April 1st, 33 C.E. Christ places joy buzzer in side, tells disciple Thomas "Go ahead. Put your hand in there."

April 1st, 1544. Henry the VIII has sixth wife, Catherine Parr, taken to the Tower and stages mock beheading with a papier-mache axe. He assembles nobles and ecclesiastics to watch with concealed mirth from behind tapestry as she shrieks in terror.

April 1st, 1765. While the great man enjoys a post-prandial doze, Boswell replaces Dr. Johnson's wig with a rainbow-colored one, eliciting the well-known remark "Sir, a man who switches the wig of a friend is indeed no friend, but merely a wig-switcher."

April 1st, 1863. Robert E. Lee convinces gullible Stonewall Jackson that Jefferson Davis's mother was born in Massachusetts. That night in the officer's mess, Jackson does not know why his toast to the "Daughters of New England" is met with silence and hostile glares.

April 1st, 1928. A group of twenty Harvard students are killed while attempting to Lindy inside a telephone booth mounted on a thirty-foot pole.

April 1st, 1954. Senator Joseph McCarthy introduces evidence that Vice-President Richard Nixon had chaired a "communal" cigarette-sharing co-operative on board ship while serving in World War II. Nixon's tearful, 18-page self-defense is drafted before the Senator phones to alert the veep that he'd been a victim of a "Special Joe Gotcha."