For the believers, it was a day to let the inner prankster out. It was April Fools’, and thus begun the competition to see who could play the best joke. Webs of deception were woven, ranging from attempts to convince an entire tutorial group that lecture on the day was cancelled due to the professor falling ill, to faux wedding engagements from long-time dating couples. Many trod through the day with raised suspicions, not wanting to be the butt of practical jokes.
For the fun pagans, it was just another day in NUS – the first day of Week 11 to be specific. Nothing to be celebrated (except hopefully a CAP 5 at the end of the semester) and life goes on.
For a group of NUS history majors however, it would be a day unlike any other. At the stroke of midnight, a group of 19 students assumed new identities and historical figures came to live on Facebook. It must have come as quite a shock for the friends of these history majors to log onto Facebook in the morning, only to be greeted by Sun Tzu quoting the Art of War, or Sir Stamford Raffles proclaiming that he founded Singapore. History Majors’ April Fool’s Day had began.
This thought experiment was the brainchild of Luke Ching, a Year 3 History major. “It started when a couple of us (history majors) had a LAN outing, and we named our characters after historical figures. The idea caught on, and we decided to make it a small scale April Fools’ thing just between the few of us.”
Despite starting the day with only 19 participants, the number grew to 44 by the time the day ended. The final number comprised not just of present history majors but came to include those that have graduated, and even people from other majors within the Arts Faculty.
Throughout the day, posts were made in character – either in response to events that unfolded along the day in campus, or in response to other characters. Kublai Khan posted about having lunch with Qin Shi Huangdi with the latter issuing threats to burn all books at NUS Libraries, although it may not have scared library patrons or honours thesis students as much as it may have done to scholars in ancient times. Later in the evening, Bismarck appeared claiming to have been too busy celebrating his birthday (the real Bismarck was, as a matter of fact, born on 1st April) to have joined the festivities earlier, before lamenting the failed Prussian reunification to the tune of Adele’s Rolling in the Deep.
“It started when a couple of us (history majors) had a LAN outing, and we named our characters after historical figures. The idea caught on, and we decided to make it a small scale April Fools’ thing just between the few of us.”
While historians within the field of academia might be sticklers for cold hard facts, it must be noted that this group of aspiring historians have the ability to think outside of boundaries and let their imagination roam free. Keen observers might have caught Zhou Enlai and Cleopatra flirting on Facebook, a sight that would not have been possible given that the two existed 2,000 years apart. There were also cases where animals were personified (Laika – the first dog to be sent to space, and the dodo bird), and monuments brought to life. Borobodur, a Hindu-Buddhist temple in Java was crying out for men of prowess to be its new ruler. Over dinner, Sun Tzu acknowledged he did not have a monopoly on stratagems, referring keen advice-seekers to a WordPress page on “the art of ordering cai png (economic rice)”.
The intention of having a History Majors April Fool’s Day event was to create a sense of solidarity within the group of History Majors.
“It was an avenue to bring what we study to life, to portray our academic pursuits in an interesting manner. People often think the study of the past is boring and archaic; we challenged that perspective by bringing historical figures to life and having them interact with one another in a manner that would never have been documented in the annals of history or any academic journal,” said Luke for whom the event held great significance. It was the creation of a historic moment, a memory by which he could remember his NUS days.
“I don’t want to just spend these four years studying and getting good grades. No one’s going to remember how many A’s you got when you start working. It’s going to be boring when you meet up with your friends and all you can say about your university days was that you studied real hard. Events like these, they give us something fond to remember our time here in NUS. They give us something to look back at and smile.”