take time to scroll down the page to the articles on origins, etc.
Origins of April fool's Day - History, Tradition and Foolishness
April Fool's Day Pranks
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Watch this famous BBC broadcast from April 1, 1957.
The spaghetti tree hoax is a famous 3-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current affairs programme Panorama. It told a tale of a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the fictitious spaghetti tree, broadcast at a time when this Italian dish was not widely eaten in the UK and some Britons were unaware that spaghetti is a pasta made from wheat flour and water. Hundreds of viewers phoned into the BBC, either to say the story was not true, or wondering about it, with some even asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. Decades later CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled." |
This page in Wikipedia also has excellent information regarding the origins of this "holiday", and links to some of the more well-known pranks played through history! Some were actually perpetrated by the government! Some by large corporations in their advertising! Very interesting reading! Here are a few examples. As you can see there are possibilities for links to all kinds of curriculum, such as government, history, media, FCC, freedom and taxation, the solar system, moon and stars, spring/vernal equinox, religion, ancient history, myths and legends, etc.
- Alabama Changes the Value of Pi: The April 1998 newsletter of New Mexicans for Science and Reason contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi to the "Biblical value" of 3.0.
- Left Handed Whoppers: In 1998, Burger King ran an ad in USA Today, saying that people could get a Whopper for left-handed people whose condiments were designed to drip out the right side.
- Taco Liberty Bell: In 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell." When asked about the sale, White House press secretary Mike McCurry replied with tongue in cheek that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would henceforth be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
- Tower of Pisa: The Dutch television news reported once in the 1950s that the Tower of Pisa had fallen. Many shocked and even mourning people contacted the station.
- Wrapping Televisions in Foil: In another year, the Dutch television news reported that the government had new technology to detect unlicensed televisions (in many European countries, television license fees fund public broadcasting), but that wrapping a television in aluminium foil could prevent its detection. Within a few hours, aluminium foil was sold out throughout the country.