By the turn of the eighteenth century, the custom of playing practical jokes on the first of April had become widespread in England, building on older European traditions of springtime foolery traced to France's 1582 calendar reform. Newspapers, neighbors, and eventually broadcasters embraced the day, producing centuries of hoaxes ranging from harmless pranks to elaborate media stunts that fooled millions.
Nobody can pin down a single origin for April Fools' Day, but by around 1700 the custom was firmly rooted in English social life, with people sending servants and friends on fake errands called 'hunting the gowk.' Scottish variants stretched the joke into a two-day affair, the second devoted to pinning fake tails on unsuspecting victims, giving rise to 'Tailie Day.'
One popular theory ties the tradition to France's 1564 shift from the Julian to a New Year beginning January 1 rather than around April 1, leaving those who kept celebrating the old date as the butt of jokes. Whatever its roots, the custom crossed the Atlantic and the centuries: by the twentieth century, newspapers and radio stations ran elaborate hoaxes, most famously the BBC's 1957 spaghetti-tree harvest broadcast.
The day endures precisely because it requires no particular technology or belief system, just a willingness to be fooled and to fool others, a rare piece of shared culture across countries and eras.