A Brief History of April Fool's Day

The "Brief History" itself is here.

You probably know a good deal of it already.  But I did want to post something about the day in order to segue into a warning about Damian Thompson's blogpost on the day.  Really.  Don't go there.  It could cause a seizure.  Particularly if you don't know the meaning of Aprilis Stulte Dies.  Or if, like I did, you sort of breeze by it without paying any attention to the meaning but just sort of getting distracted by the odd grammar.

I'm only calming down now.