by Dave Barry
Speaking of developments, the “hot trend” sweeping through Europe in the early…
1400s
…was burning people at the stake, which had become the punishment for just about every infraction, including jousting without a permit. By the 1430s, so many people had been burned at the stake that Europe ran out of stakes and had to start burning people at the lump of peat, which took forever. Eventually, the fuel was exhausted, and the Dark Ages began. Virtually all learning ceased as the great universities of Europe closed their doors (although in response to alumni demand they were able to maintain a full football schedule). It was also around this time that Constantinople was captured by the Ottomans (or, as they were known on parchment, the “Toot-mans”). This led to the fall of the Byzantine Empire, an important empire that we should have mentioned earlier.
The Dark Ages finally ended when a printer named Johannes Gutenberg had a brilliant idea. In those days, printing was a laborious process because the type was not movable. A typical letter, such as B, was four feet high and weighed as much as six thousand pounds. So, to print a book, you had to carry the blank paper around and press it against the letter you needed, one letter at a time; this was slow and tedious, and the printers tended to take shortcuts, as we see by the 1412 edition of the Old Testament, reprinted in its entirety here:
“In the beginning, etc.”
One day, Gutenberg had an idea: Instead of moving the paper to the type, why not move the type to the paper? So he tried it, and on a historic day in 1455 three of his assistants were crushed while attempting to lift the letter W. So then Gutenberg had the idea of using small type, and within days he printed the first modern mass-produced book, Codpieces of Passion, by Danielle Steel.
This led to a rebirth of knowledge that we now call the Renaissance (literally, “Easter Island”). It was spearheaded by the brilliant multitalented Italian Leonardo da Vinci. One day, he was painting a portrait of a young woman named The Mona Lisa when they got to talking in English.
“Leonardo,” said The Mona Lisa, smiling enigmatically, “do you think Man will ever be able to fly?”
“I don’t know, The,” he answered. “But I sure am hungry.”
And so he invented pizza, without which the modern world would be a very different place indeed.
But the most important development of the fifteenth century was taking place in Spain and Portugal, which were determined to find a new sea route to Asia. Year after year, they sent ships out into the Atlantic; year after year, they were disappointed. And then they had an idea: Why not put men on the ships to steer them? And thus it was that in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain and discovered America, which he believed was the East Indies. The reason he believed this is that prank-loving Vikings, who had discovered America three hundred years earlier, had left a sign that said WELCOME TO THE EAST INDIES!
Nevertheless, as the great historian Edward Gibbon often used to say before passing out, “Once the genie is out of the bottle, the shoe is on the other foot.” The Age of Exploration had begun, and by the…
1500s
…there were ships sailing everywhere, carrying the message of European civilization to the indigenous peoples of Africa and the Americas (the message was: “Hi! We own you!”). Among the greatest mariners of this era was Ferdinand Magellan, who, in 1521, proved that the Earth was round by sailing all the way to the Philippines and getting killed, thus paving the way for what we now know as the tourism industry.
In Asia, many exciting things were happening, but we frankly do not know what they were.
Meanwhile, in Wittenberg, Germany, a priest named Martin Luther nailed ninety-five theses to the church door. This made the church very angry because nobody could read the bingo announcements. As a punishment, Luther was sentenced to the Diet of Worms, which was so disgusting that he started the Protestant Reformation. This movement got a boost in 1534 when Henry VIII started the Church of England after the pope refused to let him divorce his first wife, Elizabeth Taylor.
Henry went on to have a number of wives, most of whom died in freak guillotine accidents. The next major monarch was Mary Tudor, who was known as “Bloody Mary” because she invented the celery garnish. She was succeeded by Elizabeth I, who is the mother of the current queen and is still periodically seen blinking into TV news cameras on her birthday. She presided over the Elizabethan Era, which produced the immortal William Shakespeare, who wrote such timeless works as Richard II, Richard III, Richard III Strikes Back, and Hamlet Hears a Who, and who gave us a priceless legacy of famous phrases that, to this very day, are pretty much incomprehensible.
The major world power at this time was Spain, which was ruled by King Philip II (or, for short, “King Philip I”), who was legendary all over Europe because of the unnaturally large size of his armada. (“Hey,” he was always saying to women, “want to see my armada?”) Then, in 1588, the English fleet snuck up and set Phil’s armada on fire, and that was pretty much all she wrote with regard to Spain being a major world power.
Meanwhile, exciting progress was being made in Russia, which had decided, after centuries of operating under the Marauding Horde System of government, to switch over to the Lone Homicidal Psychopath System, choosing as its first leader Ivan the Terrible (son of Becky the Terrible). And speaking of progress, in the…
1600s
…humanity’s understanding of the universe took a giant leap forward. It had long been theorized that the Earth orbited around the sun, but there had been no proof until one night in 1609 when an astronomer named Galileo, who had just invented a new device called the “telescope,” peered through it and discovered that he could see directly into the bedroom window of a woman who lived nearly five hundred feet away. As a result, many guys became interested in astronomy. Or so they told their wives.
Another important scientific advance occurred in 1614 when the logarithm was invented by Scottish mathematician John Napier. Someday, when time travel is invented, high-school students will go back and kill him.
But the greatest scientific advance of the century came in 1687, when Sir Isaac Newton, after watching an apple fall off a tree, wrote his famous Principia Mathematica, which states that there is a universal force, called “gravity,” inside apples. Later scientists would expand this definition to include grapefruit, but the basic concept remains unchanged to this day.
On the political front, 1618 marked the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, in which the German Protestants joined forces with France, Sweden, Denmark, Wisconsin, and the San Diego Chargers to fight against the old Holy Roman Empire, which was led by the Hapsburgs (Stan and Louise). The fighting went on until 1648, when the combatants realized that they would either have to stop fighting or change the name of the war. This led to the Peace of Westphalia, under which the various parties formally agreed that the letters in HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE could be rearranged to spell O RIPEN MY ARM-HOLE, thus paving the way for Europe as we know it today.
At this time, France was experiencing its glory years under Louis XIV, who became known as the “Sun King” because he was more than two million miles in circumference. But things were not so good for England, which in 1665 suffered through the Great Plague of London, which was followed in 1666 by the Great Fire of London, which was followed in 1667 by the first recorded attack on London by Godzilla.
Nevertheless, there was hope, and that hope was focused on the New World, where a group of hardy settlers had founded the first permanent English colony in Jamestown, Va., where the Native Americans introduced them to a local plant with broad leaves. The Virginians found that when these leaves were cured, shredded, and smoked in a pipe, they tasted terrible.
“That’s because it’s corn, you morons,” pointed out the Native Americans. So things looked bad for the colonists, but then they discovered tobacco, which was not as bad, and which was introduced to consumers back in England via a media campaign using the slogan “Tobacco—Eventually, You Stop Throwing Up.” This ma
rked the dawn of modern marketing.
Meanwhile, two other famous settlements were being established farther up the North American coast. One was an island on the north end of what we now call New York Bay, which the Dutch settler Peter Minuit purchased from the Manhattan Indians for $24, plus $167,000 a month in maintenance fees. Minuit named this settlement “New Amsterdam,” although after it was taken over by the English it became known by the name that has become synonymous with urban greatness: “Easter Island.”
The other famous settlement was of course Plymouth Colony, which was founded by Puritans, a group of religious separatists who sailed across the Atlantic in search of a place where they could starve to death. In the winter of 1620, they landed in Massachusetts, where they signed the Mayflower Compact, in which they swore before Almighty God that if they managed to survive the winter and create a viable colony, and if that colony prospered and grew to the point where, someday, it boasted a major city with a professional baseball team, and if that baseball team was stupid enough to trade away the greatest hitter of all time, then that team would never again win a World Series. And that is why we celebrate Thanksgiving.
In Asian news, the big story was that Peter the Great became the leader of Russia. And if you have to ask why, then you clearly have not stopped to ask yourself how a person gets a nickname like “Peter the Great.”
And speaking of great, the…
1700s
…were a time of important worldwide advances in knowledge that became known, collectively, as “the Enlightenment” because people became so excited that they lost weight. To name just a few advances:
In England, a chemist named Daniel Rutherford discovered nitrogen, without which many of us would not be here today.
In France, the great philosopher Voltaire wrote his masterpiece, Candide, which tells the fascinating story of somebody named Candide. At least, that is our assumption.
In Germany, a composer named Johann Sebastian Bach was writing some hot new fugues, including “Just Fuguen’ Around,” which was to remain No. 1 on the European Fugue Parade for the next 238 years.
In Austria, a four-year-old prodigy named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sat down at the harpsichord and began to play music in a style so original and exquisite that his father, Walter “Bud” Mozart, smacked him on the head and told him to go outside and play like the other boys, thus paving the way for what would one day become Little League.
In Scotland, an inventor named James Watt was sitting in his laboratory, looking at an engine and trying to figure out how to make it go, when he decided to brew himself some tea. So he put a teapot on the fire, and when the steam came billowing out Watt had an idea: Wouldn’t it be great if you could heat tea water just by plugging something into the wall? So he invented the watt.
In America, Benjamin Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanack, which tells the fascinating story of somebody named Candide.
In Egypt, soldiers discovered the Rosetta Stone (daughter of Sol and Esther Stone). This was very significant because it enabled scholars, for the first time, to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which turned out to be a letter from Publishers Clearing House informing the ancient Egyptians that they might already have won two hundred sheep.
But this was also a century of great turmoil and radical change, and the center of that change was the New World, where, in the words of the great historian Charles Howard McIlwain, “the American colonies, having for too long been forced to consume the bean dip of tyranny, were preparing to release a mighty wind of liberty into the world.”
Trouble had been brewing for some time. In 1735, a New York newspaper publisher named John Peter Zenger was arrested after he printed a story alleging that the New York governor had been seen at a Times Square peep show in which milkmaids allegedly operated churns topless (the headline was LUV GUV IN BUTTER FLUTTER). Zenger was acquitted, thus establishing Freedom of Speech and laying the groundwork for what would ultimately become Jerry Springer.
This was followed by the French and Indian War, which further heightened tensions because, contrary to what the name “French and Indian War” suggests, both the French and the Indians were on the same side. Then, in 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which decreed that if the colonists wanted to buy stamps they had to wait in long lines at inconveniently located postal facilities staffed by surly clerks who periodically went on murderous rampages with semiautomatic muskets.
But the straw that finally pushed the camel over the edge of the cliff and caused the dam to burst came in 1773, when the British Parliament placed a tax on tea. In retaliation, a group of Boston patriots dressed up as Indians, sneaked aboard a ship, and threw its cargo into Boston Harbor. Unfortunately, this was a cruise ship and the cargo consisted of retired couples, many of whom were poor swimmers. But the die had been cast, and there was no way to put the shoe back on the other foot. The hostility between the colonies and the British government, headed by King Big Fat Stupid III, was bound to turn into violence, and, finally, on the fateful night of April 18, 1775, the Revolutionary War began when Paul Revere made his legendary “midnight ride,” galloping all the way from Boston to Lexington while shouting the message that would resound through the annals of history: “I CAN’T STOP MY HORSE!”
This rallying cry united the colonies, which decided to hold a Continental Congress in Philadelphia, where, on July 4, 1776, the delegates, after passionate debate, signed the Gettysburg Address. To lead the Revolutionary Army, they chose a man named George Washington, who was known and respected throughout the colonies because his picture was on the dollar. Washington scored many important victories, most notably on the dark and bitter cold Christmas night of 1776, when he set out across the Delaware River in a small boat and, after several anxious minutes, discovered land, which he named “New Jersey,” after his mother.
Finally, after many historic battles whose names all American schoolchildren should be forced to memorize before they are allowed to buy one more damn Pokemon card if you want our frank opinion, the British surrendered. At last, after years of oppression, all Americans were truly free! (Except for the slaves.)
Soon the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were hard at work, and in 1788 the constitution they created underwent formal ratification, a complex legal procedure involving actual rats. And thus was born a new nation—a nation that would grow and prosper and ultimately become the mightiest nation that the world had ever seen, a shining beacon of hope that today is known throughout the world as “Easter Island.”
This new spirit of freedom spread, in the words of the historian William Hickling Prescott, “like crazy.” It reached across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, where the French, warmly embracing the concept of democratic self-government, brotherhood, and equality under the law, whacked many people’s heads off.
Yes, the times, as Bob Dylan (1746–present) once observed, were a-changing. And the pace of that change would only increase in the…
1800s
…which started off with a “bang” in the form of the Louisiana Purchase, in which Thomas Jefferson bought 828,000 square miles from the French for just $15 million, including all appliances. (The French originally wanted $30 million, but they came way down on price when Jefferson pointed out that the parcel included North Dakota.) The newly acquired territory was then explored by two brothers, Lewis and Clark Expedition, who spent two arduous years traveling through the uncharted wilderness, forced to eat virtually every meal at the International House of Jerky. Finally, the Expeditions returned to Washington and presented Jefferson with a map that was amazingly accurate down to the smallest detail, because it was a map of Germany. And that was the beginning of the Interstate Highway System.
But the fledgling nation was soon to find its very existence threatened with the outbreak of the War of 1812 (1807–10), during which the British marched into Washington, D.C., and, with the help of local residents, burned the Internal Revenue Service to the ground. Tragic
ally, it was rebuilt, and eventually the British went back to England, where many of them still reside today. Fed up with this type of foreign interference, the fifth president of the United States, Monroe Doctrine, issued a decree stating that anybody wishing to invade the United States had better have a valid permit.
Meanwhile, over in Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte had himself crowned emperor of France in recognition of the fact that he alone, among all the French, could rearrange the letters in his name to spell RENT AN ABALONE POOP. Through a series of brilliant military campaigns, he went on to conquer a large area of Europe, only to meet his Waterloo in the Battle of Bunker Hill. He was then exiled to Easter Island, where he invented the cream-filled puff pastry that we know today, in his memory, as the Hostess Twinkie.
A few years later, England and China got into the Opium War, during which soldiers on both sides spent most of the time lying around staring at candles and going, “Wow!” England at this point had a new queen, Victoria, who was much beloved despite having basically the same facial expression as a grouper. She reigned for the next 150 years, during which the sun never set on the British Empire, which as you can imagine experienced an alarming increase in skin growths.
Meanwhile, a great Industrial Revolution was taking place, thanks to a cavalcade of technological and scientific advances:
In 1807, an American inventor named Robert Fulton put a steam engine aboard a ship called the Clermont. Needless to say, it sank like an anvil, thus confirming the widespread scientific belief that gravity was still working.
In 1808, a German musician named Ludwig “van” Beethoven revolutionized the tedious, labor-intensive task of composing when he harnessed a steam engine to a symphony-making machine, which cranked out Beethoven’s fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth symphonies in just twelve minutes before exploding, leaving Beethoven permanently deaf, and foreshadowing the music we now call “hip-hop.”