1204 Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of Henry II, died on April 1 1204. By the time of Eleanor's death she had outlived all of her children except for King John of England and Queen Eleanor of Castile. Her tomb is in Fontevraud Abbey where she is tombed next to her husband Henry and her son Richard the Lionheart.
1293 After Robert Winchelsey was elected as Archbishop of Canterbury, he left England for Rome on April 1, 1293 to be consecrated by the Pope, only to find that there wasn't one. Celestine V eventually performed the ceremony at Aquila on September 12, 1294.
1392 April Fools’ Day is mentioned in literature that dates back to 1392. According to the Museum of Hoaxes, the holiday is believed to have been first referenced in Chaucer's Nun’s Priest’s Tale. In the tale, a rooster is tricked by a fox on "syn March bigan thritty dayes and two," which is believed to be a reference to April 1st.
1578 William Harvey, the first to describe blood circulation, was born in the Kentish coastal town of Folkestone on April 1, 1578. He was the eldest of seven brothers and two sisters. Harvey enrolled in the University of Padua in 1599, where he studied under Fabrizio d’Acquapendente, who was the first person to clearly describe the valves in the veins. Galileo was a Professor during Harvey's time there.
1721 Sir Robert Walpole entered office on April 1, 1721 as the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom under King George I. He pursued a policy of peace abroad and efficient financial management at home. Under Walpole's leadership the British economy boomed as never before. He served 20 years and 314 days as prime minister, the longest single term and longer even than the accumulated terms of other British PMs who held the office more than once.
1810 A few months after divorcing Josephine, Napoleon married his second wife, the 19 year old Marie-Louise of Austria, a daughter of the Hapsburg Emperor, Francis II on April 1, 1810. She duly presented her husband with a son the future Napoléon II. Napoleon was very fond of Marie-Louise. He referred to her as “Donne Louise” and he daily wrote affectionate letters to her whilst on campaign. Marie-Louise died in Parma in 1847 having remarried twice after Napoleon's death.
1815 Otto Von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of the German Empire, was born on his family estate at Schönhausen, a village on the Elbe, North West of Berlin, on April 1, 1815. His father, Ferdinand Von Bismarck, was a landowner and a former Prussian military officer; his mother, Wilhelmine Mencken, originally belonged to a prosperous bourgeois family. A very mischievous child, as a youth Otto was an indefatigable duellist. He was known as the mad Junker.
1826 On April 1, 1826 American Samuel Morey received a patent for a compressionless "Gas or Vapor Engine.” It was pretty much the kind of engine we still use in cars and trucks, but not as complicated and needing less maintenance than those of today.
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| Tomb effigies of Eleanor and Henry II at Fontevraud Abbey. By ElanorGamgee |
1293 After Robert Winchelsey was elected as Archbishop of Canterbury, he left England for Rome on April 1, 1293 to be consecrated by the Pope, only to find that there wasn't one. Celestine V eventually performed the ceremony at Aquila on September 12, 1294.
1392 April Fools’ Day is mentioned in literature that dates back to 1392. According to the Museum of Hoaxes, the holiday is believed to have been first referenced in Chaucer's Nun’s Priest’s Tale. In the tale, a rooster is tricked by a fox on "syn March bigan thritty dayes and two," which is believed to be a reference to April 1st.
1578 William Harvey, the first to describe blood circulation, was born in the Kentish coastal town of Folkestone on April 1, 1578. He was the eldest of seven brothers and two sisters. Harvey enrolled in the University of Padua in 1599, where he studied under Fabrizio d’Acquapendente, who was the first person to clearly describe the valves in the veins. Galileo was a Professor during Harvey's time there.
1721 Sir Robert Walpole entered office on April 1, 1721 as the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom under King George I. He pursued a policy of peace abroad and efficient financial management at home. Under Walpole's leadership the British economy boomed as never before. He served 20 years and 314 days as prime minister, the longest single term and longer even than the accumulated terms of other British PMs who held the office more than once.
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| Napoleon's second wife, Marie-Louise |
1815 Otto Von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of the German Empire, was born on his family estate at Schönhausen, a village on the Elbe, North West of Berlin, on April 1, 1815. His father, Ferdinand Von Bismarck, was a landowner and a former Prussian military officer; his mother, Wilhelmine Mencken, originally belonged to a prosperous bourgeois family. A very mischievous child, as a youth Otto was an indefatigable duellist. He was known as the mad Junker.
1826 On April 1, 1826 American Samuel Morey received a patent for a compressionless "Gas or Vapor Engine.” It was pretty much the kind of engine we still use in cars and trucks, but not as complicated and needing less maintenance than those of today.
1845 On April 1, 1845, when Louisa Alcott was 12, she and her family moved into the Concord, Massachusetts, home they named "Hillside". The Alcott family's time at "Hillside" was a significant period in Louisa's life, as it was there that she began to develop her love for writing and storytelling. They sold it seven years later to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who renamed it The Wayside.
1848 The dwarf George Nutt was born on April 1, 1848. Nutt was touring New England with a circus when P. T. Barnum hired him to appear at the American Museum in New York City. Barnum gave Nutt the stage name Commodore Nutt, a wardrobe that included naval uniforms, and a miniature carriage in the shape of an English walnut. Nutt became one of the Museum's major attractions.
1849 In 1848 the Russian novelist Fydor Dostoyevsky joined a group of young intellectuals who read and debated French socialist theories and other forbidden circulated texts from the west. The Liberal Petrashevsky Circle also voiced their opposition to serfdom and censorship. Dostoyevsky was arrested with 33 others on April 1, 1849 as a Social Revolutionary, after a police informer had slipped into his socialist discussion groups. He was sent to Siberia for four years.
1876 Four years before he became the US President, James A. Garfield contributed an original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem during a discussion with other members of Congress. It was published in the April 1, 1876 edition of the New England Journal of Education.
1876 in 1869, Vincent Van Gogh's uncle Cent helped him obtain a position with the art dealer Goupil & Cie in The Hague. In June 1873, Goupil transferred him to their London office. Van Gogh became moody after being rejected by a girl and was transferred to Goupil & Cie's Paris branch, where he became resentful at how art was treated as a commodity and started to lecture prospective customers on moral issues. On April 1, 1876, Goupil dismissed Van Gogh for lack of motivation.
1891 In 1891 William Wrigley went to Chicago founding William Wrigley Jr. Company on April 1, 1891. At first he sold soap, then baking powder before realizing that chewing gum had greater potential, so he begun marketing it under his own name. The first brand of Wrigley's chewing gum was called "Vassar", after the New England woman's college. Next were "Lotta" and "Sweet Sixteen Orange."
1905 'SOS' is the Morse-code signal (…---…) used by shipping and the like in distress to summon immediate aid, hence any urgent appeal for help. This distress signal was first adopted by the German government in radio regulations effective April 1, 1905. It was recommended at the Radio Telegraph Conference the following year and officially adopted as the worldwide standard on July 1, 1908.
1910 There is a popular urban myth that the French banned kissing at railway stations in 1910 as they claimed it delayed train departures. The origins of this myth can be traced back to a humorous article published in Le Figaro on April 1, 1910, which claimed that the government was planning to ban kissing in public as a way to improve efficiency and punctuality in public transport. It was clearly an April Fool.
1848 The dwarf George Nutt was born on April 1, 1848. Nutt was touring New England with a circus when P. T. Barnum hired him to appear at the American Museum in New York City. Barnum gave Nutt the stage name Commodore Nutt, a wardrobe that included naval uniforms, and a miniature carriage in the shape of an English walnut. Nutt became one of the Museum's major attractions.
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| Commodore Nutt in uniform, ca. 1865 |
1849 In 1848 the Russian novelist Fydor Dostoyevsky joined a group of young intellectuals who read and debated French socialist theories and other forbidden circulated texts from the west. The Liberal Petrashevsky Circle also voiced their opposition to serfdom and censorship. Dostoyevsky was arrested with 33 others on April 1, 1849 as a Social Revolutionary, after a police informer had slipped into his socialist discussion groups. He was sent to Siberia for four years.
1876 Four years before he became the US President, James A. Garfield contributed an original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem during a discussion with other members of Congress. It was published in the April 1, 1876 edition of the New England Journal of Education.
1876 in 1869, Vincent Van Gogh's uncle Cent helped him obtain a position with the art dealer Goupil & Cie in The Hague. In June 1873, Goupil transferred him to their London office. Van Gogh became moody after being rejected by a girl and was transferred to Goupil & Cie's Paris branch, where he became resentful at how art was treated as a commodity and started to lecture prospective customers on moral issues. On April 1, 1876, Goupil dismissed Van Gogh for lack of motivation.
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| Goupil & Cie Editeurs, Place de l'Opéra, Paris |
1891 In 1891 William Wrigley went to Chicago founding William Wrigley Jr. Company on April 1, 1891. At first he sold soap, then baking powder before realizing that chewing gum had greater potential, so he begun marketing it under his own name. The first brand of Wrigley's chewing gum was called "Vassar", after the New England woman's college. Next were "Lotta" and "Sweet Sixteen Orange."
1905 'SOS' is the Morse-code signal (…---…) used by shipping and the like in distress to summon immediate aid, hence any urgent appeal for help. This distress signal was first adopted by the German government in radio regulations effective April 1, 1905. It was recommended at the Radio Telegraph Conference the following year and officially adopted as the worldwide standard on July 1, 1908.
1918 The oldest independent air force in the world was founded in the UK on April 1, 1918 when The Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Services amalgamated and established a separate service as the Royal Air Force (RAF). By the end of World War I, the RAF had 291,000 officers and men and 22,171 aircraft.
1924 Adolf Hitler led an unsuccessful rising, the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich on November 8-9, 1923. After its failure, Hitler was sentenced to five years in jail. He only spent only nine months as a prisoner, during which he wrote the first part of his political testament Mein Kampf.
1933 The recently elected Nazis under Julius Streicher organized a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany on April 1, 1933, ushering in a series of anti-Semitic acts. Fascism and the Nazi Party's application of racial theories led to organized persecution and the genocide of the Holocaust.
1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the creation of the United States Air Force Academy on April 1, 1954. The youngest of the five United States military academies, its campus is located immediately north of Colorado Springs in El Paso County, Colorado.
1957 The BBC broadcast on the April 1, 1957 episode of Panorama, the spaghetti tree hoax. The current affairs program carried out a spoof report that the Swiss were not only growing spaghetti on trees, but that they also had a shortage of the crop.
1959 The Mauritania flag was adopted on April 1, 1959. It is almost unique among national flags as it does not contain any of the three most common flag colors; red, white, or blue - a distinction only shared with Jamaica.
1960 On April 1, 1960, a Dutch TV station ran a report announcing that The Leaning Tower of Pisa had fallen over. The report was accompanied by footage of the tower's collapse, which was actually a cleverly edited video clip of the tower slowly toppling over. The report was intended as an April Fools' Day prank, and it was quite successful in fooling many viewers who believed the tower had actually fallen.
1924 Adolf Hitler led an unsuccessful rising, the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich on November 8-9, 1923. After its failure, Hitler was sentenced to five years in jail. He only spent only nine months as a prisoner, during which he wrote the first part of his political testament Mein Kampf.
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| Defendants in the Beer Hall Putsch trial including Hitler. By Bundesarchiv, |
1933 The recently elected Nazis under Julius Streicher organized a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany on April 1, 1933, ushering in a series of anti-Semitic acts. Fascism and the Nazi Party's application of racial theories led to organized persecution and the genocide of the Holocaust.
1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the creation of the United States Air Force Academy on April 1, 1954. The youngest of the five United States military academies, its campus is located immediately north of Colorado Springs in El Paso County, Colorado.
1957 The BBC broadcast on the April 1, 1957 episode of Panorama, the spaghetti tree hoax. The current affairs program carried out a spoof report that the Swiss were not only growing spaghetti on trees, but that they also had a shortage of the crop.
1959 The Mauritania flag was adopted on April 1, 1959. It is almost unique among national flags as it does not contain any of the three most common flag colors; red, white, or blue - a distinction only shared with Jamaica.
1960 On April 1, 1960, a Dutch TV station ran a report announcing that The Leaning Tower of Pisa had fallen over. The report was accompanied by footage of the tower's collapse, which was actually a cleverly edited video clip of the tower slowly toppling over. The report was intended as an April Fools' Day prank, and it was quite successful in fooling many viewers who believed the tower had actually fallen.
1965 A lifelong advocate for healthy living and self-care, the cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein died in New York City on April 1, 1965, at age 94. Rubenstein was known for her innovative beauty products and treatments, which were designed to cater to women of all skin types and colors. At the time of her death, Rubinstein was one of the wealthiest women in the world and had left a lasting legacy in the beauty and cosmetics industry.
1966 The last Flintstones show was broadcast on April 1, 1966 by ABC. The six seasons that The Flintstones held the record for the longest-running prime-time animated TV series until the seventh season of The Simpsons in 1997.
1970 President Richard Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law on April 1, 1970, requiring the Surgeon General's warnings on tobacco products and banning cigarette advertisements on television and radio in the United States. The last cigarette ad appeared on the New Year’s Day football games in 1971.
1974 On April 1, 1974 a local prankster Oliver "Porky" Bickar took 70 tires to the top of Mt. Edgecumbe, a volcano located at the southern end of Kruzof Island, Alaska. and lit them on fire. The locals thought the 400-year dormant volcano was erupting and a helicopter was sent up to check it out. When the helicopter arrived, the pilot found the words "APRIL FOOL" spray painted on the snow.
1976 Apple was founded on April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne came together to form the company in order to sell their Apple I personal computer kit. Steve Wozniak sold his Hewlett Packard calculator for $500 in 1976 to fund the firm’s launch. The company was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977.
1980 On April 1, 1980, the BBC reported that Big Ben was getting a digital display. The report claimed that the new display would feature red digital numbers and that it was part of an effort to modernize the tower's timekeeping technology. The story was, of course, a complete fabrication and a classic April Fools' Day prank.
1987 On April 1, 1987 Steven M Newman completed a solo walk around our planet Earth. The 15,000-mile trek took him four years and untold pairs of shoes to complete. Newman became popularly known as “The Worldwalker."
1993 On April 1, 1993 a San Diego Radio station reported that the space shuttle Discovery had to make an emergency landing at the local airport at 8:30 am. Over 1000 people headed for the landing site to catch a glimpse, crowding the airport and causing traffic jams. It was an April Fools hoax.
1997 Pokémon - I Choose You!, the pilot episode of the Pokémon anime series was first broadcast in Japan on April 1, 1997. The episode introduced the series' main protagonist, Ash Ketchum, and his trusty companion Pikachu, and set the stage for the adventures and battles that would follow.
1997 When the comet Hale–Bopp was discovered at a great distance from the Sun, there were expectations that the comet would brighten considerably by the time it passed close to Earth. Although predicting the brightness of comets with any degree of accuracy is very difficult, Hale–Bopp met or exceeded most predictions when it made it closest approach to The Sun on April 1, 1997.
1998 On April Fool's Day 1998, Burger King published an advertisement for "Left-Handed Whopper". The condiments of this whopper were supposed to be rotated 180 degrees, as to avoid spilling out toppings from the right side of the burger. It was said to be the "ultimate 'Have-it-your-way' for lefties."
1999 On April 1, 1999, the Northwest Territories in Canada was divided to create Nunavut to the east. Inuit make up almost 85 percent of Nunavut's population and Nunavut means "our land" in Inuktitut, the Inuit language.
2004 Gmail initially started as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004. It became available to the general public on February 7, 2007. Before Google launched their email service, “G-Mail” was the name of a free email service offered by Garfield’s website.
2007 The largest ever Easter egg hunt took place at the Cypress Gardens Adventure Park in Winter Haven, Florida, USA, on April 1, 2007. A whopping 501,000 eggs were hidden for 9,753 children and their parents to search for! That's a lot of hunting and gathering for Easter treats. The event was organized by the Cypress Gardens theme park and Guinness World Records was on hand to verify the record-breaking attempt.
2004 Gmail initially started as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004. It became available to the general public on February 7, 2007. Before Google launched their email service, “G-Mail” was the name of a free email service offered by Garfield’s website.
2007 The largest ever Easter egg hunt took place at the Cypress Gardens Adventure Park in Winter Haven, Florida, USA, on April 1, 2007. A whopping 501,000 eggs were hidden for 9,753 children and their parents to search for! That's a lot of hunting and gathering for Easter treats. The event was organized by the Cypress Gardens theme park and Guinness World Records was on hand to verify the record-breaking attempt.
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