This Month in History:

• 2006 AD: Earl Thomas, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, looks at a website which features images of non-clothed women.
• 1992 AD: U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle correctly spells pusillanimous in the first round of a Trenton, NJ elementary school spelling bee.
• 1967 AD: Producers of Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. successfully sue the Beatles, who are forced to come up with a new name for their upcoming album Sergeant Carter’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.
• 1936 AD: Alabama State Legislator Atticus Finch shoots a dog. Not the rabid one, another one not mentioned in the book.
• 1885 AD: The Emperor Meiji, in order to help Japan’s great advance, offers to adopt the name Emperor Mr. Charlemagne Van Der Thompson. Aides most respectfully explain that this would require inordinate amounts of paperwork, and the matter is quietly dropped.
• 1662 AD: John of Strathclyde invents a one-wheeled cart stabilized by primitive gyroscopes. It is not adopted because such an idea is rightly considered stupid.
• 1515 AD: While the location has been forgotten, an East African, an Indian, and a Chinese are the first such people to visit that location many years before a European did.
• 1296 AD: Explorer and traveler Marco Polo decides to leave out the chapter of Le divisament dou monde wherein he describes in detail his love of nubile young Asian women.
• 899 AD: Biff steals a kiss from Magdalen at a mid-Summer’s festival in Burgundy. Magdalen’s father has Biff executed as a lesson to all future osculatory thieves.
• 678 AD: Several kingdoms in Britain which few rightly remember, if at all, go to war for some reason or other. Probably over a fishing hole or a particularly green hill.
• 630 AD: In an episode slightly less stunning than his ascension to Heaven, Muhammad is taken up by the Buraq and shown a vision of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• 280 AD: Comedians Li Ri Bo and Po Zu Ti win the Emperor’s favor in Datong by setting a live chicken on fire and performing a humorous dance as the hapless fowl dies.
• 40 AD: Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened this month. Move along.
• 238 BC: The Parthians invent heavy cavalry through the use of larger horses.
• 753 BC: Rome is actually founded by Romulus in this month, not in April as contended by historians. It is also founded about five feet to the west of where it is traditionally believed to have been founded.
• 849 BC: Court musician Latha of Parsa adopts the stage-name Latha Lyre.
• 1225 BC: Out of barley and wheat, Snebit the Libyan creates a liquor out of grass and palm leaves instead. It isn’t any good and Snebit is thrown into a nearby river to drown.
• 2002 BC: Korean merchant Hwandan is the first person to come up with the idea of “buy one, get one free.”
• 4888 BC: A ditch digger with one leg shorter than the other plies his trade across Central Europe. His handiwork is discovered 6600 years later by “archaeologists.”
• 8306 BC: Dartho upsets Ungot and becomes the best spear-thrower in the clan.
• 721,238 BC: While strolling through the plain, Mumaugue sees storm clouds on the horizon. For a moment he shivers in the cold wind.