| 3050 | A Sumerian invents the wheel. Within
the week, the idea is stolen and duplicated by other Sumerians,
thereby establishing the business ethic for all times.
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| 2900 | Wondering why the Egyptians call that
new thing a Sphinx becomes the first of the world's Seven Great Wonders.
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| 1850 | Britons proclaim Operation Stonehenge a
success. They've finally gotten those boulders arrange in a
sufficiently meaningless pattern to confuse the hell out of scientists
for centuries.
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| 1785 | The first calendar, composed of a year
with 354 days, is introduced by Babylonian scientists.
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| 1768 | Babylonians realize something is wrong
when winter begins in June.
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| 776 | The world's first known money appears in
Persia, immediately causing the world's first known counterfeiter to
appear in Persia the next day.
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| 525 | The first Olympics are held, and prove
similar to the modern games, except that the Russians don't try to enter
a six-footer with a mustache in the women's shot put. However, the
Egyptians do!
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| 410 | Rome ends the practice of throwing debtors
into slavery, thus removing the biggest single obstacle to the development
of the credit card.
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| 404 | The Peloponnesian war has been going on
for 27 years now because neither side can find a treaty writer who knows
how to spell Peloponnesian.
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| 214 | Tens of thousands of Chinese labor for a
generation to build the 1,500 mile long Great Wall of China. And after all
that, it still doesn't keep the neighbor's dog out.
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| 1 | Calendar manufacturers find themselves in
total disagreement over what to call next year.
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| 79 | Buying property in Pompeii turns out to
have been a lousy real estate investment.
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| 432 | St. Patrick introduces Christianity to Ireland,
thereby giving the natives something interesting to fight about for the
rest of their recorded history.
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| 1000 | Leif Ericsson discovers America, but decides
it's not worth mentioning.
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| 1043 | Lady Godiva finds a means of demonstrating
against high taxes that immediately makes everyone forget what she is
demonstrating against.
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| 1125 | Arabic numerals are introduced to Europe,
enabling peasants to sole the most baffling problem that confronts them:
How much tax do you owe on MMMDCCCLX Lira when you're in the XXXVI
percent bracket?
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| 1233 | The Inquisition is set up to torture and kill
anyone who disagrees with the Law of the Church. However, the practice
is so un-Christian that it is permitted to continue for only 600 years.
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| 1297 | The world's first stock exchange opens,
but no one has the foresight to buy IBM or Xerox.
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| 1433 | Portugal launches the African slave trade,
which just proves what a small, ambitious country can do with a little
bit of ingenuity and a whole lot of evil!
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| 1456 | An English judge reviews Joan of Arc's case
and cancels her death sentence. Unfortunately for her, she was put to
death in 1431.
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| 1492 | Columbus proves how lost he really is by
landing in the Bahamas, naming the place San Salvador, and calling the
people who live there Indians.
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| 1497 | Amerigo Vespucci becomes the 7th or 8th explorer
to become the new world, but the first to think of naming it in honor of
himself...the United States of Vespuccia!
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| 1508 | Michelangelo finally agrees to paint the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel, but he still refuses to wash the windows.
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| 1513 | Ponce de Leon claims he found the Fountain of
youth, but dies of old age trying to remember where it was he found it.
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| 1522 | Scientists, who know the world is flat,
conclude that Magellan made it all the way around by crawling across the
bottom.
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| 1568 | Saddened over the slander of his good name,
Ivan the Terrible kills another 100,000 peasants to make them stop calling
him Ivan the Terrible.
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| 1607 | The Indians laugh themselves silly as the first
European tourist to visit Virginia tries to register as "John Smith".
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| 1618 | Future Generations are doomed as the English
execute Sir Walter Raleigh, but allow his tobacco plants to live.
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| 1642 | Nine students receive the first Bachelor of
Arts degrees conferred in America, and immediately discover there are no
jobs open for a kid with a liberal arts education.
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| 1670 | The pilgrims are too busy burning false
witches to observe the golden anniversary of their winning religious
freedom.
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| 1755 | Samuel Johnson issues the first English
Dictionary, at last providing young children with a book they can look
up dirty words in.
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| 1758 | New Jersey is chosen as the site of America's
first Indian reservation, which should give Indians an idea of the kind
of shabby living conditions they can expect from here on out.
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| 1763 | The French and Indian War ends. The French and
Indians both lost.
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| 1770 | The shooting of three people in the Boston
Massacre touches off the Revolution. 200 Years later, three shootings
in Boston will be considered just about average for a Saturday Night.
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| 1773 | Colonists dump tea into Boston Harbor.
British call the act "barbaric", noting that no one added cream.
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| 1776 | Napoleon decides to maintain a position of
neutrality in the American Revolution, primarily because he is only
seven years old.
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| 1779 | John Paul Jones notifies the British,
"I have just begun to fight!" and then feels pretty foolish when he
discovers that his ship is sinking.
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| 1793 | "Let them eat cake!" becomes the most famous
thing Marie Antoinette ever said. Also, the least diplomatic thing she
ever said. Also, the last thing she ever said.
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| 1799 | Translation of the Rosetta Stone finally
enables scholars to learn that Egyptian hieroglyphics don't say anything
important. "Dear Ramses, How are you? I am fine."
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| 1805 | Robert Fulton invents the torpedo.
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| 1807 | Robert Fulton invents the steamship so he has
something to blow up with his torpedo.
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| 1815 | Post Office policy is established as
Andrew Jackson wins the Battle of New Orleans a month after he should
have received the letter telling him the War of 1812 is over.
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| 1840 | William Henry Harrison is elected president
in a landslide, proving that the campaign motto, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too"
is so meaningless that very few can disagree with it.
|
| Henry Clay announces, "I'd rather be right than
president," which gets quite a laugh, coming from a guy who has run for
president five times without winning.
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| 1859 | Charles Darwin writes "Origin of the Species".
It has the same general plot as "Planet of the Apes", but fails to gross
as much money.
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| 1865 | Union Soldiers face their greatest challenge
of the war: getting General Grant sober enough to accept Lee's surrender.
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| 1894 | Thomas Edison displays the first motion picture,
and everybody likes it except the movie critics.
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| 1903 | The opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway
enables passengers from Moscow to reach Vladivostok in eight days, which
is a lot sooner than most of them want to get there.
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| 1910 | The founding of the Boy Scouts of America
comes as bad news to old ladies who would rather cross the street by
themselves.
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| 1911 | Roald Amundsen discovers the South Pole and
confirms what he's suspected all along: It looks a helluva lot like the
North Pole!
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| 1912 | People with Reservations for the voyage of the
Titanic get their money back.
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| 1920 | The 18th Amendment to the Constitution makes
drinking illegal in the U.S. so everyone stops. Except for the 40 million
who don't stop!
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| 1924 | Hitler is released from prison four years
early, after convincing the parole board that he is a changed man who
won't cause any more trouble.
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| 1928 | Herbert Hoover promises "a chicken in every
pot and a car in every garage," but he neglects to add that most Americans
will soon be without pots and garages.
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| 1930 | Pluto is discovered. Not the dog, stupid;
the planet. The dog wasn't discovered until 1938.
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| 1933 | German housewives begin to realize why that
crazy wallpaper hanger with the mustache never came back to finish his work.
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| 1933 | Hitler establishes the Third Reich, and
announces that it will last for a thousand years. As matters develop,
he is only 988 years off.
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| 1934 | John Dillinger is gunned down by police as he
leaves a Chicago movie theater. And just to make the evening a complete
washout, he didn't enjoy the movie either.
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| 1934 | As if the Great Depression weren't giving
businessmen enough headaches, Ralph Nader is born.
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| 1938 | Great Britain and Germany sign a peace treaty,
thereby averting all possibility of WW II.
|
| 1944 | Hitler's promise of Volkswagens for all Germans
as soon as they've won the war doesn't prove to be as strong an incentive
as he had hoped.
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