What do you call someone who’s fallen for a prank? In most English-speaking places, you’d probably just call them gullible. But in France, you might use the term poisson d’avril (“April fish.”) The centuries-old name is linked to a 1508 poem by Renaissance composer and writer Eloy d’Amerval, who used the phrase to describe the …
Monthly Archives: April 2024
April Fools — Part 2
In my last post, I picked on Boston because, well its Boston. But stupid laws are not a Massachusetts thing. Let’s look a little closer to home. Here are a few from Pennsylvania: It is illegal to catch a fish by any body part other than the mouth. There’s also a law forbidding the use …
April Fools
The origins behind April Fool’s Day are a little sketchy but it is generally understood that it started back in 1582. That was the year that France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian but communication was slow and unreliable so, not everyone switched at the same time. As a consequence, many priests didn’t …
Michael Carver -- Historical Interpreter/Reenactor 