and now for something completely different.

We need an uplifting post. Here's one of those emails that everyone gets and forwards to everyone who already got it. Well, who would do that when I've got a BLOG!

This reminds me of the book 1066 and All That, which I highly recommend.



ABRIDGED OUTLINE OF HISTORY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3050 B.C.- A Sumerian invents the wheel. Within the week, the idea is stolen
and duplicated by other Sumerians, there-by establishing the business ethic
for all times.

2900 B.C.- Wondering why the Egyptians call that new thing a Sphinx becomes
the first of the world's Seven Great Wonders.

1850 B.C.- Britons proclaim Operation Stonehenge a success. They've finally
gotten those boulders arranged in a sufficiently meaningless pattern to
confuse scientists for centuries.

1785 B.C.- The first calendar, composed of a year with 354 days, is
introduced by Babylonian scientists.

1768 B.C.- Babylonians realize something is wrong when winter begins in
June.

776 B.C.- The world's first known money appears in Persia, immediately
causing the world's first known counterfeiter to appear in Persia the next
day.

525 B.C.- 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!

410 B.C.- Rome ends the practice of throwing debtors into slavery, thus
removing the biggest single obstacle to the development of the credit card.

404 B.C.- 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.

214 B.C.- Tens of thousands of Chinese labor for a gener-ation 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.

1 B.C.- Calendar manufacturers find themselves in total dis-agreement over
what to call next year.

79 A.D.- Buying property in Pompeii turns out to have been a lousy real
estate investment.

432- St. Patrick introduces Christianity to Ireland, thereby giving the
natives something interesting to fight about for the rest of their recorded
history.

1000- Leif Ericsson discovers America, but decides it's not worth
mentioning.

1043- Lady Godiva finds a means of demonstrating against high taxes that
immediately makes everyone forget what she is demonstrating against.

1125- Arabic numerals are introduced to Europe, enabling peasants to solve
the most baffling problem that confronts them: How much tax do you owe on
MMMDCCCLX Lira when you're in the XXXVI percent bracket?

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.

1297- The world's first stock exchange opens, but no one has the foresight
to buy IBM or Xerox.

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!

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.

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.

1497- Amerigo Vespucci becomes the 7th or 8th explorer to discover the new
world, but the first to think of naming it in honor of himself...the United
States of Vespuccia!

1508- Michelangelo finally agrees to paint the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel, but he still refuses to wash the windows.

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.

1522- Scientists, who know the world is flat, conclude that Magellan made it
all the way around by crawling across the bottom.

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.

1607- The Indians laugh themselves silly as the first Euro-pean tourist to
visit Virginia tries to register as "John Smith."

1618- Future Generations are doomed as the English exe-cute Sir Walter
Raleigh, but allow his tobacco plants to live.

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.

1670- The pilgrims are too busy burning false witches to observe the golden
anniversary of their winning religious freedom.

1755- Samuel Johnson issues the first English Dictionary, at last providing
young children with a book they can look up dirty words in.

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.

1763- The French and Indian War ends. The French and Indians both lost.

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 Sat-urday Night.

1773- Colonists dump tea into Boston Harbor. British call the act
"barbaric," noting that no one added cream.

1776- Napoleon decides to maintain a position of neutrality in the American
Revolution, primarily because he is only seven years old.

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.

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.

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."

1805- Robert Fulton invents the torpedo.

1807- Robert Fulton invents the steamship so he has something to blow up
with his torpedo.

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.

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.

1850- 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.

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.

1865- Union Soldiers face their greatest challenge of the war: getting
General Grant sober enough to accept Lee's surrender.

1894- Thomas Edison displays the first motion picture, and everybody likes
it except the movie critics.

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.

1910- The founding of the Boy Scouts of America comes as bad news to old
ladies who would rather cross the street by themselves.

1911- Roald Amundsen discovers the South Pole and confirms what he's
suspected all along: It looks very much like the North Pole!

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!

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.

1930- Pluto is discovered. Not the dog, stupid; the planet. The dog wasn't
discovered until 1938.

1933- German housewives begin to realize why that crazy wallpaper hanger
with the mustache never came back to finish his work.

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.

1934- As if the Great Depression weren't giving business-men enough
headaches, Ralph Nader is born.

1938- Great Britain and Germany sign a peace treaty, there-by averting all
possibility of WWII.