Mother Nature’s little April Fool’s Day joke for New York this year is unseasonably cold temperatures to follow the past week and a half of beautiful, moderate weather. It was 34º F when I walked to the office this morning! Crazy. In any event, one origin of April Fool’s Day asserts that the tradition is based on ridiculing those societies who continued to celebrate 01 Apr as the first day of the new year — as per the old Julian Calendar — long after the Gregorian Calendar, as it was implemented by the British, had designated that day as 01 Jan.

Mostly, we’re talking about the French here, so you can see it’s not just recent events that are responsible for the predilection of English-speakers to ridicule that great nation. There’s also a somewhat more sober and less plausible alternative theory involving Christians fooling and then slaying Muslims, and then celebrating every first day of April.

More April Fool’s odds’n’ends (I will append more if I come across them during the day):

• By far, the best April Fool’s Day prank on the Web this year is TeeVee.org’s sendup of ABC-TV’s reality television schedule
• TidBITS has released its annual tongue-in-cheek issue
• Apple Computer was born this day 27 years ago
• Dave Winer started his Scripting News weblog on this day six years ago
• A list of all-time best April Fool’s pranks
• The George Foreman grill is now USB-compatible
• Bare Bones has announced special BBEdit pricing
• NPR on Shellac archiving
• Metafilter is spoofing Google