April Fools' Fooling Around
April fools' day is one of the weirdest, vaguest and controversial celebration(?) days that is, by some, so ceremoniously celebrated. What does it even offer? Let us dig deep... HOW IT ALL STARTED... There are many popular, unverified and disputed claims. Some are: EARLIEST ENGLISH A disputed association between April 1 and foolishness is in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1392). In the "Nun's Priest's Tale", a cock Chauntecleer is tricked by a fox on Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two . Readers apparently understood this line to mean "32 March", i.e. April 1. However, it is not clear that Chaucer was referencing April 1, since the text of the "Nun's Priest's Tale" also states that the story takes place on the day when the sun is in the signe of Taurus had y-runne Twenty degrees and one , which cannot be April 1. Modern scholars believe that there is a copying error in the extant manuscripts and that Ch...