Guided Primary Source Analysis: Origin of April Fool’s Day

April Fool's Day and Its Origin
“April Fool’s Day and Its Origin.” The Evening World. (New York, N.Y.), 01 April 1914.

For elementary & middle school students

Read this newspaper article, then make a list of the countries mentioned that celebrate April Fool’s Day and information about how they celebrate the day. Explain which story you found funniest or most interesting.

Create an April Fool’s Day poem using information from the article and your own experiences.

For elementary & middle school students

Read this newspaper article, then make a list of the countries mentioned that celebrate April Fool’s Day and information about how they celebrate the day. Explain which story you found funniest or most interesting.

Compare and contrast the information in this  article to one of the newspaper articles linked to in this Library of Congress April Fool blog post.

For high school students

Read the first three paragraphs of “The Bismarckian Alliance System” by history teacher Brett N. Silva. Based on that information, explain why the author of the historic newspaper article above might have included the last sentence, “Fate played the greatest of April Fool jokes on France a little less than a century ago when on April 1 Bismarck was born.”

Compare the references in this article with the information in this Folklife Today post—April Fools: The Roots of an International Tradition. Then create an April Fool timeline based on the post.

For all

What other observations, reflections or questions does this source inspire? Let us know!

More resources

Today in History: April Fool!