April Fool’s Day brings pranks, jokes, and ‘kick-me’ notes to the consternation of almost all. The silliness has its foundations a long way in the past, nearly 450 years ago by some estimates, and is still going strong.

While its actual roots are debated, one popular explanation suggests that the origins of April Fool’s Day go back to the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar which occurred on 15 October 1582. Under the Julian calendar the new year began on April 1 and was moved to January 1^st under the new calendar.

The transition to the new calendar was announced in Rome by Pope Gregory and was quickly adopted in Catholic countries such as Spain and Portugal but other areas found its adoption was slower, either through slow communications, religious differences, or just resistant to change.

Since the change over to the new calendar was slow, some people and communities continued to celebrate the New Year on April 1^st and were roundly mocked as April Fools. This mockery quickly morphed into jokes, both vernacular and practical, which continued to this day.

The BBC has become known for their irreverent April Fool’s jokes. In 1957 they showed their viewers a clip of Swiss farmers harvesting spaghetti from trees, with many in their audience calling in to find out how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. In 1980 the BBC told its listeners that Big Ben was going to a digital readout and followed that up with an announcement that clock hands would be sold off to the first four that called in.