My Blog Will Make You Smarter

I am on a never-ending quest to make the people who read this blog and myself smarter. Here are some interesting origins relevant to this week:

April Fools Day is a holiday of uncertain origin. Prior to the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar the date was observed as New Year’s Day by cultures spanning from the Hindu to the Romans. The original New Years was related to the festival of the vernal equinox which occurs on March 21. In 1564 France adopted the reformed Gregorian calendar and shifted New Year's Day to Jan. 1. However, many people either refused to accept the new date, or did not learn about it, and continued to celebrate New Year's Day April 1. Other people began to make fun of these traditionalists, sending them on "fool's errands" or trying to trick them into believing something false.

Yesterday I also learned about another important origin: March Madness. The term was first coined in the early 1900s in reference to Illinois high school basketball. In 1982, Brent Musberger became the first television analyst to use it in reference to the NCAA basketball tournament. That year also happened to be the year Michael Jordan hit his first history-making shot when North Carolina defeated Georgetown 63-62.