A long time ago, in a country not so far away, a kindly king had a stable of jesters to amuse the citizens of the kingdom. One would entertain the king for the month, while the others would scour the countryside, looking for people who needed a laugh. Each month, the jesters would switch off, so the king would never hear a stale joke.

Well, being a jester was hard work and took years of study, and even then, few would ever be good enough to entertain the King. Many were called to apprentice, few to entertain. One such apprentice, whose real name escapes the historians, was determined to become a Royal Jester. He admired the March jester, whose funny walks were the talk of the town, and of course he loved the May jester, whose inflated indecisiveness had people rolling in the aisles. Oh, and if only he could pull the outrageous provarications of the July jester, he'd be set for life!

So the little jester-in-training got up early every day, watching all the folk to see what they found funny, and went to bed late every night to catch any last gossip. He even put his acrobatics training to good use - climbing out the window at night and scaling up and down the castle walls to stay ahead of his competitors.

One night, during his "practice session," he found himself outside the window of the Royal Advisor. Much to his horror, he overheard a terrible plot to poison the King! Now being only a young jester-in-training, the poor guy had no one who would believe him. If he were lucky, they'd think it a poor joke. If he wasn't lucky, they'd imprison him for threatening their beloved King. And so the apprentice had to find a way to stop the dastardly plot all by himself.

The next morning, he snuck in before the King had finished dressing and substituted whipped cream for the poisoned shaving cream. The doctored tea was spat out when the sugar turned out to be salt. The wine was angrily turned away when what appeared to be a fly floated to the top. (It's amazing how similar to a fly a raisin with two chips of ice can appear.)

But there was one last poisoned item, a custard pie, the jester couldn't get rid of by subtle chicanery. The King loved his banana pie, and by decree only he would be served such a pie. Few would handle the pie before it reached the Royal Table, and the would-be jester would certainly not be one of them.

As the pie came out, a subtle hush came over the room, as the King gazed at his pie in near-worship. He bent his head for a moment and silently gave thanks that no one had pointed out that bananas didn't grow in pseudo-European kingdoms like his. As the King raised his fork to delve into this large slice of heaven, not realizing it might take him there literally in just a few moments, the brave little jester darted up and threw the pie towards the Royal Advisor, declaring, "Food fight!"

Knowing what lay inside the pie (and it wasn't four and twenty blackbirds), the Royal Advisor ducked so the pie hit the wall and slid to the floor with a very unroyal gloomph.

A shocked silence fell over the hall for several moments. A few of the slower witted half-rose, pies in hand, then slunk back into their seats.

"Off with his head!" the King declared.

As the jester was grabbed by several burly nights, he cried out, "But, Sire, look over there!"

Over in the corner, near the tainted pie, lay one of the royal hunting dogs, writhing in agony, its face coated in pie.

"Poison! Some one has dared try to poison me?" the King exclaimed in anger. "Those other strange events, they were to protect me as well, weren't they?"

The jester nodded, unable to speak, partially from fear but mostly from the sword pressed to his throat.

"For saving my life, you shall be my newest jester. My April Fool. In fact, this day will forever be your day. To make sure it is always honored, I declare that on this day, we shall all be April Fools."

The jester beamed in delight as the crowds cheered and the burly knights stopped wrenching his arms out of their sockets. He imagined kids, in body or mind, playing silly pranks on each other for all eternity, without fear of reproach, all because of him.

And once the King retired for the night, forever immortalizing the young, brave fool, several nobles ganged up on the jester and killed him. After all, no one likes to be declared a fool.

Attached Link: The Museum of Hoaxes

Because I like links, from those good folks at the RefDesk: Every April Fool's Day the ritual is the same. Outrageously false stories - issued by a variety of sources such as corporations, non-profit organizations, journalists, and politicians - appear in the media. The challenge for all of us is to sort out the April Foolery from the weird stuff that's actually true. This site provides information on the origin and history of April Fool's Day along with a chronololgy and timeline of memorable hoaxes.

lol Crescent. Someone posted a simple April Fools day joke in the Cinema 4d forum. Just a title to a post. "Microsoft buys Maxon, I'm outta here" It got me :-) Shannna :-0

There is a Corel buys Curious Labs in the Poser forum. The April fools are at work. :)

My all time favourite is still the one when the BBC did a program about spaghetti growing on trees. Shanna :-)

Great story Crescent - clearly the history of the custard pie fight too :-) Capital Radio, London's major radio station, pulled a very good one back in the 80's. About half the population of London listens to Capital every morning, and one April 1st there were all those people, going about showering and breakfasting and reading the morning paper, keeping one ear open for the big joke news story that they knew would be coming. Seven o'clock news came and went - nothing unusual. Eight o'clock news came and went, everyone in their cars on the way to work, no joke news story. Nine o'clock news, everyone arriving at work, still no joke news story. "Guess they mustn't have bothered this year," thinks half of London, stepping through the office front door to discover it's still only eight o'clock...

Great story Crescent... In Italy we call it April Fish, don't ask me why... Children use to pin paper fish on the back of people, without being noticed, so that you can se someone walking around the streets carring the fish... We also use to tell stories, and if one spots the joke can say: "It smells of fish" before the other cry out "April Fish!" I already posted it in Rhino forum, but here my April Fish for you too! (Pesce d'Aprile is in Italian because I sent it to all my Italian friends)

That is so funny....now, you know, there has to be a good story behind April Fish. I understand that in France it is called "Poisson d'Avril" (April Fish) because at that time of year the sun was in the zodiac sign of Pisces, the fish. I wonder if that's the same for Italy?

It's one of the various explanations, but I've been told about so many possible reasons that truly I cannot figure out what it's the true one...

I have come to the certain opinion that April Fool's day, itself, is othing more thn a joke foisted on us by some conniving type... Now I see that the truth of the matter is I'm right. hee hee Great Story, Crescent.