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April Fools Day or All Fools Day is the one day of the year when you are allowed to mercilessly prank your friends, family, and co-workers.
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How exactly did this day come about?
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We don't actually know for sure what started this celebration of April Fools Day.
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References can be found as early as the 1500s, but these accounts are infrequent and not very detailed.
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Most popular theories that it began around 1582 in France, during the reformation of the calendar.
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Before France adopted the Gregorian Calendar, they celebrated New Years for eight days.
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Beginning on March 25th and ending on April 1st.
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When they switched calendar systems, the 8th day moved from April 1st to January 1st.
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Because they didn't have internet, phones, social media and a mail system, a lot of people didn't hear about this change until years later.
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Those that did not hear about the change continued to celebrate New Years in April.
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Others refused to celebrate it out of rebellion.
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Those who had been informed of the change and adjusted their calendars began to make fun of these fools who were uninformed or rebellious.
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This harassment evolved into a tradition of playing pranks on the 1st day of April and this spread to other countries.
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However, April Fools Day was already established in England, which didn't switch calendar systems until 1752.
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Also, people were already engaging in pranks and light-heartedness around this time of the year, long before the French switched their calendar systems.
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Such as in the case of the ancient Roman festival of Hilaria.
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Modern celebrations of April Fools Day have slightly different traditions depending on the country you are in.
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But they all have the similar theme of pranking or humiliating individuals.
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In France, they try to tape an image of a fish to your back without you noticing.
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And in Portugal, they throw flour at you.
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In England, you are only supposed to pull jokes until noon and if you pull a joke after noon, you are called an April Fool.
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In the United States and Britain, even popular media outlets and companies have been known to get involved in the fun.
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In 1996, Taco Bell announced that it had purchased the Liberty Bell from the city of Philadelphia and was going to rename it The Taco Liberty Bell.
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In 1992, npr claimed that Richard Nixon would be running again for president.
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British publication The Guardian, famously pranked the public in 1977 when they said that a semicolon-shaved island in the Indian Ocean had been discovered.
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This hoax is credited for launching the trend of April Fools Day pranks by British tabloids.
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So, hopefully you now know a little more about the history of April Fools Day or at least what we think the history of it is.
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Now that we are at the end of this video, you might be wondering if all this information is accurate, seeing that it is a video about April Fools Day.
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Yeah! It's accurate.
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But seriously, it's accurate. I...I wouldn't do that to you.