A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on April 1st. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper In Italy, France, Belgium, and French-speaking areas of Switzerland and Canada, a 1st April tradition dating back to at least 1508 is often known as “April fish” (poissons d’avril in French or pesce d’aprile in Italian). On April 1, 1861, the municipality called East St. Louis was established. On April 1, 1939, Phil Niekro, Hall of Fame pitcher and winner of 318…
Browsing: April 1
A Brief History On this April Fool’s Day, we not only wish you a happy April 1st, but to dispel some historical and current event misconceptions, we also want to share with you three strange events that actually happened in the history of the southernmost continent, Antarctica. Again, we want to be explicitly clear that what follows are NOT jokes. These events actually happened! Digging Deeper 1. The Nazis Attempted to Create a Colony There Yes, those guys! The Third Reich, enemies of Indiana Jones and Captain America… In 1939, Germany sent an expedition to explore a chunk of Antarctica…
A Brief History On April 1, 2016, we published an article using made up “scientific” names of fish in a pathetic effort to be funny. (This author, according to most people, is not funny. I beg to differ…) Today, we take a look at the common name of some real life fish in fresh and salt water. Feel free to nominate others that you believe should be on such a list. Sometimes people butcher the names of fish and create their own stupid/funny names, a fact I learned working part-time at an aquarium store. Examples are “African American Cichlids” when…
A Brief History On April 1, 1970, the Detroit Automobile Comedy Consortium unleashed a sort of automotive April Fool’s joke on the American public by introducing the American Motors Corporation’s entry into the small car market to combat the rise in small car imports from Germany and Japan. The AMC Gremlin was like nothing else American car companies had ever produced, causing cynical Americans to snidely ask new Gremlin owners, “Where’s the other half of your car?” Digging Deeper Built in Wisconsin, Ontario, and Mexico, the Gremlin was pretty much a shortened AMC Hornet, only 161.3 inches long and 70.6…
A Brief History On April 1, 2018, we have just 2 words for you, April Fools! This time instead of publishing a satirical spoof containing false stories, we will list 10 times real people really got fooled, either as individuals or as a group. Digging Deeper 1. US Public, War of the Worlds. On October 30, 1938, CBS radio in the United States aired a for radio adaptation of the HG Wells 1898 science fiction story, The War of the Worlds, directed and narrated by Orson Welles. In spite of periodic reminders that the program was a work of fiction,…
