please enjoy your travel through time on the 1st day of April, with interesting events, births & deaths on this day in history
1st April History Timeline
1700s / the 18th century on the 1st of April
1700 : APRiL FOOLS DAY was popularized when English pranksters began celebrating the annual pranking tradition also known as All Fools’ Day, by playing practical jokes on each other on the 1st April in 1700, but some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched to the Gregorian calendar, from the Julian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were too slow to get the news and fail to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to the 1st January and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. These included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), which is said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.
