April Fools' Day

April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is a day celebrated in many countries on April 1. The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, enemies, and neighbors, or sending them on a fool's errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible. Traditionally, in some countries, such as the UK, Australia, and South Africa the jokes only last until noon, and someone who plays a trick after noon is called an "April Fool".[1] Elsewhere, such as in France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Russia, The Netherlands, Brazil, Canada and the U.S., the jokes last all day. The earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness can be found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392). Many writers suggest that the restoration of January 1 as New Year's Day in the 16th century was responsible for the creation of the holiday, but this theory does not explain earlier references.

The frequency of April Fools' hoaxes sometimes makes people doubt real news stories released on April 1.

The 1946 April Fools' Day tsunami in Hilo, Hawaii.

• The April 1, 1946 Aleutian Island earthquake tsunami that killed 165 people in Hawaii and Alaska resulted in the creation of a tsunami warning system (specifically the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre), established in 1949 for Pacific Ocean countries. The tsunami in question is known in Hawaii as the "April Fools' Day Tsunami" due to people drowning because of the assumptions that the warnings were an April Fools' prank.

• The death of King George II of Greece on April 1, 1947.

• The AMC Gremlin was first introduced on April 1, 1970.^[77]

• In 1979, Iran declared April 1 its national Republic Day. Thirty years on, this continues to be mistaken for a joke.^[78]

• On April 1, 1984, singer Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father. Originally, people assumed that it was a fake news story, especially considering the bizarre aspect of the father being the murderer.

• On April 1, 1993, NASCAR Winston Cup Series Champion Alan Kulwicki was killed in a plane crash involving Hooters of America executives inBlountville, Tennessee near the Tri-Cities Airport. The party was travelling to the Food City 500 qualifying scheduled for the next day.

• The suicide death of Deathrock legend Rozz Williams was on April 1, 1998.

• On April 1, 1999 The Canadian Northwest Territories was split, and the territory now known as Nunavut came to be.

• The merger of Square and its rival company, Enix, took place on April 1, 2003, and was originally thought to be a joke.

• Leslie Cheung, one of Hong Kong's well-known singer and actor, committed suicide in 2003 due to severe depression.

• Gmail's April 2004 launch was widely believed to be a prank, as Google traditionally perpetrates April Fools' Day hoaxes each April 1 (see Google's hoaxes.) Another Google-related event that turned out not to be a hoax occurred on April 1, 2007, when employees at Google's New York City office were alerted that a ball python kept in an engineer's cubicle had escaped and was on the loose. An internal e-mail acknowledged that "the timing…could not be more awkward" but that the snake's escape was in fact an actual occurrence and not a prank.^[79]

• The 2005 death of comedian Mitch Hedberg was originally dismissed as an April Fools' joke. The comedian's March 29, 2005 death was announced on March 31, but many newspapers didn't carry the story until April 1, 2005.

• British sprinter Dwain Chambers joined English rugby league team Castleford Tigers shortly before April 1, 2008. The athlete was attempting a return to top flight athletics at the time following a high profile drugs ban, and his apparent unfamiliarity with rugby led many people to assume this was an April Fools' Day prank.

• On April 1, 2008, it was reported that UEFA would require the Swedish fast food chain Max to close their restaurant at the Borås Arena during theEuropean Under-21 Football Championship due to a conflict with official sponsor McDonald's and a requirement that only official sponsors may operate around the arena. The arena was later replaced as a tournament site.^[80]

• On April 1, 2008,Persch announced that the GNOME desktop web browser Epiphany would be switched from Mozilla's Gecko engine to the WebKitengine used by Safari and KDE's equivalent application Konqueror ^[81]

• On 1 April 2009, Alan Shearer becomes caretaker manager of Newcastle United.

• On April 1, 2009, CBS announced the cancellation of the daytime drama Guiding Light after 72 years with the final episode scheduled to air September 18, 2009.

• On April 1, 2009, A school was almost burned to the ground in the Danish town Albertslund; apparently, the fire department refused to believe that the news was true the first two times that people called to report it.

• Also on April 1, 2009, a Virus/Worm was called Conficker and spread to millions of computers and releasing personal info and deleting files. This was supposed to be a joke, but random computers throughout America were hit. Before this happened, news media like, NBC, Fox News, ABC andCBS told the viewers to install firewalls and updates to their Windows Computers before it hit.