Pranks I wish I was there to play on my grandson on April Fools Day

Some ideas for my daughter to play pranks on my grandson on April Fools Day. 

Happy Thanksgiving day to my grandson and all his mates in Australia

1.   Blech! Sprinkle a little salt on your kid’s toothbrushes the night before.

2.   Where Am I? If your kids are heavy sleepers, put them in a different bed once they are asleep.  Imagine their surprise waking up in the wrong bed the next morning!!

3.   Mint your milk jug with food coloring the night before and serve your kid their breakfast with a colorful new addition!

4.   Where’s my Rice Krispies? Switch bagged cereal within their boxes and see how long it takes for your kids to find their favorite.

5.   EEK! Buy realistic toy flies, spiders, etc and hid them in your kids’ lunches.

6.   What a mess! Toilet Paper your kids room as they sleep.  Make sure to have the camera ready when they wake up!

7.   Goedemorgen! Change the language on your kids’ smart devices to a different one.  Make sure you know who to change it back though!

8.   OUCH! Stuff a little toilet paper in the ends of their shoes and watch them think their feet grew overnight.

9.   Turn your house upside down!  Turn photos, toys, and furniture, anything that works, upside down the night before.

10.   For Sale?? Put a for sale sign up in your yard the night before.  Try to get one with a MLS box and print flyers that say “April Fools!”  Watch your neighbors go crazy!

April Fools' Day: Pranks that fooled us

For some fun on this 91st day of the year here are some famous hoaxes that fooled many of us and some in formation on the day came to be an important day for those who love practical jokes.

April Fools Pranks  (Source here)
On April 1, 1957 the British news show Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually mild winter and to the "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil." The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the show's highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that, "For those who love this dish, there's nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti."

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." 

The April 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated contained a story about a new rookie pitcher who planned to play for the Mets. His name was Sidd Finch, and he could reportedly throw a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy. This was 65 mph faster than the previous record. Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the "art of the pitch" in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the "great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa." Mets fans celebrated their teams' amazing luck at having found such a gifted player, and they flooded Sports Illustrated with requests for more information. In reality this legendary player only existed in the imagination of the author of the article, George Plimpton, who left a clue in the sub-heading of the article: "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga —and his future in baseball." The first letter of each of these words, taken together, spelled "H-a-p-p-y A-p-r-i-l F-o-o-l-s D-a-y 

Sweden's most famous April Fool's Day hoax occurred on April 1, 1962. At the time, SVT (Sveriges Television) was the only television channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white.

The station announced that their "technical expert," Kjell Stensson, was going to describe a process that would allow people to view color images on their existing black-and-white sets. 

The broadcast cut to Stensson sitting in front of a television set in the studio. He began to explain how the process worked. His discussion was highly technical, going into details about the prismatic nature of light and the phenomenon of "double slit interference." But at last he arrived at the main point. Researchers, he said, had recently discovered that a fine-meshed screen placed in front of a black-and-white television screen would cause the light to bend in such a way that it would appear as if the image was in color. 

Stensson told viewers they could experience the effect at home with the help of some simple, readily accessible materials. Nylon stockings, it turned out, were the perfect fabric to use as a fine-meshed screen. So all viewers had to do, Stensson said, was to cut open a pair of stockings and tape them over the screen of their television set. The image on the television should suddenly appear to be in color.

Stensson cautioned that the viewer would have to be seated at the correct distance from the screen in order to get the full effect. Also, it might be necessary to "move your head very carefully" back and forth, in order to align the color spectrum.

Thousands of viewers later admitted they had fallen for the hoax. Many Swedes today report that they remember their parents (their fathers in particular) rushing through the house trying to find nylon stockings to place over the TV set.

Burger King published a full page advertisement in the April 1st edition of USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."

The uncertain origins of a foolish day written by David Johnson and Shmuel Ross

April Fools' Day, sometimes called All Fools' Day, is one of the most light-hearted days of the year. Its origins are uncertain. Some see it as a celebration related to the turn of the seasons, while others believe it stems from the adoption of a new calendar.

New Year's Day Moves
Ancient cultures, including those of the Romans and Hindus, celebrated New Year's Day on or around April 1. It closely follows the vernal equinox (March 20th or March 21st.) In medieval times, much of Europe celebrated March 25, the Feast of Annunciation, as the beginning of the new year.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar (the Gregorian Calendar) to replace the old Julian Calendar. The new calendar called for New Year's Day to be celebrated Jan. 1. That year, France adopted the reformed calendar and shifted New Year's day to Jan. 1. According to a popular explanation, many people either refused to accept the new date, or did not learn about it, and continued to celebrate New Year's Day on April 1. Other people began to make fun of these traditionalists, sending them on "fool's errands" or trying to trick them into believing something false. Eventually, the practice spread throughout Europe.

Problems With This Explanation
There are at least two difficulties with this explanation. The first is that it doesn't fully account for the spread of April Fools' Day to other European countries. The Gregorian calendar was not adopted by England until 1752, for example, but April Fools' Day was already well established there by that point. The second is that we have no direct historical evidence for this explanation, only conjecture, and that conjecture appears to have been made more recently.

Constantine and Kugel
Another explanation of the origins of April Fools' Day was provided by Joseph Boskin, a professor of history at Boston University. He explained that the practice began during the reign of Constantine, when a group of court jesters and fools told the Roman emperor that they could do a better job of running the empire. Constantine, amused, allowed a jester named Kugel to be king for one day. Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day, and the custom became an annual event.

"In a way," explained Prof. Boskin, "it was a very serious day. In those times fools were really wise men. It was the role of jesters to put things in perspective with humor."

This explanation was brought to the public's attention in an Associated Press article printed by many newspapers in 1983. There was only one catch: Boskin made the whole thing up. It took a couple of weeks for the AP to realize that they'd been victims of an April Fools' joke themselves.

Spring Fever
It is worth noting that many different cultures have had days of foolishness around the start of April, give or take a couple of weeks. The Romans had a festival named Hilaria on March 25, rejoicing in the resurrection of Attis. The Hindu calendar has Holi, and the Jewish calendar has Purim. Perhaps there's something about the time of year, with its turn from winter to spring, that lends itself to lighthearted celebrations.

Observances Around the World
April Fools' Day is observed throughout the Western world. Practices include sending someone on a "fool's errand," looking for things that don't exist; playing pranks; and trying to get people to believe ridiculous things.

The French call April 1 Poisson d'Avril, or "April Fish." French children sometimes tape a picture of a fish on the back of their schoolmates, crying "Poisson d'Avril" when the prank is discovered



Read more: April Fools' Day: Origin and History 

April Fools Day

Where did the day originate? There are of course several theories as to the origins. The following is from The Museum of Hoax's and for more information and more theories it is a great place to start

There are several theories of the origin of April Fool's Day specific to Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. None of these theories offers a compelling explanation of the day's origin. However, it is a sign of the cross-cultural nature of the tradition that four different countries should attempt to take credit for it.

What is possibly the first reference to April Fool's Day can be found in the work of Chaucer. 
In the Nun's Priest's Tale (written around 1392), Chaucer tells the story of the vain cock Chauntecler who falls for the tricks of a fox, and as a consequence is almost eaten. The narrator describes the tale as occurring:

When that the monthe in which the world bigan
That highte March, whan God first maked man,
Was complet, and passed were also
Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two

This passage has caused enormous confusion among Chaucer scholars, since it appears to be self-contradictory. Could Chaucer have chosen this date purposefully, setting the tale on April 1st because of the tradition of tricks and foolery associated with the day?

Most editors of Chaucer don't think so. The most popular interpretation of this passage is that Chaucer meant May 3, so editors often change the text to read "Syn March [was gon]". However, the historian Peter Travis has argued that Chaucer did not intend to provide a precise date at all, but was instead purposefully using confusing language in order to parody the language of Medieval philosophy. 

Whatever Chaucer may have meant, we can't conclude, based on these few lines, that he was aware of a custom of playing pranks on April 1st.

Almost every culture in the world has some kind of festival in the first months of the year to celebrate the end of winter and the return of spring. Anthropologists call these "renewal festivals." Often they involve ritualized forms of mayhem and misrule. The wearing of disguises is common. People play pranks on friends and strangers. The social order is temporarily inverted. Servants might get to order around masters, or children challenge the authority of parents and teachers. However, the disorder is always bounded within a strict timeframe, and tensions are defused with laughter and comedy. The social order is symbolically challenged, but then restored, reaffirming the stability of the society, just as the cold months of winter temporarily challenge biological life, and yet the cycle of life continues, returning with the spring.

April Fool's Day has all the characteristics of a renewal festival. For one day forms of behavior that are normally not allowed (lying, deception, playing pranks) become acceptable, and yet the disorder is bounded within a strict timeframe. Traditionally, no pranks are supposed to be played after 12 o'clock noon of the first. Social hierarchies and tensions are exposed, but hostility is defused with laughter.

The French also have a theory that traces the origin of the custom back to the abundance of fish to be found in French streams and rivers during early April when the young fish had just hatched. These young fish were easy to fool with a hook and lure. Therefore, the French called them 'Poisson d'Avril' or 'April Fish.' Soon it became customary (according to this theory) to fool people on April 1, as a way of celebrating the abundance of foolish fish. The French still use the term 'Poisson d'Avril' to describe April Fool's Day pranks. They also observe the custom of giving each other chocolate fish on April 1.

British folklore links April Fool's Day to the town of Gotham, the legendary town of fools located in Nottinghamshire. According to the legend, it was traditional in the 13th century for any road that the King placed his foot upon to become public property. So when the citizens of Gotham heard that King John planned to travel through their town, they refused him entry, not wishing to lose their main road. When the King heard this, he sent soldiers to the town. But when the soldiers arrived in Gotham, they found the town full of lunatics engaged in foolish activities such as drowning fish or attempting to cage birds in roofless fences. Their foolery was all an act, but the King fell for the ruse and declared the town too foolish to warrant punishment. Ever since then, according to legend, April Fool's Day has commemmorated their trickery.

On April 1, 1530 a meeting of lawmakers in Germany was supposed to occur in Augsburg in order to consider various financial matters. Because of time considerations, the meeting did not take place. But numerous speculators, who had bet on the meeting occurring, lost their money and were ridiculed. This is said to have been the origin of the tradition of playing pranks on April 1.

On April 1, 1572 Dutch rebels captured the town of Den Briel from Spanish troops led by Lord Alva. This military success eventually led to the independence of the Netherlands from Spain. A Dutch rhyme goes: "Op 1 april / Verloor Alva zijn Bril." This translates to: "On April 1st / Alva lost his 'glasses'". "Bril" means glasses in Dutch, but is also a pun on the name of the town, Den Briel. It is claimed that the tradition of pranks on April 1st arose to commemorate the victory in Den Briel and humiliation of the Spanish commander.

Take your pick of the theories but get into the tradition and hopefully play some practical jokes today in the spirit of fun!