April Fool

Nobody really knows the true origin of April Fools Day, but it's widely popular to play pranks on naive souls in all non Hispanic countries* over in the world.

In English speaking countries its called Aprils Fool's day and is written about in the Canterbury Tales, The French call it 'Poisson d'Avril' and people tend to stick a fish on the back of non suspecting victims, Russians call it 'День Дурака' (Den Doeraka, the day of the dumb), Belgians call it 'verzenderkesdag' and try to trick people into traveling somewhere for a special event that does not exist.

We Dutch call it '1 April, Alfa verloor zijn Bril' to memorize the day the Spanish count Alfa lost the  town of Den Brille to the Dutch Rebellion, but the most likely origin is the introduction of the Gregorian Calander by Pobe Gregorius XIII in 1582 shifting New Years Day from April 1st to January 1st. The joke was to invite those who were unaware of this shift to new years parties that obviously were not celebrated on april first anymore. *I don't know why but Hispanic countries are not familiar with this tradition.

I chose to visualize one of the best Dutch pranks ever... as you might know we Dutch are famous for being kind of thrifty as our North Eastern Scottish neighbors. (Some even suggest that the Dutch are originally Scotts who swam over the Northsea to save money ;-))

Here's the story... On the last days of march 1969 the TV News warned the population that the Tax Inspectors would drive through the streets with a brandnew Scan device to catch all offenders that owned a TV or Radio without paying the 'Listeners Tax' red handed. (a tax that really existed at that time)  
As almost everyone owned at least a TV or Radio, (but many didn't the mandatory tax pay for it) a concerned TV Interviewer asked an 'Authority' if there wasn't a way to dodge the scanner during that particular news broadcast. At first the 'Authority' answered the it could not be done, but then he said that wrapping your TV and Radios in Aluminum foil might mislead the scanners.
The next days all shops had sold out their stock of Aluminum foil, making this one of the best nation wide April Fools pranks ever!

Hope no one pulled your leg today :-))

info: Newdelftblue by Hjarald Agnes and Wikipedia

ps. There's a color in the extra