Wonderbringers Newsletter with Monica Parker
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Hello Wonderseekers!
On the morning of 1 April 1698, London was all abuzz. For weeks, word on the street had been brimming with excitement. Everyone had seen the posters all over town inviting them to come to the Tower of London to witness the annual washing of the lions. On the date, throngs of Londoners arrived, bustling through the streets in anticipation of this never-before-seen spectacle. What a treat they would all be in for!
Except, there were, of course, no lions being washed. There was no ceremony. There was only confusion. And then laughter. Followed by the slow, dawning realization that they had been hoodwinked. It is one of history's earliest recorded mass pranks, and one of the first to be documented specifically on April 1st.
The strange truth about April Fools' Day is that nobody really knows where it came from, and historians suspect we never will. The most popular theory traces it to 16th-century France, when King Charles IX decreed in 1564 that the new year would begin on January 1st rather than around Easter. Those who hadn't heard the news and kept celebrating in late March or early April became the “April fools,” sent on pointless errands and given fake gifts to tease them.
The French call it poisson d'avril, or ‘April's fish’, a term first recorded by poet Eloy d'Amerval as far back as 1508 (which, for me, brings to mind a favourite Monty Python sketch). Children in France still sneak paper fish onto the backs of unsuspecting adults, delighted when their target walks around unwittingly adorned with papier poissons.
It is a tradition that has outlasted empires, calendars, and centuries of upheaval, so what is it about April Fools that is so appealing? Psychologists who study humour have found that the act of crafting a good prank requires considerable mental effort. From withholding information from the target to imagining how they'll react and timing the reveal, that creative investment is part of what makes it so satisfying. But there's also something more primal at work.
Sociologist Giselinde Kuipers describes pranking as a moment of engineered superiority. You arrange a situation where, briefly, you know something another person doesn't. And when handled with warmth, rather than punching down, the prank acts as a bonding agent. The moment the target laughs, the hierarchy between the duped and the prankster dissolves, and what was a trick becomes a shared story and emblem of play.
Being fooled, even mildly, also triggers a flash of embarrassment that researchers suggest is adaptive. Feeling foolish diminishes our ego and lessens our sense of certainty, gently recalibrating our social alertness and reminding us that we are all, at some level, operating on incomplete information about the world.
There's a reason the Tower of London prank has survived 300 years in the retelling, while countless cruel hoaxes have been forgotten or condemned. The lions-washing prank asked nothing of its targets except a willingness to be curious. It didn't mock anyone's vulnerability or single out any one group to feel stupid. It simply invited people into a shared silliness. It laughed with them, not at them.
I recall a prank my father played on one of the nurses in his practice when I was little. She had gotten a new car specifically for its great fuel economy. My dad started topping up her gas tank just a bit every day, and she kept remarking how the gas mileage was out of this world! Then, my dad began siphoning gas out of her tank. (It was how I learned Bernoulli’s Principle!) She started coming into the office so frustrated that her car had suddenly stopped performing well. He let the prank go on for a good few weeks before confessing the joke to her. She thought it was hysterical, and they laughed about it for years. Done well, a prank isn't an act of dominance. It’s an act of intimacy. It says, ‘I know you well enough to play with you.’
And the laughter that follows is far from trivial. Research consistently shows that genuine laughter reduces cortisol, releases oxytocin, boosts immune responses, and is so effective that even forced laughter of 12 seconds or more a day is linked to improved well-being. A well-landed prank doesn't just amuse. It heals, if only briefly, the tension of daily life.
Some wonderbringers for me this week:
Cottingley Fairies: How Sherlock Holmes's creator was fooled by hoax
The four types of imagination and how they create our worlds:
Why adults need to make time for playtime: New studies suggest that play may be as essential to our health as sleep.
Happy April Fools' Day. May your pranks be warm, your targets willing, and your laughter healing to your playful inner child.
With wonder,
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