Little Egypt Heritage Articles Stories of Southern Illinois (c) Bill Oliver 28 March 2004 Vol 3 Issue: #13 ISBN: pending Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen of Little Egypt, Briefly mentioned in last week's article were wedding pranks like the one where the groom arrived in a canoe and after the ceremony, it was discovered that the canoe was missing. The wedding night was spent in a low and small one room cabin with the groom's new in-laws. Well, pranks are well ingrained into our culture. The British for all their "stiff" upperlip and straight- lacedness are well versed in large practical jokes and hoaxes. Even the Great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was suspected of a part in the Great Pittdown Man Hoax. Charles Dawson, during the period of 1908 and 1915, claimed to have discovered the fossil remains of the "missing" link [between man and ape]. The hoax remained active for a bit more than forty years. In 1953 it was determined by modern testing methods that the bones were but a couple hundred years old. In addition, they were from several different animals, including elephant and hippopotamus. Though Dawson was the prime suspect in the hoax, the list of suspects included Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit theologian and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Considered one of the light hearted days of any year, April Fool's Day probably got it's official start over the adoption of the "new" calendar ordered by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Ancient cultures, such as the Romans and the Hindus, celebrated the new year on the first of April. The new calendar was to begin the new year on the first of January. Well, not everyone got on this bandwagon right away. In France, particularly, many people either refused to accept the new date or in ignorance of the edict, continued to celebrate New Year's Day on the first of April. These traditionalists were made fun of and the act of sending them on "fool's errands" or tricking them became tradition. At least, so the "story" goes. Since no one really knows how April Fool's Day got started it does seem to be centered about a year's ending or beginning. In Rome there was a festival known as Hilaria, the end of the Celtic new year. This because the celebratiions of the Spring Equinox lasted until the first of April. In the land of my ancestors, Scotland, April Fools Day lasts 48 hours. The second 24 hours is known as Tally Day and pranks involving the posterior are played. The victim of the practical joke is referred to as "hunting the gowk". A gowk is an extinct cuckoo bird. In France, children enjoy taping a picture of a fish on the backsides of their friends and yelling "poisson d'Avril" [fish of April] when it is found. In Spain the Feast of the Holy Innocents [December 28th] is celebrated as their day for practical jokes. April Fool's Day is a "for-fun-for-sure" day. There are no presents or gifts to buy. You don't have to take the family out to dinner. It's not a holiday and no one gets off work [or school]. Just a "holiday" where one must be constantly vigilant that a sign saying "kick me" isn't pinned to your back side or someone tells you that your shoe string is untied when you wear velcro. There is a rule that no one should be harmed ... mentally or physically ... that the best jokes cause everyone to laugh ... including the victum. In 1752, Great Britain accepted the new calendar. At that point, we genealogists could stop figuring "double" dating. Remember the quite famous statement attributed to P T Barnum -- "There's a sucker born every minute"? Well, it was a partner of George Hull -- David Hannum -- who coined it ... Barnum just appropriated it. It all started in 1869 when New York cigar maker, George Hull had a block of gypsum carved into the likeness of a larger than ten foot man and buried it buried in on the farm of William Newell. Hull arranged that it should be discovered by some workmen. The discovery was heralded as a great geological petrified man. This was heralded as proof of the Bible verse from Genesis, "There were giants on the earth in those days...". Hull charged people twenty five cents to view the phenomenon. Hull refused to sell it to P T Barnum so he had a copy made, declaring Hull's to be a phony. Both men finally admitted their hoax, however, Barnum's fake drew more people than Hull's. The Cardiff Giant, as it became known, can be seen in Cooperstown, NY and Barnum's can be viewed in Farmington Hills, Michigan. How about the MicroSoft hoax which began ... "your friends, Bill Gates and Walt Disney ..." Well, if you are not aware of it, stick around, it is bound to come around again. It has several times already and remains one of the most distributed hoaxes on the internet. The clue to this hoax was "Bill Gates and Walt Disney, JR". Have you read or seen the movie "The Education of Little Tree"? The story of a Cherokee orphan brought up by loving grandparents in the American Appalachians in the 1930s. It is written as a memoir. After a million or more copies were sold, a historian discovered that the author, Forrest Carter, was not what he pretended to be in the book. He was an active member of the KKK and was at one time a ghost-writer for George Wallace. The publisher deleted "A true story" from the cover of the book. Probably one of the dramatic hoaxes of the last century was by Orson Welles, who with his Mercury Theatre Company, created mass hysteria on 30 October 1938 with their presentation of H G Wells' "The War of the Worlds". The radio broadcast was in a news-broadcast format. Even Welles was surprised by the total reaction it created. There have been some clever American commercial hoaxes. Like Taco Bell buying the Liberty Bell from the Federal Government and renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Or George Plimpton's article in Sports Illustrated, April 1, 1985 titled, "The Curious Case of Sidd Fitch", the man who could throw a baseball so fast that it would knock his catcher three feet backwards. He also was reported to have such "pin-point" accuracy that it would hit the catcher's glove ... a necessity since the throw was so fast that the catcher couldn't see it. Fifteen days later Sports Illustrated admitted it was all a hoax. The sub-heading of the article read: "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga -- and his future in baseball." If you take the first letter of each word in the sub-heading, what do you have?? The last five words were not included in the clue, yet they also spell something a bit strange. e-la-di-e-das-di ha-wi nv-wa-do-hi-ya nv-wa-to-hi-ya-da. (May you walk in peace and harmony) Wado, Bill -=- PostScript: Other sites worth visiting: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/SOIL http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/ILMASSAC http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/state/BillsArticles/LittleEgypt/intro.html