warnings were an April Fools' prank.
Gmail's April 2004 launch was widely believed to be a prank, as Google was known to include joke pages on their website, until that point. The merger of Square and its rival company, Enix, took place on April 1, 2003, and was originally thought to be a joke. Fans of the long running square series Final Fantasy often claim that the merger was in fact a joke due to the decline of the series after the merger.
The 2005 death of comedian Mitch Hedberg was originally dismissed as an April Fools' joke. The comedian's March 29, 2005 death was announced on April 1, 2005.
Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z was announced for production by Aniplex, Cartoon Network, and Toei Animation on 1 April 2005 and was originally discredited, but turned out to be true when poster art and clips from the series were revealed days later. [8]
People obeying hoax messages to telephone \\zoo, sometimes cause a serious overload to zoos' telephone switchboards.
This article is about the informal holiday. For other uses, please see April Fool's Day (disambiguation) or April Fool.
April Fools' Day is a celebrated in the Western world on April 1st of each year. Sometimes referred to as All Fools' Day, April 1st is not a legal holiday, but is widely recognized and celebrated as a day which tolerates practical joke and general foolishness. The day is marked by the commission of good humoured hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, teachers, neighbors, work associates, and others with the aim to embarrass the stupid and naive.
Traditionally, in some countries, such as New Zealand, the UK, Australia, and South Africa, the jokes only last until noon, and someone who plays a trick after noon is called an \Fool.\[1] It is for this reason that newspapers in the U.K. that run a front page April fool only do so on the first (morning) edition.[2] Elsewhere, such as in France, Ireland, Italy, South Korea, Japan, Russia, The Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Canada, and the U.S., the jokes last all day. The earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness can be found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392). Many writers suggest that the restoration of January 1 as New Year's Day in the 16th century was responsible for the creation of the holiday, but this theory does not explain earlier references.