Ed Johnson-Williams

Today is both April Fools’ Day and Easter Sunday (in Western Christianity).

When did this last happen and when will it happen again?

This is relatively straightforward to find out thanks to Python and specifically the dateutil module. Dateutil makes it easy to find out the date of Easter Sunday for any given year between 1583 and 4099. The code I used for this is right at the bottom of this post.

The last time April Fools’ Day was on Easter Sunday was 1956 – 62 years ago. And the next time will be in 2029 – only 11 more years!

Here’s a full list of years where Western Easter Sunday is on April Fools’ Day.

1584 1646 1657 1668 1714 1725 1736 1804 1866 1877 1888 1923 1934 1945 1956 2018 2029 2040 2108 2170 2181 2192 2238 2249 2260 2306 2317 2328 2401 2412 2485 2496 2553 2564 2610 2621 2632 2700 2762 2773 2784 2857 2863 2868 2925 2936 3004 3077 3088 3145 3156 3235 3240 3308 3387 3392 3449 3455 3460 3517 3528 3601 3607 3612 3691 3696 3759 3764 3821 3827 3832 3900 3973 3979 3984 4063 4068 4074

The Code

from dateutil.easter import easter

for year in range(1583, 4100):
    easter_full_date = easter(year)
    easter_full_date = str(easter_full_date)
    year, month, date = easter_full_date.split("-")

    if date == "01" and month == "04":
        print(year)