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 [ BACK]  [NEXT]                       Issue #275 - 11/18/2001

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY

Everyone's Wrong About Something...

Hello, Historic Friends,
     As most of you know by now, I really like history.  And I
also believe that the study of history is critical for every
serious student.  After all, if you don't know how we got here,
how will you know when you get where we're going?  For that
matter, how will you know when to get off, change lines or ask
for a transfer?
     When I was much younger, I thought that history was simply
the "boneless chicken" version of current events; like the news,
but with all of the bones of contention removed.  Later, though,
I was surprised to discover that hardly any event in history is
completely understood.  We are pretty solid with where things
happened, and when, and mostly to who.  But things get vastly
more difficult when we try to figure out just what happened. 
And, especially, why.
     Pundits have been claiming a lot lately that we are "living
through historic events."  Pretty much by definition, I guess,
because: 1) Lots of stuff is happening, and, 2) we write it down. 
Besides becoming a valuable record of past experience, these
written histories become a resource that can be twisted by many
future crackpots to prove whatever hateful, cockamamie theories
they dream up.  This is, of course, the most common pattern all
through human history, so we'd better be darned careful just what
we write down and how we write it.
     Much of the popular interest in history seems to center
around a few individuals, most of whom had interesting sex lives. 
Our fascination with past peccadillos is why many popular
histories read like a bound set of the National Enquirer.  This
sexy theory of history also explains the continued interest in
historical figures such as Napoleon & Josephine, Adam & Eve,
Cleopatra, Julius Caesar & Marc Anthony (in any combination),
King Arthur & his crowd, that whole bunch of Kennedys and
Catherine the Great and her horse.  No one much cares about
Millard Fillmore, since it can't be proved that he had a
scandalous sex life.  It can barely be proved that he had any sex
life at all.  One this basis, historians of the distant future
are likely to spend far more chapters of 20th Century history on
Bill Clinton than on Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Dwight
Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson combined.  No wonder we have such a
warped view of life in the past.
     Historic Thanks this week to our friends of the present,
including: Jerry Taff, Ted Wilder, R.J. Tully, Keiko Amakawa,
Catherine Cassidy, Kerry Miller, Carol J. Becwar, Charles
Beckman, Kenn Venit, David Zach, Peter J. Adler, Helen Yee &
Wayne Pokora, Sharon Nuernberg, Wallace Adams, Tim McChain, and
Anna Macareno.
     It used to be that most people thought of history as a
purely academic exercise, with no real, practical value.  That is
to say, most folks couldn't figure any way of making a quick buck
off the past.  This has begun to change as many places around the
world have discovered that tourists are willing to pay big bucks
to hang around where something happened long ago - even if
there's nothing much happening there now.  In this age of
relatively easy and inexpensive travel, tourist dollars have
become very important to many local economies.  This is called
having archaic and eating it too.
     Have A Historic Week,

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THE SUNDAY FUNNIES COMPLETE GUIDE TO HISTORY (ABRIDGED)
-------------------------------------------------------

circa 4,000BCE - History begins with the invention of writing.
          Actually, lots of stuff happened before this, but
          everyone was too busy to write it down.  It would be
          nearly 6,000 years before that excuse came into fashion
          again.

3050BCE - An unknown Sumerian invents the wheel.  Within a week,
          the idea is stolen and duplicated by other Sumerians,
          thereby establishing the business ethic for all time.

1850BCE - Ancient Britons finally get the rocks at Stonehenge
          arranged in a sufficiently meaningless pattern to
          confuse the hell out of everyone for centuries.

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

1768BCE - Babylonians realize their calendar needs adjustment
          when winter begins in June.

 776BCE - The world's first known money appears in Persia,
          followed shortly by the world's first known counterfeit
          money.  Human nature also hasn't changed much.

 525BCE - The first Olympics are held, and prove remarkably
          similar to the modern games; Spartan pro athletes
          compete as "amateurs," the Egyptians try to enter a
          female shot-putter who is six feet tall and has a
          mustache, the Sumerians claim that the Philistine
          judges are unfairly against them and the games fail to
          make any money.

 399BCE - Socrates condemned to death for "corrupting the youth
          of Athens," marking the first time politicians use this
          excuse to get rid of a popular philosopher.

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

 214BCE - Tens of thousands of Chinese labor for a generation to
          build the 1,500 mile long Great Wall of China.  After
          all that, it still doesn't keep the neighbor's dog out.

circa 35BCE - Jesus Christ is born a few years early, just to
          confuse all future historians.

   1BCE - Calendar manufacturers find themselves in total
          disagreement over what to call next year.

   79AD - Buying real estate in Pompeii turns out to have been a
          rotten investment.

  410AD - End of the Roman Empire with the sacking of Rome. 
          Little remembered now is that the Visigoths were just
          celebrating their victory in a soccer match in the
          traditional way when things got out of hand.

  413AD - St. Patrick introduces Christianity to Ireland, giving
          the natives something interesting to fight about for
          the rest of recorded history.

  500AD - The increasingly incorrectly named Middle Ages begin.

  800AD - Vikings conduct raids across Northern Europe.  This is
          the last winning team the Vikings will produce until
          they built a domed stadium in Minneapolis in the 1980s.

  955AD - King Eadwig of England fails to show up for his own
          coronation.  He was later found cavorting with a young
          lady and her mother, setting the high moral standard
          observed by British royalty to this day.

  962AD - Otto the Great, from modern Germany, becomes the first
          Holy Roman Emperor, despite being neither Holy, Roman,
          nor having much of an empire.

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

 1004 - Lady Murasaki Shibuki invents the novel with "The Tale of
          Genji."  There being no Oprah Book Club at the time,
          sales of the romance novel are poor.

 1043 - Lady Godiva founds a tax protest movement.  She also
          finds a means of demonstrating that makes everyone
          forget what she is protesting against.

 1066 - William the Conqueror from Normandy invades England.  It
          will be another 900 years before England figures out
          how to invade them back.

 1095 - The First Crusade proves unsuccessful enough that it is
          followed by nine more.

 1233 - The Inquisition is set up to torture and kill anyone who
          disagrees with Religious Law.  The practice is so
          un-Christian that it is stopped after only 600 years.

 1297 - The world's first stock exchange opens, but no one has
          the foresight to buy Xerox at .000005.

 1340 - The Hundred Years War breaks out in Europe.  Politicians
          being about as accurate then as now, it lasts for 123
          years.

 1400 - The Renaissance begins what is known as the age of reason
          and enlightenment.  Considering how stupid and
          unreasonable things have been since then, the preceding
          time must have REALLY sucked.

 1433 - Portugal launches the African slave trade, which proves
          what a small, ambitious country can do with a little
          ingenuity and a lot of evil.

 1456 - An English judge reviews Joan of Arc's case and cancels
          her death sentence.  A little late for Joanie though,
          as she was burned at the stake in 1431.

 1492 - Columbus proves how lost he really is by landing in the
          Bahamas, naming the place San Salvador, wearing a
          Chinese silk robe to greet the natives and calling the
          people who live there Indians.

 1497 - Amerigo Vespucci becomes about the eighth explorer to
          come to the New World, but the first to think of naming
          it after himself.  Fortunately, the name Vespuccia
          never really catches on.

 1508 - Michelangelo 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.  He
          dies of old age trying to remember where it was.

 1568 - Saddened over the slander of his good name, Ivan the
          Terrible kills another 100,000 Russian peasants to make
          them stop calling him "Ivan the Terrible."

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

 1618 - Countless future generations are doomed as the English
          execute Sir Walter Raleigh, but keep his tobacco plants
          alive.

 1642 - Nine students receive the first Bachelor of Arts degrees
          conferred in America.  They immediately fill all nine
          jobs open to liberal arts graduates resulting in
          unemployment for all future BAs.

 1748 - War of Jenkin's Ear begins, later merged with the War of
          Austrian Succession.  These are know collectively as
          the "Who Cares?" era.

 1758 - New Jersey was chosen as the site of America's first
          Indian reservation, giving Indians an idea of the kind
          of shabby conditions they could expect from then on.

 1770 - The shooting of three people in the Boston Massacre
          touches off the American Revolution.  200 Years later,
          three shootings in Boston will be about average for a
          Saturday night.

 1773 - Colonists dump tea into Boston Harbor.  British see the
          act as "barbaric" since no one thought to add cream.

 1776 - American colonists declare their independence from
          England.  Fortunately for the colonists, the Thirty
          Years War is going on in Europe, so England doesn't pay
          much attention.

 1793 - Marie Antoinette and her husband Louie lose their heads
          and flee Paris in a panic just ahead of a mob at the
          start of the French Revolution.  Later, they lose their
          heads in a far more literal sense.

 1802 - Hard up for cash, Napoleon sells his American real estate
          holdings to the new United States for billions of
          dollars less than the appraised value.  French
          restaurant owners have been trying to extract the lost
          money from American tourists ever since.

 1815 - Post Office policy is established as Andrew Jackson wins
          the Battle of New Orleans two weeks after he should
          have received the letter saying the War of 1812 was
          over.

 1828 - Construction of the first railroad begins in America. 
          Congress withdraws funding when it fails to make an
          immediate profit.

 1840 - William Henry Harrison is elected president in a
          landslide, his campaign motto, "Tippecanoe and Tyler,
          Too" being so meaningless that no one could figure out
          how to disagree with it.

 1850 - Henry Clay announces, "I'd rather be right than
          president," which gets quite a laugh, coming from a guy
          who ran for president five times and never won.

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

 1869 - Completion of the Transcontinental railway means that
          travellers can journey by rail from New York to San
          Francisco in only eight days - just about what it takes
          on AMTRAK now.

 1871 - Charles Darwin writes "Descent of Man".  It has the same
          general plot as "Planet of the Apes", but fails to make
          as much money.

 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, and,
          quite accidentally, telemarketing.

 1882 - Edison invents the practical electric light.  The first
          erroneous billing by ConEd follows almost immediately.

 1883 - Brooklyn Bridge opens in New York, allowing people to get
          from Manhattan to Brooklyn faster than most people want
          to get there.

 1887 - First electric streetcars operate in Richmond Virginia. 
          Critics immediately condemn the impracticality and
          expense of using city streets for light rail.

 1896 - Henry Ford builds his first automobile.  After this, he
          builds a few more.  This marks the last time anyone can
          find a parking spot in downtown Detroit.  Or, wants to.

 1902 - The Wright Brothers become the last air travellers to
          suffer neither flight delays nor lost luggage.

 1912 - People holding tickets from New York to England on the
          Titanic get their money back.

 1914-18 - Those fighting in the Great War call it the "War to
          end all wars."  This proves about as accurate as
          calling the first act of Hamlet the play to end all
          plays.

 1920 - The 18th Amendment to the Constitution makes drinking
          alcohol illegal in the U.S., so everyone stops - except
          for the 40 million, or so, who drink more.

 1921 - Warren G. Harding becomes president, forever insuring
          that no future president could ever be the stupidest
          man to hold the office.

 1924 - Adolph Hitler is released from prison four years early,
          after convincing the parole board that he was a changed
          man who wouldn't cause any more trouble.

 1929 - The stock market crashed, resulting in financial ruin,
          massive unemployment and eventually, war.  Who says
          things change?

 1933 - Nazi rule begins as German homeowners begin to realize
          why that crazy paper hanger with the mustache never
          came back to finish his work.

 1938 - Great Britain and Germany sign a peace treaty, thereby
          averting all possibility of a second world war - for
          about a year.

 1945 - Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany falls, thankfully ending
          the Thousand Year Reich 988 years early.

 1945 - Atomic bomb dropped on Japan, ending World War II.  After
          many millennia of unsuccessful attempts, human beings
          finally achieve the ability to accidentally destroy
          themselves in a few milliseconds.

 1945 - now - Pretty boring - US invades Korea, Cuba, Vietnam,
     Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan ... Microsoft,
     New Coke, Hula Hoops, Kennedy, Data Processing,
     Supertankers, International House of Pancakes, Moonies, Moon
     Landing, Moon Pies, War on Drugs, Nixon, Carter, Johnson,
     Gerald Somebody, Bush, Clinton, another Bush, CNN, Disney
     World, Y2K...

     Someday, someone will figure out what this all meant.  Too
late to be of any real use to us, of course.


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© 2001 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.