How April Fools Day is celebrated around the world

From France to Iceland to the United States, April Fools’ Day will be celebrated on Tuesday with practical jokes and elaborate hoaxes, so make sure to triple check viral posts and don’t leave your back open to any stray sticky notes.The jokesters’ custom has been around for hundreds of years, although its exact birth is difficult to pinpoint.These days, depending on your location, it could be marked with a fish secretly pinned to someone’s back or a whoopee cushion or even news reports of flying penguins (yes, that actually happened ).In the U.S., the pranks are typically followed by screams of “April Fools!” to make sure all are aware that they were the unsuspecting recipient of a practical joke.Here are some thing to know about April Fools’ Day and its history:There are plenty of theories about where this day of pranks and hoaxes came from.

It’s not clear exactly which one might be true.But what is clear is that April Fools’ Day has roots stretching back hundreds of years.One idea is that it dates back to France in 1564, when King Charles IX moved the New Year celebration from its weeklong observance beginning March 25 to a celebration on Jan.

1, according to the Library of Congress.Those who forgot or were never told about the change were mocked.

Although the library notes that the true history of the New Year is more complicated, as different parts of the country observed it on different days.A similar theory ties April Fools’ Day to the 1582 change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, according to the library.But it explains that this type of origin story has been used to explain several holidays and may be more of a “migratory legend.”And then there’s the theory that it could be connected to the March 21 vernal equinox, which is known as a day when people are tricked by unexpected weather changes, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.Whatever its origin, the first time there was clear documented reference to the day was in...