Please Don't Punk Me: A Reluctant Guide to April Fool's

April 1. The day America got punk'd by the earnest, tweedy folks at National Public Radio. No really. It happened.

Imagine the nation's shock when Richard Nixon announced his candidacy for president during an April 1, 1992 broadcast of NPR's Talk of the Nation. That day, Tricky Dick unveiled his new campaign slogan — "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again" — and declared his intention to take the oval office once more. Listeners were flabbergasted by the broadcast, flooding NPR's phone lines with calls. Only later did host John Hockenberry reveal that the announcement was a hoax, a fine bit of voice acting by comedian Rich Little.

And what about the left handed burger from Burger King? Or the time that the Alabama legislature changed the value of Pi to a more "biblical" number? Flying penguins, anyone? Take a quick look at the Museum of Hoaxes and you'll see that Ashton Kutcher has no monopoly on tomfoolery.

So why do we do this each year? Blame the Brits. Around 1700, English pranksters began popularizing this most-asinine annual tradition, according to the History Channel, though its exact origins remain a mystery. Some historians have suggested that April Fools' Day harkens back ancient Rome's festival of Hilaria or to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar — a perfect occasion for monkeyshine. People who failed to realize that the new year now began on January 1 became the butt of many a bad Gallic joke, which could include having paper fish pinned on their backs and being taunted as "poisson d'avril" (Fish of April). Snicker, snicker.

Mercifully, April Fool's falls on a Sunday this time around, much to the delight of gun-shy high school teachers everywhere. All the same, good luck to you, mes chers poissons. Got a good prank? Upload the evidence to Patch or tell us about it in the comments.