Who was the first April Fool?

Fooling about

When did the tradition of 1 April pranks begin? One theory is that it derives from the ancient Roman festival of Hilaria, which involved games and pranks – although that was held on the spring equinox, which falls more than a week earlier than 1 April.

— In Chaucer’s ‘Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, a fox fools a cockerel ‘since March began thirty days and two’. Another explanation is that ‘All Fools’ Day’ referred to backward country folk in 16th-century France who didn’t realise that the adoption of the Julian calendar had moved New Year’s Day from 25 March (a week’s festivities used to end on 1 April) to 1 January. However, the first reference to a ‘poisson d’Avril’ was in a poem from 1508, before the calendar change was made.