The Historigon: Clauduary 2008

The Historigon

This Month in History:

2008 AD- A monster attacks New York City, but no one notices this time.

2004 AD- Television show Futurama has no idea it’s about to be canceled.

2003 AD- High school sophomore Kayla Dobbs of Scranton, PA, fears that senior Michael Allen knows she likes him.

1995 AD- After six disappointing weeks without a single sale, Roscoe’s Pumpkins Filled with Tuna goes out of business.

1972 AD- In a discussion about the Imperial Japanese attack on Nanjing, feminist Gloria Steinem declares that all invasion is rape.

1938 AD- The Japanese and the Russians have a tea party on the border of Manchukuo and Mongolia. Many thousands do not leave the party.

1918 AD- As commander of the Rainbow Division, General Douglas MacArthur leads the charge into No-Mans-Land armed only with a feather duster.

1824 AD- Sailors aboard the H.M.S. Pigeon use the tortoise’s shell as a bowl to serve a meal of fresh tortoise stew.

1754 AD- Avant Garde artist Jizumo Nakamura creates a confusing and troublesome 18 syllable haiku. The shocked and astonished Shogun has him executed.

1555 AD- Several people engage in sexual intercourse. Two couples have a good time. One couple vomits from the smell.

1443 AD- King Sejong takes credit for inventing the Korean alphabet and has the entire group of linguistics wizards killed so they don’t blab to anyone.

1105 AD- Alfonso VII of Castile dies after being choked by sapient truffles sent back in time by King Desregar or the Plotuthnan Kingdom located in the same geographical area, but 400,000 years in the future.

1066 AD- Australian aborigine Topath has no idea that the crucial turning point in English history has occurred.

800 AD- Pope Leo III is given a dirty look by Charlemagne as the former accidentally steps on his foot whilst crowning him Holy Roman Emperor.

700 AD- Stephen and John of Glastonbury invent the world’s first commercial while acting out messages for pay from local shopkeepers at the town tavern during saga night. Some grog is thrown.

600 AD- The Mayans begin the only period in history where native Mexicans can feel themselves superior to anyone except the French.

500 AD- A raving Sterolab fan is accidentally transported to the past and dropped in Wei Dynasty Northern China. He is promptly killed after playing the neo-lounge act through his iPod for the local magistrate.

400 AD- The Roman Empire lets out a small fart.

320 AD- Chitartha goes one better and invents the super-zero, which is three times greater than zero, but fails to catch on with his fellow mathematicians.

89 BC-Another year goes by without Meso-Americans inventing the wheel.

207 BC- Someone in Sparta decides it’s about time to have some fun.

530 BC- Cyrus II orders a fig pie. He dies shortly afterward.

622 BC- Seriously, some guy whose name you can’t pronounce defeated this other dude you don’t care about and went on to do some rad stuff for his people that had no effect on you at all. Really, history doesn’t mean much, does it?

753 BC- Those Romans liked to say their city was founded in this year, but it was really Poughkeepsie.

1203 BC- The Olmecs figure a big head on the porch ought to look pretty cool.

1492 BC- A large massing of weevils in the future Ohio causes lightning and cloud formation.

1666 BC- The first drunk dial occurs when Sham, son of Norath, uses his small bow to let his girlfriend know he’s horny.

2545 BC- Seven brothers marry seven sisters, but each sister is really their own sister. It doesn’t end well and we don’t really feel like going into it here because it’s too depressing. Ask about it again later.

3820 BC-Shaduthusha is voted as having the worst reedmanship of all the scribes in Uruk.

17,456 BC- Sparklegirl108 Smith, the world’s first time traveler, goes off course and crashes her time ship, inadvertently killing her ancestor and erasing her existence, and thus causing time travel to never be invented in the future.

43,257 BC- Poga becomes the last person ever killed by a giant ground sloth.

4, 007, 373, 387 BC– A self-replicating protein begins creating copies of itself on a clay surface, beginning the long march toward the existence of James K. Polk.

Historigon: Maine 2008

The Historigon

This Month in History:

2006 AD- Looking back on his impeachment, William Jefferson Clinton is still amazed at how skillfully he managed to gain the moral high ground and play the victim after besmirching his office and lying under oath.

1991 AD- Colonel Donald Birdfeather steals a beret off a dead Iraqi Crimson Guard soldier as a gift for his young nephew.

1973 AD- The Bronx is briefly named officially as The Aquahung in a nod to liberal guilt until an crowd of The Bronxians hurl various expletive-laden insults at Mayor John V. Lindsay.

1954 AD- Joseph McCarthy correctly identifies Joseph Stalin as a member of the Communist Party.

1924 AD- Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway enjoy a couple of illegal martinis on the lawn.

1902 AD- To the shagrin of his taxidermist, Teddy Roosevelt shoots a rhinoceros.

1888 AD- Thomas Alva Edison invents an deodorant flap for T-shirts, but then accidentally leaves the schematics on his seat after leaving the train and the advancement is lost to mankind, seemingly forever.

1776 AD- Benjamin Franklin invents the big-boned stove.

1655 AD- Aborigines begin building Ayers Rock.

1487 AD- In what would later become a world-wide romantic tradition, Aztec warrior Xoxoxo signs a love letter to his wife.

1225 AD- The Abbasid Dynasity of Caliphs is briefly interrupted when Jimmy the Leper, formerly of England, somehow wanders into the inner sanctum of the Caliphate and puts on the exalted one’s hat.

1138 AD- Pepin of Nice invents the fake animal the zykylax (a horse with the head of a dog, native to Lydia) so that he can finish up the last page of his Beastiary and head down to the tavern for a grog.

805 AD- On his death bed Te Tsung wishes he could have written better poetry for his imperial decrees.

732 AD- Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi leads some of the chefs of his clan across the Pyrenees in search of interesting cream sauces.

424 AD- After careful thought, St. Augustine of Hippo surmises that farting probably is a sin.

300 AD- The last lion in Armenia forgets to turn off the faucet before leaving.

122 AD- Overseers at the construction of Hadrian’s wall realize that something fishy is going on when after two months only fifteen stones have been laid.

3 AD- Menneas, after being raised to the title of Archon of Athens, comes to the realization that with the Romans running everything, his job is kind of pointless. He spends a lot of time drinking.

18 BC- Poor Onjo becomes a Korean king very much by accident.

100 BC- Thirsty Scythians in search of a good place to rest apologize for overrunning Parthia.

221 BC- Po Liu Chang, after being told “we are all China now” thinks to himself “the hell I am. Poc gai!”

321 BC- Alexander the Great and his “friend” retire for the night, but no one says anything about it.

485 BC- Gelo, the tyrant of Gela, decides to name Sicily Geland after himself, too.

540 BC- Anaximenes spends several days smashing pomegranates against his left temple.

986 BC- Solomon says to hell with the bitchy women and cuts the baby in half anyway.

3985 BC- Ushtuk creates two new signs, allowing merchants to differentiate between milk cows and beef cows.

7333 BC- Pantik the Proto-Tatar watches as the Black Sea floods the Aegean Sea. He laughs a little.

8550 BC- The domesticated bat dies out in Malaysia.

133000 BC- Calculus invented for the first time by anonymous tribesperson in what is now Zimbabwe.

Historigon: Vespril 2007

The Historigon

2005 AD- Punxsutawney Phil rolls out the omni-directional lighting system he has been working on in his off-months for the last decade.

1997 AD- Sondra Macgillicuddy thinks it would be an original idea to include an Emily Dickens quote at the beginning of her 12th Grade English essay. Poor Sondra.

1932 AD- Herbert Hoover officially becomes the most sore loser of Presidential elections in U.S. history when he sends FDR a card reading “Congratulations on Your Polio.”

1918 AD- Molly Pryer feels a sniffle coming on and wonders if it might be the flu.

1823 AD- Jefferson Davis also splits a rail, but the action fails to be noted by posterity.

1788 AD- At the insistence of Jacob Broom, the Constitutional convention votes down the idea of amending the historic document with the inclusion of over one hundred woodcuts of interesting song birds.

1745 AD- Carl “Greenbeard” Jones decides to be different and so marks his treasure map with a Y.

1639 AD- Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus revolutionizes warfare when he conceives of the brilliant idea of actually issuing ammunition to his troops. Catholic princes dismiss the idea as foolhardy, wasteful and expensive.

1605 AD- Traveling gunpowder salesman Guido Fawkes, tired of pushing his heavy goods-laden cart through the cold, decides to rest for a while in a nice, warm cellar.

1224 AD- Ghengis Khan, assured that he will love hot peppers, discovers the next day that he does not, in fact, love hot peppers nor the camp cook who suggested he would.

1100 AD- The reverse cowgirl sexual position is invented in southern China.

917 AD- Klingtan of a band of Indians on the Mississippi River invents the coupon by offering a two corn discount for anyone who brings a red leaf with them to market.

233 AD- Yu Fan of the Kingdom of Wu dies in an unfortunate reading incident.

2 AD- Yet another year goes by without the use of cellular telephones.

183 BC- Penguins reach South Africa on a dare.

204 BC- Using an elaborate system of pulleys and counter-weights, Sosibius allows the late Ptolemy IV to attend an official state dinner and orgy.

453 BC- In Athens Pericles institutes the world’s first speed limit.

664 BC- Jimmu decides to invent popcorn before founding Japan 4 years later.

888 BC- Weighted down by his lack of stock, Barundo the Clothier uses the one hat he has left to devise “one size fits all.”

986 BC- Uriah the Hittite wonders why he’s being ordered to the front of the column, but hopes that Bathsheba will like the cloth he looted for her.

1194 BC- Captain Axandos decides that Helen isn’t really that pretty, so he takes the armada’s 1001st ship in search of purple dye instead.

1232 BC- Luktep the Egyptian makes the observation that female genitalia resemble house cats. While all of his friends think he’s obviously wrong, the comparison endures for another 3300 years.

3301 BC- Rap group Leaders of the New School spit out rhymes at such a furious rate that they propel themselves into the distant past for a brief interval. Member Busta Rhymes accidentally shoots Otzi the Iceman with an arrow, mistaking him for a buck.

7000 BC- Fluntiglartiponactitune the Wanderer discovers apples on the far Eastern frontier of modern Kazakhstan. He remains unimpressed until his wife invents apple pie.

9096 BC- Threatened by a cosmic energy overload, Grand Master Soron attempts to reverse the polarity of the psychic crystal matrix. He fails and Atlantis sinks beneath the waves.

407,223 BC- Nunto creates the world’s first calendrical system when he begins making marks on a bone for each day his neighbor Gurt fails to clean up the rotten mammoth carcass near the hill.

407,224 BC- Gurt, neighbor of Nunto, dies in an obsidian flaking accident.

Historigon: Tiberium 2007

The Historigon

This Month in History:

2002 AD: Grocery cashier Irene Baras is first introduced to Axes & Alleys editors Scott Birdseye and Jeremy Rosen.

1976 AD: Jimmy Carter steals the election in Ohio, Texas, and Hawaii through a vast conspiracy reaching from local precinct captains all the way up to secretaries of state. In 31 years no one has yet revealed their involvement.

1948 AD: Truman’s Jr. Rangers disbands after both members lose interest.

1945 AD: Private Yoshita laments that KP Duty presents him with no dignified way to bloom as a flower in death.

1893 AD: Junebug Johnson becomes the first person to successfully play The Blues.

1882 AD: John Jacob Astor IV throws his old, golden diamond encrusted toothbrush into a filthy crystal trashcan.

1763 AD: Some lost Englishmen, still believing the French and Indian War to be on-going, throw tomatoes at a group of French fur traders.

1621 AD: Father Dominguez rechecks the entire Bible before deciding that Romans 8:24 probably condones Indian slaughter, you know, if you really, really read it.

1561 AD: After viewing a nude woman sunbathing on the roof of a distant villa, Galileo Galilei invents the telescope.

905 AD: A comet passes near the Earth. They share some light conversation, a spot of tea, and not a little bit of naughtiness.

789 AD: Charlemagne invents the toaster.

713 AD: A Connecticut Yankee stops in Tariq ibn Ziyad’s court.

666 AD: Contrary to European interpretations of Hebrew numerology, very little evil happens throughout the entire year, including this month.

458 AD: For the 1500th year in a row, Chunglit’s tribe decides to hang around above the arctic circle rather than head south where it’s warm. Chunglit is, understandably, nonplussed.

212 AD: A curious Polynesian is the first person to put a skirt on a pig. The entire village has a good laugh before being destroyed by a lava flow.

109 AD: Arcden of Nicomedia writes the fortunately forgotten Gospel of the Lewd Acts of Kristos.

90 AD: Polius rolls a pair of fours and wins ten drachmas. As he collects the money, he looks up toward the sound of a distant rumble. Then he rolls a two and a six.

2 BC: Chief Klontik of the Chochogee tribe near the Great Lakes discovers that he very much enjoys hitting small children over the head with a branch.

230 BC: Yup, you guessed it. Those damn Parthians caused some more trouble.

540 BC: Antanexos eats some bread.

777 BC: Zhou Ping Wang moves his capital to Chengzhou because of its wonderful noodle shops.

1503 BC: Moses convinces G-d that ten is a much rounder number and so G-d agrees to drop the commandment about killing all the Indians.

2474 BC: A Golden Age begins in Ur as 3% fewer people die from dysentery.

3,002 BC: Chin Cho, following a group of pilgrims up the sacred Hua Shan mountain noodling on his flute, invents elevator music nearly 5,000 years before the elevator.

12,505 BC: Gern erg ma Flescht da Husignam Flender nu Mahthat Kimderchanniftpt spends the afternoon flecking a rock for his friend’s new spear.

12,506 BC: Gern erg ma Flescht da Husignam Flender nu Mahthat Kimderchanniftpt’s friend loses his favorite spear while traversing a particularly difficult crevice.

12,507 BC: While attending the memorial for his father Flender the Maker of Excellent Spear Heads, Gern, the first son, places a spear head in his father’s hands and weeps. Luckily his friend is there to comfort him.

80, 623 BC: After donning a panther skin, Kerga invents the little black dress.

Historigon: Haduary 2007

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.