" Where can we find its origins? Ancient Rome, Victorian London or 16th-century France? Answers and comments by email please to info@stayinginwales.com. "
 1. Like Christmas as we now celebrate it, April Fools Day is more a construct than an actual event and is based on the entry into Rome on 28th March AD 37 of the emperor Caligula… Read on Renowned for his cutting wit, capricious cruelty, hairbrained schemes and habit of sending friends off on foolish ventures, his propensity for stripping people around him of their dignity contributed to his downfall and four years later at the age of 28 he was cut down by his own Praetorian Guard for pushing things beyond a joke. So pranksters beware!
 2. A more prosaic and believable origin of April Fools' Day has its roots in Victorian times and celebrates the 1st April 1835 birthday of the mathematical genius James Moriarty. Moriarty was an early exponent of "Game Theory", what psychologists call the theory of social situations. Players have either perfect or imperfect information, marking out the educated from those easily taken in and made to look foolish through trickery and practical joking. Like all those born born between the 1st and 20th April under the Aries star sign, Moriarty was quick-witted and a bit of a daredevil and is probably better known as the criminal adversary of Sherlock Holmes, lampooned over a hundred years later in a BBC wireless programme called the Goons.
 3. Celebrated up to the end of the 16th Century as the first day of Spring and hence the first day of the 'New Year', it was only fool's that continued to celebrate the day after the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar by Charles IX of France, which saw New Year's Day moved to 1st January. In a mobile-free environment and without fast Broadband connections, these so-called backward people didn't get to hear about the change until years later and were ridiculed, made the victims of practical jokes, and given fools' errands. This version hasn't stood the test of time as long as the Roman one but is equally plausible.
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