On April 1st of this year, hundreds of thousands of men with mustaches are going to gather in Washington, DC to demand tax equity for Mustached Americans. They're hoping to persuade Congress to adopt the Stimulus To Allow Critical Hair Expenses Act, or STACHE Act. The act would allow Mustached Americans to claim tax deductions for expenses such as:


The organizations behind this mustached march on Washington are the American Mustache Institute (AMUI) and H&R Block.



At first, I assumed the entire thing was an April Fool's Day joke campaign organized by H&R Block. But I now think that the American Mustache Institute was around before H&R Block got involved -- though it's obviously a rather tongue-in-cheek organization.

John Yeutter, an accountant at Northeastern State University, wrote a paper in 2010 titled, "Mustached Americans And The Triple Bottom Line: An Analysis Of The Impact Of The Mustache On Modern Society And A Proposal For A Mustached American Tax Incentive." The idea for the Mustached March on Washington seems to have been inspired by that paper, and gained momentum, eventually attracting H&R Block as a sponsor.

This is a plea for help!

If you see an April Fool's Day story in a paper or magazine, especially if it has a picture with it, could you either scan the article or take a photo of it, and .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) it to me. That way I can add it to my April Fool's Day Archive, so that it's saved for posterity. It's just part of my eccentric effort to archive the history of April 1st!

I'm particularly interested in the British papers, since they produce lots of April Fool's Day stories, and I don't have any easy way of getting copies of them.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Happy April Fools! I've been busy working on my book, but April 1st has managed to pull me back to the site.

Last year I posted a brief rant about the origin of April Fool's Day, explaining how every year reporters write articles claiming that the most likely origin of the holiday is the Gregorian calendar reform of the late 16th century. This explanation gets trotted out every year, even though there's just no way it's true. Last year I noted:


This year is already true to form. Yahoo's Buzz Log posted an article about April Fool's Day which not only manages to identify calendar change as the likely origin of the day, but claims that it's a hypothesis I support! Mike Krumboltz, the author of the Buzz Log piece, writes:


He even links to my article about the origin of April Fool's Day, apparently not realizing that much of my article is spent trying to debunk the calendar-change hypothesis.

Some things never change!

Severed Arm Prank — A strange April Fool's Day prank: A Ministry of Fisheries worker on a trawler in subantarctic waters radioed his superior to tell him that a human arm had been found in the water. Specifically, his message said:

A full-scale search and rescue operation was prepared, but then the observer admitted it was just an April Fool prank. Apparently he had played the same one five years ago. Sounds like someone is going a little stir crazy down there in the subantarctic! [Otago Daily Times]

If there's one thing I've learned from running a website it's that you can't please everyone. And apparently my selection of the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest as the #1 April Fool's Day Hoax of All Time hasn't pleased Mike Jones, staff writer for the Gaylord Herald Times. I recently stumbled upon this comment he made in his column:


I'll admit that a lot of the April Fool's Day hoaxes on that list are somewhat arbitrarily placed. After all, it's impossible to be objective about something like that. But come on! How can he question the selection of the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest as #1? That's like April Fool's Day sacrilege! It's obviously #1, if for no other reason than it's, hands down, the most famous April 1st hoax ever.

If Mike ever reads this, I'd be curious to know what he thinks should be the top pick.

The Dark Side of April Fool’s Day — For some, April Fool's Day means innocent fun. For others it appears to be an invitation to explore the dark corners of their twisted psyches. That's the only reason I can think of to explain why every April 1st stories like this one, featuring a woman who "pranked" her brother-in-law by calling him and telling him that her 1-year-old child wasn't breathing, appear in the news.

The New Number One April Fool’s Day Prank — According to the Chicago Tribune, 18,786,325 people viewed Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" video on YouTube on April 1st. That indicates the number of victims that were RickRolled by pranksters on April Fool's Day. Which means that in only two years, rickrolling has risen from nothing to become the most popular April Fool's Day prank, eclipsing even the classic "trick a victim into phoning the zoo" prank. [Chicago Tribune]

Enforcer Skunks — There's a lot of speculation in the town of York, New Hampshire Maine about the skunk signs that were placed on many traffic-enforcement signs on April 1st. The signs feature hand-painted, smiling skunks wearing yellow sashes with the word "Enforcer" painted on. The signs also have a drawing of a zebra with the statement, "Whoever says they did it, didn't do it." When asked if the police were going to be contacted, Community Development Director Steve Burns said, "They're our No. 1 suspect." After collecting all the signs, Burns received a mysterious note made from words cut out of newspapers: "Honorary special agent Burns, enforcer skunks in your protective custody ... Be watchful. ... escape possible!" [Seacoast Online]

Fake Parking Tickets — • People are angry at a bar in New Zealand for placing fake parking tickets on thousands of cars in Auckland as an April Fool's Day prank/promotional stunt. The thing is, these fake tickets weren't like the typical ones that, upon examination, are obviously fake. These were exactly identical to real tickets in every detail except for listing a different website and phone number. As a publicity stunt, I'd say it crosses the line. [stuff.co.nz]

Over-Reacting — • A slight over-reaction, perhaps. Two guys at a science park pranked a colleague on April 1st by moving his car. When the guy couldn't find his car, the science-park security force naturally thought it must be a terrorist threat and evacuated the entire building. [Chester Evening Leader]. Update: Here's a link that should work. Plus, this article (unlike the first one I linked to) makes clear that what actually happened is that the guys moved the car into a restricted parking lot, meant only for nuclear engineers, which is why the security got nervous.

No NASCAR — Car and Driver's April Fool's Day hoax claiming that President Obama had ordered that Chevrolet and Dodge withdraw from NASCAR seems to have been one of the few AF hoaxes this year that actually fooled a significant number of people. [USA Today]

Worst April Fools? — An online brokerage, Zecco, pretended to give customers multi-million trading accounts on April 1st. Funny until customers began doing actual trades with the money. Lots of blogs were linking to this story, calling it the worst April Fool's ever. (I'm not sure about that. It's still not as bad as some on the official list.) But now the company is saying it was an accident, not a purposeful prank.