...your friend might, and pull one of these April 1st gags on you!
It’s almost here.
Image courtesy Des Récits on Unsplash.
That glorious day.
Image courtesy Ben White on Unsplash.
The first of April.
When it’s a time-honored tradition to pull gags on your friends, in the name of “April Fool’s Day”.
Happy New Year!
Gif courtesy giphy.
If you can manage to pull this off - convincing someone that it’s actually New Year’s Day - you’d…
...not only be proclaimed a Master Jokester/Prankster, but…
...you’d also be paying homage to one of the supposed origins of this tradition.
April Fool’s Day originated from a New Year prank?
According to some people, yes.
Gif courtesy giphy.
The story goes that back in the Middle Ages, it was a custom among many French people to celebrate New Year’s Day on March 25th.
And they used to have a weeklong celebration.
If you count, such a celebration ends on March 31st.
And next day, the first of April, the people who’d celebrated New Year in January used to make fun of the ones who had taken to this alternative new year.
There are many other stories that compete for the “Origin of April Fool’s Day” award (including one involving Noah and the Ark) but this one is the weirdest.
When an April Fool’s gag wasn’t an April Fool’s gag
Image courtesy Colton Sturgeon on Unsplash.
There have been instances where what people thought was a gag really wasn’t.
The GMail announcement
Gif courtesy giphy.
During the early to mid 2000’s, when you asked about email services, you’d hear of options like AOL, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail.
They all had their unique features, but they had something in common - a depressingly small 2-4 megabyte storage capacity.
In other words, you’d need to keep deleting emails every few days or your inbox would run out of space.
So, when Google announced on April 1st 2004 that they’d launched an email service - GMail - with one gigabyte of storage, many people dismissed it as another of Google’s gags.
(A gigabyte is over a thousand megabytes, if you aren’t aware of these terms).
Anyhoo, it wasn’t a gag.
April 1 2004 really was the day GMail launched.
The axing of Guiding Light
In 2009, Guiding Light was one of our longest running soap operas.
It had been running - first as a radio show and then on television - from 1937.
So, when CBS announced on April 1st 2009 that Guiding Light was going to be cancelled, many people took it as an April Fool’s thing.
Only, it wasn’t.
The announcement WAS real, and Guiding Light lit up American televisions for the final time on September 18th that year.
When something may as well have been an April Fool’s gag
A real event that should be described as a bad joke…
Exorcist II: The Heretic
You MUST have heard of The Exorcist.
The 1973 film that retains its title to this day as one of the scariest movies of all time.
That made Linda Blair a star.
Its success led to a sequel being greenlit, shot and released within 4 years.
And opening day saw eager moviegoers flock to theaters bubbling with excitement.
Within minutes, people started laughing at the production.
There were reports of Warner Bros. (the producers) executives being chased by angry moviegoers, and most critics savaged it in their reviews.
It may have been highly fitting had the filmmakers added an “April Fool!” at the end of the movie.
April Fool’s Day in Chicago
Image courtesy Pedro Lastra on Unsplash.
Our great city hasn’t been all that lacking in the April Fool’s Spirit throughout the years.
The Illinois Capitol is moving to Chicago!
Our state capitol is located in Springfield.
It’s been there ever since 1888.
That didn’t stop Chicago Architecture from running this April 1st story about the Illinois Capitol being moved to Chicago in 2016.
Would have been able to tell it’s a prank?
Triple digits jerseys for Da Bears
The Bears pulled one 2 years ago.
On April 1st 2019, they announced the launch of new triple digits jerseys for all their players.
Here’s Trey Burton, in his “new jersey”...
Even after they did the “April Fool’s” thing, officially declaring the announcement as a prank, many fans thought the new jerseys to be the real thing.
Celebrating April Fool’s Day in Chicago
Gif courtesy giphy.
As it’s April 1st already, chances are, you’ve already planned your pranks.
If you haven’t, here are a few worth trying out.
Emailing them the dictionary
Someone at The University of Michigan had the brilliant idea to create a text file with ALL THE WORDS from a mid-sized dictionary.
Copy and paste the entire list into an attachment and email it to a friend.
Most email services check inside attachments during word searches, so your email will keep popping up in every search they do!
Glitter bomb!
Get an official looking envelope, and make it look like emergency official correspondence.
Fill it with glitter and leave it inside your friend’s postbox.
Texting…
Download and send this gif to a friend and...I think you can guess the rest.
Fake fried eggs
Follow the recipe and treat your friend to a completely unexpected meal!
If you need to patch things up with a friend or family member, having pranked them for April’s Fools, may we suggest an escape game at Chicago’s finest escape room?
Banner image courtesy Alexandra ❤️A life without animals is not worth living❤️ from Pixabay.
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