The Think Tank

I often times find myself wondering about some random thing or other, and I find myself searching the internet for an answer to my peculiar questions. Usually these tid bits of knowledge are only useful when trying to impress strangers at cocktail parties, or if you find yourself on Jeopardy. But I have found myself another use… sharing my little tid bits with you. So, without further ado…

Today’s topic is:

• April Fool’s Day April 1, 2010Chris

  Joel sent me an interesting link today regarding the origins of April Fool’s Day, which set me off on a little internet search for Tid Bits about the day to celebrate jokes and hoaxes.

  The exact origins of April Fools Day is not completely clear, although the most commonly accepted idea is that the tradition started in the 1500’s when the Gregorian calender was adopted.  Prior to that, on the Julian Calendar, the New Year started on March 25 (which makes perfect sense to me since that is my birthday) but, since March 25 is in the middle of Holy Week the actual celebration of the new year was held on April 1st.

  Celebrating the new year at roughly the same time as the Spring Equinox makes perfect sense: everything is starting anew after a long, hard winter.  The weather is warming, the trees and flowers are blooming, and the rabbits are… well, they are doing what rabbits do.  For those reasons and many others, the new Gregorian date was met with resistance by many people and as such they continued to celebrate the New Year on April 1st.  This seemed very foolish for those who did get (and accept) the memo, and those enlightened folks gave the foolish oldschooler’s the lasting moniker of April Fools.

  Since that time traditions have evolved somewhat from pure admonishment to general bafoonery and joke making.  Many individuals have fallen prey to these endeavors over the years, but in my reading today I found out about several  large-scale jokes which have been pulled on an unsuspecting populace.

  Here are some of my favorites:

  Continue reading →

• <<
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
...
• 20
• >>