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.