The Yuma Sun noted that only a single New York newspaper perpetrated an April fool joke — "an Italian-language journal announcing the arrival of d'Annunzio in this country incognito." From this, it concluded that April foolishness was on the decline in America:
"Americans have an old reputation as practical jokers, but they appear to have outgrown this particular form of hoax. Have they put it aside with other childish things of an undeveloped civilization?...
At any rate, for Americans at least, April-fool jokes seem to have passed out of popular favor. They have gone the way of other frivolities of the P.T. Barnum state of Yankee civilization." [
The Yuma Sun — Apr 14, 1923]
(April Fool's Day and Easter fell on the same day in 1923, which may offer another explanation of the lack of April fools in New York papers that year.)
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