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U.S.|Joseph Boskin, Scholar of Humor and April Fools’ Prankster, Dies at 95
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/us/joseph-boskin-dead-april-fools.html
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To oblige an eager reporter, he invented a story about the holiday’s origin. He didn’t realize it would turn out to be his “Andy Warhol moment.”
April 11, 2025, 6:04 p.m. ET
In March of 1983, a public relations official at Boston University asked Joseph Boskin, a scholar of humor in the history department, whether he knew anything about the origin of April Fools’ Day.
Answering facetiously — but apparently not facetiously enough, Professor Boskin later recalled — he replied that he had been researching the subject for many years. The university, to his surprise, issued a news release touting him as an authority on the subject.
What happened next was one of the kookiest episodes in the annals of April Fools’ tomfoolery, with a revenge plot involving a coconut cream pie.
“I’ve written three or four books,” Professor Boskin told The Christian Science Monitor in 2010, “but this seems to be my Andy Warhol moment.”
Professor Boskin died on Feb. 16, his family said. He was 95. His death, in a hospice facility in Lincoln, Mass., had not been widely reported.
Shortly after the news release went out, Fred Bayles, an Associated Press reporter, requested an interview with Professor Boskin, who couldn’t immediately be reached because he was flying to Los Angeles to interview Norman Lear for a book he was planning to write.
