First things first, here is a list of all the top level answers posted over April Fools. It can also be found on our Wiki Page.

/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov on how America's Invasion of Panama was actually driven by the need to destroy Josef Mengele's Hitler Cloning operation, plus some wonderful followups from /u/Prufrock451 and /u/idjet, leading to involvement of the Soviet Union and the later cover-up efforts.

/u/heyheymse describing Thaumastos of Boeotia, the Greek actor who could be considered the Tom Hanks of his day.

/u/vertexoflife and /u/coinsinmyrocket tag-teamed why crime in Nazi Germany went up because the rate of hate crimes went up.

/u/vertexoflife gave an in-depth look at the history of the black executioner's hood in France, with follow up from /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov on the use of garish colors for executioners in England.

/u/facepoundr explained how the Mongols paved their roads with the bones of their enemies (sorry metal fans), with convincing backing from /u/anthropology_nerd and /u/keyilan, and related trivia from /u/bonsequitur.

In a similar theme, /u/killfile explained how Romans did a similar method, mixing the bones into the cement and using grave markers as paving stones.

/u/coinsinmyrocket, /u/heyheymse, /u/Aerandir, and /u/supernanify came together to look at the [ancient origins of the Fedora.] (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21ttku/wondering_about_the_history_of_the_fedora_when/cggg4h7)

/u/talondearg explained the use of metric time by the Mongols.

Who knows how long /u/caffarelli has been waiting to write about the history of the female eunuch. Our more artistically inclined users, /u/BonSequitur, /u/erus, and /u/Respectfullyyours, jumped in to provide some great follow up about the paintings she highlighted.

/u/lngwstksgk explained why the Jacobites might have lost Culloden due to the disruption of Haggis hunting!

/u/BonSequitur explained the invention of the tinfoil hat, which protected against brain degredation

DEPTHHUB /u/fraudianslip described how Neo-Confucianism rejects all of the ideas espoused by Confucius after the age of 40, because he was a total prick after then.

/u/gingerkid1234 details the history of early flight and the Second Temple.

/u/WhoH8in on how "up" and "down" came to mean the opposite of what they used to!

/u/depanneur gave us the history of the colonization of Ireland, fueled by the lack of a word for ownership in their language.

/u/Jasfss told us how the teas trade was mostly about providing sexual enhancements.

/u/MI13 crafted an interesting take on salvia, English archers, and Goose poaching.

/u/facepoundr provided some biography on Ghengis Khan's later years.

BESTOF /u/vampire_seraphin and secret Nazi weapons programs.

/u/anthropology_nerd and /u/Bernardito both offered their take on South Pacific insurgency movements.

/u/Daeres and the story of My Immortal

BESTOF /u/Daeres and the ancient Persian sport of Camel Gliding.

/u/mosin91 entertained us with Operation 420 240 during WWII, Field Manual BS-39-341's guide on corpse photography, and the saga of the Steele Brothers.

/u/DonaldFDraper described French Elan the inherent racism in many countries' military uniforms.

/u/gingerkid1234 told us about the best Jewish Holiday, Yom ha-Meshugas.

[...]

Were the submissions plants, or just the answers? Will joke answers be edited or deleted so people don't stumble on them in future searches and become confused and/or misinformed? Have legitimate question askers been notified of the fake answers? On future April 1 dates will people who remember this be allowed to give joke answers, or would they be deleted as "bad answers"? I probably wasted more time than I needed to on JSTOR checking some of these facts before I realized the mods were in on this. :-/

I also fully realize I'm a wet blanked as someone who dislikes and forgets about April fools.

How gullible are our readers?

The first spoof answer, the famous Mongol Bone Roads, went up at 12:35pm UTC March 31, which was 01:30am April 1 in New Zealand. Since then, approximately seventy top-level spoof comments (we are still counting) were posted. This is not counting the fake follow-up comments corraborating the spoofs.

All of these combined attracted a scant 157 reactions (comments, PMs, or modmails) expressing either confusion, scepticism, or calling April Fool's. These reactions were removed in order to keep the fun going. A full forty-five top-level fakes went totally unchallenged. The most challenged were:

• Female eunuchs: 27 reactions expressing confusion, scepticism, or calling April Fool's

• Hitler clones: 24

• Roman ducks: 23

• Camel gliders: 14

• Haggis Hunt: 13

Four users were concerned or clued-in enough to send us a modmail message. One user started a META thread that was promptly removed. Sorry, /u/Maklodes! You are our hero of sound critical thinking!

EDIT: /u/Daeres has deconstructed his spoof answers here and at the same time provided an excellent exposé on how to spot pseudohistory. I highly recommend a read!

Can I just say, I thoroughly enjoyed /u/Daeres's post on hang-gliding camels?

The real invention of Caesar's salad happened in 1924 in Tijuana, Mexico. Caesar Cardini's restaurant was packed and he needed to have something that could be prepared quickly and used as a main course. Originally finger food, the salad was made with romaine lettuce, olive oil, croutons, Worcestershire sauce, and Parmesan cheese. It really was an immediate hit, and the International Society of Epicures in Paris really did name it the "greatest recipe to originate from the Americas in fifty years."

It had nothing to do with Julius. Sorry.

Also, /u/coinsinmyrocket's post on pygmy infantry made me wonder about what weaponry they would use, and the ridiculous and totally false idea of Thompson submachine guns as a crew served weapon amused me I hope it amused you.

Well, I had a lot of fun writing all of my answers, and I sincerely hope that none of you went off to school or work to tell people about the fight against Hitler Clones... if so... my bad... I know I pulled the wool over at least a few eyes, but I hope that in hindsight, the absurdity of all my answers stands out. I'd certainly love it if someone were able to pick out what all of the hidden references I made were!

Also, while some people believed me, a number of people expressed skepticism, or outright called me out on my BS. Sorry for ignoring all of you, or doubling down. A shout out especially to /u/hausofshaney and /u/Exovian who were most dogged in their attempts to prove that no, Hitler wasn't really being cloned in Panama.

I think this is a lesson in

A) asking for sources

B) actually reading those sources

Good work coming up with answers. I will say that you did good jobs mixing fact and fiction to create (usually) believable things at first glance

I'll also say that it was a bad idea.

I love the creativity that went into it. But one of the things that attracts me to this sub is the moderation, high quality, and dedication to discussion. To have roughly two days of bogus posts, actively denied by the moderation team, in a place where that same mod team has done a great deal to earn the trust of a community, is damaging, I think.

I like the idea of coming up with "prank" answers, but in a place like /r/askhistorians, to try to hide it as you did felt both disrespectful and frustrating.

I'm really shocked nobody got I was making shit up for either of my posts. I'm a little proud, but mostly shocked. Is my bullshitting that quality? I thought it was really obvious that it was made up.

If you'd told me when I was writing the history of female eunuchs last week that I'd fool anyone with it, I'd have been very surprised! Credit should go to /u/WileECyrus (I believe it was you, correct me if I'm wrong WileE!) who I remember once asked me if there were ever any "female eunuchs" (very much in the context of a discussion of liminial gender roles in societies and not literal gonad removal, so you do not think he was being dumb!) and the question just sort of stuck in my brain as wonderfully silly out of context...

Major props also to /u/TectonicWafer for actually hunting down and reading a richly misogynistic gynecological text from 1916 to find the truth.

Oh and thanks to my frenemy /u/C_B_Farinelli for doing me a solid and planting that question.

You bastards! I spent all day waiting for a thread like /r/AskHitler joke. But it was hidden in the threads all along.

I have to thank the inquisition for teeing one up for me. I barely needed to touch an existing inquisition record and troubadour song to make this April Fool's meta-post work - I changed only 7 words in the sources. The crazy was already there.

I want to especially note /u/facepoundr's answer on Mongol Bone Roads already linked. I was legitimately fooled by the prank I helped organize. And the Roman ducks were so funny that I started laughing in the middle of class. That'll teach me for trying to reddit in class.

To let you guys in on part of the joke, most of my fake sources or publications had easter eggs if you know the language they're in. Dr. Benjamin Shakran, an authority on Second Temple gliders, has the initials BS, and "Shakran" is Hebrew for "liar". יידן פון דער ים-פעסיפיק און מעסו-אמעריקע: א גוטר שקר does not means "Jews of the Pacific and Meso-America--a Thorough Analysis"--the last bit actually is "a good lie", and Dr. Michael Charles Patish is a subtle reference to MC Hammer (Patish means hammer). His earlier work, סוחרים פון די אלטער היים--סבֿרא איך האב אויסגעטראַכט "Merchants of the Old-Home (Europe)--a study in exchange" actually means "Merchants of the Old-Home (Europe)--Argument I have invented".

Similarly, for the made-up holiday of Yom HaMeshugas (which means "day of craziness"), "zikpah" means "erection", and the alternate name of "Shvantziger Tag" means "Penis Day". The fake quote in Hebrew had a bit I didn't translate, which reads "And there are those accustomed to lying on the 1st of Nisan", today's date in the Hebrew calendar.

To let you in on another joke, this and this were based off plots of Marx Brothers movies, the former being Duck Soup, and the latter Animal Crackers. Interestingly, more of the Duck Soup one is fact than fiction--I added some detail and adjusted the names, but there was a wealthy widow who paid lots of money to have the guy of her choice be appointed high priest.

Anyway, it was a helluva lot of fun making this stuff up! Thanks for the laughs everybody!

You cheeky bastards

Edit: I still have some threads saved because I thought they were so out there that I had to go back later and read through the sources that were linked! Damnit this is the most devious April Fools prank of the day by a long shot.

I don't know whether this happened a lot, but I was pm'd almost right away when I replied to a joke post early in the night. After that it became a game of spotting them all for me (didn't get anywhere near), and I feel like I'd have gotten some without the spoiler but hey, that's hindsight for you! My point here being that I may not have been the only one in that, and I didn't reply to anything else because I didn't know what your 'policy' was on non-flaired users playing along, so maybe that's also part of why some posts went nearly unchallenged and highly upvoted? Oh well, probably just wishful thinking :P (is this the part where I exclaim my withdrawal of faith in humanity?)

Let's not dwell on that though, because what I really came here to say (and already told the mod who pm'd me, but here it is again just in case it wasn't sent forward - you guys were busy today after all!), thanks to the entire mod-team and other flaired users for not only being awesome throughout the year, but also congratulations on pulling off, in my opinion, the best prank on Reddit and maybe the best one I've ever seen, certainly in terms of scale and organisation!

And that's why you always leave a note check sources if a story sounds too good/unbelievable to be true.

I had been working on my answer for a week, tweaking it and adding onto it until I was completely satisfied. Those familiar with the TV-show LOST would probably get the joke at once (if not, the supposed sources definitely would). The mythos of the show have always fascinated me, so to write about the conflict between the DHARMA Initiative and the hostiles/the others out of a counterinsurgency perspective was a pure joy of mine. I also had fun putting together the three photographs included.

If you haven't read the answer in question, it can be seen here.

Can you guys put the April Fools warning at the top of the posts in question instead of the bottom? Some people might not read the whole thing and I'd hate for people to end up believing some of it.

I always love the /r/AskHstorians april fools pranks. The hangman thread got me questioning, but the female eunuch thread is the one that made me finally get it. I personally enjoyed it, but apparently people can be more stuffy than the stuffy historians.

Fuck you guys got me good. Seriously though, good job, those were some damn interesting historical ''facts''.

and the Jacobites didn’t lose Culloden because so many of their soldiers were off Haggis hunting.

I literally just fell out of my chair and onto the floor laughing uncontrollably for five minutes straight. My roommates must think I am very strange now, to say the least, since it was a very uncontrolled fit of laughter and it sounded weird.

This was really good. It took me many threads to realize that some of these answers might have been joke answers. I read and believed the executioner's hood, roman citizenry and the female eunuch posts at the very least; it was the North Korea DMZ post that made me realize that at least some of these were April Fool's jokes. In my defense, I think some of these posts were made before April first in my time zone.

And here I was, about to add wings to my camel and throw it off a cliff :(

Well shit... I actually believed the post about the Nazi icebergs. My fault for not reading sources :(

Hangmen didn't wear black hoods because they were black. Sorry guys!

But it was seriously entertaining reading and helping others write these. I hope you guys can enjoy (now) as much as we did!

Great way to demand credibility! Especially right after making a big deal out of people not following/taking your rules seriously! Timing us everything...

I participated!

With like 2 lines.

^^^^^andididn'tsource

Why are you guys seemingly on Sydney time? It's still April 1st here, and I didn't get a chance to get something into the hidden history thread.

So the Mongols didn't make roads out of enemy bones? I was so fascinated by that piece of history!

Dammit! I fell for the executioners hoods stuff hook line and sinker.

That this was done to some posters who weren't plants or puppets is... prickish, to use to politest term that comes to mind. "Hey, this would get me banned any other day of the year!" isn't a prank, you're just an asshole.

(Reposted from down-thread)

I think the moderation policy of this sub-reddit is fine. OTOH, I don't think that you (as insiders) really appreciate the effect that it has on outsiders.

The moderation policy amounts to "shut up and listen". That's fine, but it's a bit pathetic watching you all congratulate yourselves about how nobody called you out when you all decided to spout bullshit for a day.

Personally, I only saw one of the "joke" posts. I thought, "that's a load of shit", but rather than saying that, I replied something that amounted to "are you quite sure you mean what you're saying?" When the OP effectively replied, "yes, that's really what I'm saying". I tagged him as an idiot in RES, shrugged, and moved on. What did you expect? I don't have an hour to research alternate sources and construct a counter-thesis, and any less would usually just be rewarded with [comment deleted].

So when I make a joke post tomorrow, I'll get banned?

Just trying to clarify how stupidly hypocritical the moderation in this subreddit is.