On this day in 1700, English pranksters begin popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools’ Day by playing practical jokes on each other. Although the day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery. Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last…

MIDDLE EAST NEWSMARCH 31, 2011 In Key Defection, Libyan Minister Resigns His Post By DAVID GAUTHIER-VILLARS, ALISTAIR MACDONALD and MARGARET COKER In a major diplomatic setback to Col. Moammar Gadhafi, Libya’s foreign minister Moussa Koussa resigned from his position and may announce his defection as early as Thursday, European government officials said. A British Foreign and Commonwealth office spokesman said. Mr. Koussa arrived in England from Tunisia Wednesday where he resigned his position as Libyan Foreign Minister, Reuters Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa in 2010. “He travelled here under his own free will,” the spokesman said. The U.K. is currently in discussions with Mr. Koussa, the spokesman said, declining to…

  Albert Einstein The German-born physicist Albert Einstein developed the first of his groundbreaking theories while working as a clerk in the Swiss patent office in Bern. After making his name with four scientific articles published in 1905, he went on to win worldwide fame for his general theory of relativity and a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his explanation of the phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect. An outspoken pacifist who was publicly identified with the Zionist movement, Einstein emigrated from Germany to the United States when the Nazis took power before World War II. He lived and worked in Princeton, New Jersey, for the remainder of his life.…

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire   On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 145 workers. It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were largely preventable–most of the victims died as a result of neglected safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers. The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the…