I am not in the mood for April Fools this year. April is known for April Fools’ Day, but more importantly, it is also a very damp month. The old saying of “April showers bring May flowers” is a warning, but it also forecasts the end of snow and winter. A new beginning.
That probably surprises no one. I have nothing against humor. In fact, I am rather fond of dry humor, especially the kind that arrives quietly, does its work, and leaves before anyone asks it to explain itself. But this year, April strikes me as a month better suited to reflection than foolishness. In the worlds of technology, computers, and artificial intelligence, April has given us too many genuinely important beginnings to waste the month pretending to glue someone’s coffee cup to the ceiling.
Besides, in modern life, there are enough absurd things that invention is becoming less competitive.
What interests me more is how often major change begins in ways that look almost ordinary at the time.
Take April 7, 1969, when RFC 1 was published. It was not flashy. It was not marketed. It was not announced with a dramatic soundtrack and a branding campaign. It was a technical document—the first in what would become the Request for Comments series that helped define how the Internet would be discussed, refined, and standardized. A great many things that now run the modern world began exactly this way: a small group of serious people trying to write down what they were doing clearly enough that other serious people could build on it.
Then there is April 16, 1959, when LISP had its first public presentation. That date matters to anyone who cares about artificial intelligence, because LISP became one of the foundational languages of early AI research. Before AI became a marketing department’s favorite phrase, there were researchers trying to model reasoning, symbols, and thought in a disciplined way. LISP belongs to that older tradition, the one that asked not merely how to make a machine produce output, but how to represent ideas.
That older question still matters.
In many ways, we are still arguing about it now, only at greater speed and with larger electricity bills.
On April 1, 1976, Apple Computer was founded. There is a certain comedy on that date. One of the most consequential companies in personal computing began on April Fools’ Day, yet the joke turned out to be on everyone who assumed the personal computer would remain a hobbyist curiosity. History often begins this way: a few people, a few tools, and one idea that seems smaller than it really is. Later, the world retells the story as if the result were obvious. It never is. At the beginning, almost nothing important looks important enough.
Another April moment that deserves more respect than it usually gets came on April 30, 1993, when CERN placed the World Wide Web software into the public domain. That was not just a technical milestone. It was a philosophical one. The Web became world-changing not merely because it existed but because it was open. Closed systems can be profitable. Open systems can become civilization-scale. We still live inside the consequences of that decision.
April is not only a month for looking backward. It is still a month in which the future continues to introduce itself.
In April 2026, events such as Google Cloud Next 2026, ICLR 2026, and the expected opening of
ICANN’s New gTLD Program 2026 Round. Whether one is looking at commercial AI platforms, core research, or the governance of the Internet itself, the same pattern remains: the future is assembled piece by piece, often in rooms that look unremarkable until years later. Conferences, standards, platforms, naming systems, and technical communities still matter because they are where tomorrow is quietly negotiated.
What ties all these April moments together is not just timing. It is a scale disguised as modesty.
A memo becomes the language of the Internet.
A programming language becomes a bridge into machine reasoning.
A small company becomes a giant.
A release decision becomes the modern Web.
A conference becomes the seedbed of the next decade’s arguments and products.
None of these things, standing alone, looks like destiny. That is one of history’s favorite tricks. It hides the important moment inside the ordinary one and waits to see who is paying attention.
Perhaps that is why I prefer April, this year, as a month for serious beginnings.
I have reached an age where I am less impressed by noise and more impressed by durable ideas. The older I get, the more I notice that the world is often changed not by the loudest announcement, but by the quiet decision that proves, over time, to have been the correct one. Much of modern computing and much of modern AI came into being that way, not with spectacle but with persistence, thought, and the willingness to build something useful before the crowd understood it.
So, no April Fools from me this year.
I would rather spend April remembering the moments when a few serious people made serious decisions and quietly changed the world. That seems more fitting. And, unlike many annual traditions, it also has the advantage of being useful.
A few well-known people born in April:
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452)
- Thomas Jefferson (1743)
- Charlie Chaplin (1889)
- Maya Angelou (1928)
- Jackie Robinson (1919)
- William Shakespeare (1564, traditionally observed in April)
- Queen Elizabeth II (1926)
- Al Pacino (1940)
- David Letterman (1947)
- Robert Downey Jr. (1965)
A few political events that happened in April:
- April 12, 1861 — The American Civil War began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. That is one of the clearest April war dates in U.S. history.
- April 13, 1861 — Fort Sumter surrendered, confirming that the conflict had moved from political crisis into open war.
- April 6–7, 1862 — The Battle of Shiloh began, one of the early major and shockingly bloody battles of the Civil War.
- April 19, 1775 — The American Revolution began at Lexington and Concord, another major April war milestone.
- April 21, 1898 — The Spanish-American War began (Britannica dates it April 21 to July 17, 1898).
- April 4, 1968 — Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, a pivotal political event that triggered nationwide unrest and had major consequences for U.S. politics and civil rights.
Some of the best-known April food associations are:
- National Grilled Cheese Month.
- National Soft Pretzel Month.
- National Pecan Month.
- National Garlic Month and National Soy Foods Month are also commonly listed in April food calendars.
There are also specific food days in April that are widely observed, such as:
- April 1 — National Sourdough Bread Day.
- April 2, 2026 — National Burrito Day (first Thursday in April in 2026).
- April 12 — National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day.
- April 14 — National Pecan Day.
- April 16 — National Eggs Benedict Day.
- April 6, 1930 — The Twinkie was invented by James Dewar at Continental Baking in Illinois.
If you know me, then you know I am fond of dry jokes. How could I let April go without a few jokes?
- I was going to do an April Fools post, but reality continues to outperform satire.
- April is the month when spring begins, pollen attacks, and everyone briefly pretends winter
- was character building.
- I like April. It is the only month that begins with a warning label.
- April is nature’s way of saying, “Try the weather again.”
- April reminds us that optimism is seasonal.
© April 2026 by Peter V. Radatti