April Fool's Day [Antedating to 1748]

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

The OED shares a 1753 occurrence of "April fool-day" as its earliest
example of the phrase.  Here's a slightly earlier one.

-- Bonnie

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VIII. Poetry. On the first of April, called April Fool Day.

[From an advertisement of the April, 1748 issue of The British
Magazine, printed in The Whitehall Evening-Post or London
Intelligencer, 30 April to 3 May, 1748, p. 3; via
newspaperarchive.com.]

I suppose that means that within the pages of that issue of The
British Magazine there exists a poem making use of "April Fool Day."

An image of the advertisement can be found at http://ow.ly/vjGE2 for a
week or so.

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