(Continued from last week)

From about 2860 to 2840 BC, the pair used Fu Xi's trapping expertise to hunt down and kill every member of the bandit group, as well as all of their children. Thus, the first part of their vow was quickly fulfilled. The second part, however, took a while longer. For the next few decades, they went to all the neighboring villages, building immense walls to keep attackers out. They would also teach willing villagers a fighting style they were developing, which the villages decided to name in part after Fu Xi, calling it Kung Fu. When not building or teaching, Nuwa would tell the villagers stories of where they had come from. The attack on the village, the tournament, and then the flood. These elements were soon integrated into local legends.

By 2750 BC, the pair realized that something was wrong. The villages seemed to be defended adequately, but their sacred vow still wouldn't let the two die. At over one hundred years old, they were ready to rest. Not long after this realization, they found out what was wrong with their plan. One of their villages sent their best fighters to bully another village they had helped. For months after the attack, Fu Xi and Nuwa debated how to deal with the situation. Finally, they came up with an idea that hearkened back to the origin of their mission.

For the next year, Fu Xi and Nuwa went from village to village advertising a tournament. Each of the eight villages were allowed to send their four best fighters, resulting in thirty-two contestants, the same as the number of winners of the original tournament. The winner of the tournament would show that his village was the strongest, and so that one would be charged with protecting the other seven until the next tournament. On the other hand, the other seven villages would have to send the winner tribute of various supplies to bolster their ability to defend the weaker villages.

The first such tournament took place in the now-drained Jizhou, the village Nuwa had come from. As instructed, each village sent four competitors. In order to not give anyone an unfair advantage, everyone fought, one on one, at the same time in various parts of the village. There would also only be one round of fighting per day. Because of this, the tournament lasted five days. With the intensity of some of the fights, the already ruined village was further devastated as people were thrown into walls, and smaller pieces of wood were used as weapons.

And so, after five days of fighting, the winner was crowned. Not all of the villages agreed with the decision, though. One in particular had had their last remaining champion knocked unconscious by a flying piece of debris from another fight. They wanted the entire tournament redone, but with fights taking place one at a time. They thought that having the fights all at once made it easier for the fighters to interfere with each other. They were ignored and simply looked at as sore losers.

The winning village was instructed to defend the others and make preparations for the next tournament. In forty-nine years, they were to construct an arena large enough that all sixteen of the first day's fights could take place at once, and it had to be built well outside the village. But apart from those two, no specifications were made. The village could construct it as they liked. Once construction was complete, or after a year passed after construction began, whichever came first, the next tournament was to begin. Once again, each village would send four combatants and the ultimate winner would receive the same instructions.

However, a year after the first tournament, the disgruntled village hatched a plan to show that the winning village wasn't the best choice to defend the others. Their plan would be in two parts. First, they sent a message to the nearest known group of bandits. Claiming to be from the winning village, the message invited the bandits to visit for as long as they wanted. As was expected, when the bandits arrived they were turned away at the gate. Also predicted was the bandits' reaction, which was to immediately attack. They were quickly forced back, but not before they had caused substantial damage to the village's defensive fortifications.

The second part of the plan was for the disgruntled village to attack with their own forces before the winning village could rebuild their defenses. They would have succeeded if not for the fact that Fu Xi and Nuwa were in the village at the time, once again wondering why they weren't dying yet. When the attacking force was seen on the horizon, they understood what had happened and how to stop it. Fu Xi took a small force of warriors to lead in stopping the attacking village while Nuwa repaired the walls as fast as she could. In her haste, Nuwa somehow made the wall far stronger than it had been, and it was later named the Wall of Heaven. She needn't have bothered, though, as Fu Xi and his troops quickly stopped the attackers.

Rather than kill them for betrayal, Fu Xi listened to the disgruntled village's complaints. After some consideration, a compromise was reached that everyone could agree to. The only rules set in stone for the tournament were the four combatants from each village, the fifty years between them, and that the winner had to defend the other villages, but received tribute from them for it. Any additional rules could be decided upon by the winning village. Appeased, the attackers went home to train for their next chance at victory.

After forty-nine years passed, the second tournament began. Again, after five days of fighting, a winner was crowned. However, he was not congratulated by Fu Xi or Nuwa. They were later found in their private viewing box, dead. Their vow had finally been fulfilled. In fact, there were no successful attacks on the villages until the tournaments stopped over four hundred years later, in 2249 BC. The reason the tournaments were stopped is the source of another story altogether.

One convention in fighting anime is that there will eventually be a tournament for the main characters to enter and prove their fighting prowess against opponents they otherwise never would have faced. The tournament is usually said to take place “once a generation.” Often the prize for this tournament is power of some sort or another. Increased fighting prowess, governmental control, the ability to change the world as they see fit, etc. The concept reinforces the outdated idea that “might makes right.” Interestingly, this anime convention dates back in stories to events in current China during the 29th to 23rd centuries BC.

In the early-mid 29th century BC, there was a mountaineer in modern-day China named Fu Xi. He lived on his own in the remote mountainside, trapping and fishing for himself, rarely interacting with his fellow Chinese. In a bit of anachronism, Fu Xi is credited with teaching the Chinese to fish and trap, despite the fact that they had already been farming since 5000 BC at the latest. Most cultures developed in the other direction, hunting, trapping, and fishing, and then learning to farm. The cause for this seeming backward development will become clear later. But, in any case, Fu Xi enjoyed his life on his own, never wanting to leave it behind. Unfortunately for him, his tranquility was not to be.

Sometime around 2860 BC, during the winter, Fu Xi returned to his humble cottage to find it in shambles. He had been attacked by bandits who had taken all of his winter food stores. The rivers were all but frozen over and the animals he trapped were hibernating, so Fu Xi had no choice but to travel down to Jizhou, the nearest village, and beg for their generosity. When he arrived, however, he found that they, too, had been attacked by the bandits. There was only enough food in the village, mainly from livestock and pets, to feed two or three dozen people through to the spring thaw. The village was home to over two hundred people, so it was understandable when Fu Xi's request for aid was not looked upon kindly.

However, the village still had to think of some way of deciding who would eat and who wouldn't. If they didn't properly ration the food, the whole village would die. Because he had helped the villagers in the past, Fu Xi was still allowed to stay and be part of the deliberations on who should be allowed to live. Several factors were brought up in the debates, most prominently what skills would be needed for reconstructing the village. Carpenters, farmers, hunters, seamstresses, and more, each necessary job had two or three candidates selected, but there was still disagreement. It was pointed out by one villager, presumably Nuwa, one of the village's women, that most of the people being selected were men, and so the village would still die out within generations from inability to repopulate.

Nuwa pointed out that with only a couple dozen people, there was no way the village would thrive again, and instead they should be concerned with protecting other villages from the fate that this one fell to. She suggested that they instead find the best fighters of the village, and once winter was over, have them go after the bandits who had caused the village's destruction. After that, they would go to a new village and assimilate themselves into that population. Though there were some dissenting voices, Nuwa's idea of a tournament was decided to be the best.

After a week of fighting, Nuwa and Fu Xi were two of the thirty-two winners of the tournament. The remaining members of the village sadly left into the woods, presumably never to be heard from again. However, it seems that one of the villagers who lost the tournament was actually a spy for the bandits. He went out to their encampment and told them of the tournament and what the winners were planning to do. So that winter, the bandits dug extensively, finally rerouting a nearby river, which flooded into the valley the village had been in, killing everyone in it.

During the winter, the thirty-two villagers chosen to survive decided that the best way to acclimate themselves to a new village was to have all the useful skills they possibly could, and so were teaching each other all the skills they had. When the flood happened, there were only thirty people still in the valley. The Spring thaw was almost upon them, so some animals had already come out of hibernation. Because of that, Fu Xi had taken Nuwa out of the village to teach her to trap small game. When they returned to the village they were devastated to see that it had become a lake. It didn't take long for the two to realize what had happened. They each made a sacred vow that they would never die until the bandits had paid and all nearby villages were protected from them. Apparently their basic biology paid attention to this vow, as even the most reliable records have Fu Xi and Nuwa living for almost two hundred years.

(Continued next week)

For centuries, people have delighted in tales of ninja; spies and assassins clad in darkness, slipping away into the night before their work has been discovered. Or, in some cases, bumbling magical warriors clad in orange, running from battle because they have diarrhea. Nevertheless, ninja have been a mainstay of eastern, and on occasion western fantasy. They are usually portrayed as impossibly skilled at any task set before them. Concealing themselves in the slightest shade, fighting off hordes of highly trained warriors at once, cracking codes of unrealistic complexity within seconds. Theatrical ninja are truly amazing people. Yet as fantastical as their portrayed abilities are, the truth is even more unbelievable.

In the history of the ninja legend, there has been only one actual ninja. He is the basis of all stories and beliefs about them. Because of the pervasiveness of ninja stories, finding the truth at the center of it all is quite difficult, but through years of study, here is what has been uncovered. At some point in the early 15th century, Kage Musuke found a strange item, which looked rather like a modern day diving watch, while he was walking along a beach in southern Japan. Curiosity getting the better of him, he picked up the device and began fiddling with it. When Musuke returned to his home later that day, he was greeted by amazed family members, saying he had been gone for almost a year. Unable to explain his absence, he was deemed a traitor by his daimyo, and was sentenced to death. Before committing seppuku, Musuke touched the device as a nervous tic, and was shocked to see that everyone around him seemed to suddenly stop moving.

The device Musuke had discovered was actually a piece of Atlantean technology, the name of which roughly translates to “Space/Time Inverter.” It projected a bubble of time-displacement around the wearer. It could then speed up or slow down time so that time around the user would either slow to an infinitesimal rate or have months pass by in a single second. However, because of the temporal radiation involved in the process, the user quickly suffers mental changes affecting their whole personality. Musuke had originally been a loyal subject of his daimyo, willing to do anything that was ordered of him. However, now that he was in control of the Space/Time Inverter, he became far more interested in his own safety.

Time having stopped around him, Musuke decided to leave and see what else his new toy was capable of. Within months from his perception he had mastered the device, though almost sixty years had passed around him. Megalomania having taken firm hold in Musuke's mind, he went to his former daimyo's estate, and killed the new master of it. When news got around that a powerful daimyo had been killed with no witnesses, dozens, perhaps hundreds tried to claim credit for it. Eventually one rival leader gathered several together and told them to reenact how they said they had made the kill so stealthily. In the middle of one failing demonstration, all the would-be assassins suddenly dropped dead from various sword wounds that appeared on their bodies all at once with seemingly no cause. Musuke then casually walked out of a shadowy corner garbed all in black, saying that the kill was his doing.

For centuries Musuke was given work as an assassin by anyone able to give him something of value. Labor, typically. After all, anything material Musuke wanted, he could just steal by stopping time. In the mid-1700s it was requested of him that he teach his secrets to a future generation. Megalomania in full swing, Musuke agreed, despite the fact that there was no teachable skill involved in his techniques. He set up a course of obstacles the students could learn to sneak by and hide in, then basically let them teach themselves, Musuke himself only showing up every once in a while to oversee things.

He was finally stopped in the mid-1800s, shortly before the Meiji Restoration. He was sent to stop some pirates who had been wreaking havoc across Japan. Musuke stopped time, and then walked out to where the ship was located. He was able to walk on water because with time frozen the water's surface tension was enough to hold his full weight. However, when he got to the vicinity of the ship, Musuke fell prey to the trick the pirates were using to take larger cities with little resistance; a piece of Atlantean technology that stopped almost all machines from working. This included the muskets most samurai were relying upon at the time. It also included the Space/Time Inverter. No longer displaced from normal time, Musuke suddenly fell through the water and drowned. Decades later his body was recovered, but the Space/Time Inverter had been damaged beyond repair. They were already used to his absence, so Musuke's school continued unabated, and eventually declared themselves to be ninja, but they were, for obvious reasons, never as successful as Musuke had been.

The pirates who had led to Musuke's downfall were stopped years later, but that's a story in itself.

There is a longstanding legend among chess instructors that the game was first created as an alternative to what would have been a long, bloody war between two kingdoms in south-west Asia. Instead, the two kings took the advice of their pacifistic advisors. They met and played a game the advisors had devised to simulate a war with varying types of troops. They called it chess. The winner took what he wanted from both kingdoms, and the loser was sent into exile. It's certainly a nice story. And like many legends, even has a grain of truth to it.

In modern day China, during the Xia Dynasty, Emperor Huai was trying to find a way to stop the Northern barbarians from attacking. They had been a recurring problem for centuries, but were now attacking harder than ever. Several ideas were suggested, and immediately discarded for various reasons. Marrying the emperor's daughter to the barbarian leader wouldn't work, as the barbarian leader wouldn't recognize the significance, and would keep attacking. Trade offers wouldn't work because the barbarians were taking anything they wanted anyway. Huai was close to giving the barbarians a ceremonial seat in his imperial court when one of his newer advisors gave him the idea to challenge the barbarian leader to a game.

It was well known that the barbarians enjoyed games, though the type of games they played was still unknown. However, what was needed was a game that was complex enough that the barbarian leader could not learn the nuances of strategy quickly enough to win in under an hour, but was simple enough that the emperor could excel at it in as little practice time as possible. The emperor's advisors quickly set about at creating such a game. A month later, they triumphantly returned with a rudimentary form of Chinese Checkers. Emperor Huai began playing day and night in an attempt to master the game After another month, his advisors could not beat him. They decided it was time to challenge the barbarians.

An envoy was sent into the northern wastes to tell the barbarians of the emperor's challenge. When they first heard of it, the barbarians got excited, thinking it was a challenge to a duel. Once the game idea was explained to them, they were disappointed. But, nevertheless, the barbarian leader, Bu Lo, accepted the challenge. When he arrived at the designated meeting place, the terms were laid out to him. The game would be best of three. If Bu Lo won, the emperor would be exiled, and all of China would belong to Bu Lo, to do with as he would. If Huai won, the barbarians would stop attacking, and Bu Lo would spend the rest of his days in a four foot by four foot cage. Bu Lo accepted the terms. Huai and Bu Lo entered Huai's private tent alone.

Two hours later, Huai emerged, covered in Bu Lo's blood. He said he had won the first two games, and Bu Lo took his own life in shame. As for why Huai was covered in Bu Lo's blood, he explained that Bu Lo was a “spurter” and left it at that. Inside the tent, Bu Lo was found, throat slashed with his own dagger. Huai then told the barbarians to go north and never trouble his people again. Many at the time suspected that the emperor was lying. That he had lost the best of three, and killed Bu Lo in a rage. Not that it would have mattered. Having killed the barbarians' leader, they saw Huai as their new leader, and did what he ordered. They went north, and barbarian raids didn't begin again until several centuries later.

Amazingly, the modern version of Chinese Checkers was developed independently. Though some say it still had some inspiration from the ancient form that was played by Huai and Bu Lo. That possible connection may be discussed in the future.

One of the most celebrated names in food history is George Washington Carver. His research into peanuts gave us such wonderful things as peanut butter, peanut oil, peanut bombs, et cetera. Due to this, there is a museum dedicated to him in his home state of Missouri called “The Peanut Gallery.” So with all this attention given to Carver, one would expect him to be the most prolific culinary inventor who specialized in one specific crop. Sadly, this is not the case. There is one other such inventor who is celebrated in song, but few know any details about him.

James Dean Carver, George Washington Carver's great-grandfather, was born into slavery in 1815. James was a sickly youth, though, and so not much use in the field, so he was sent into the kitchen to help the women. In James' teen years, he started to wonder why other foods were prepared in so many different ways, but the only way they prepared corn was by boiling it and eating the kernels straight off the cob. To James, this seemed like a terrible waste. There had to be more that could be done with the crop.

When James was 19, he asked his master to allow him to research corn, and see what other uses could be taken from it. Fortunately, James had an unusually open-minded master, so he was allowed to do his studies. The first setback to James' project was that his first creation had already been invented. In 1835, a year after he had started, James gave his master a bottle of a drink he appropriately called “Fire Water,” which turned out to be grain whiskey. His master took it jovially enough, and decided that, if James could come up with grain whiskey in one year, when it took decades for the colonists to make it, he could stand to keep working for a while longer.

James' next creation had for more reaching consequences. He thought of it when watching some of his fellow slaves baking bread. He tried to make a bread out of corn, and after several attempts created the basic corn tortilla. At first this idea didn't go over very well, as James expected it to be eaten like regular bread is, and James was made to go back to his old kitchen duties for some months. Then one of his fellow slaves decided to be adventurous, spreading his meal over the tortilla, accidentally creating the world's first taco. This other, unknown slave showed everyone his creation, and James was immediately reinstated as the resident corn researcher.

James' next creation was by far his most infamous, with even farther reaching and dire consequences than the tortilla. No one is quite sure how he thought of it, but one day James handed one of his fellow slaves a corn cob pipe, and asked him to smoke the contents. The slave almost immediately passed out. When explaining himself, James said that he had managed to process corn into a powerful narcotic. The method he altered the corn through to make it a drug at one point caused a great fissure in the corn, so, for lack of a better name, James called his new creation “crack corn.” This was the source of the traditional field working song “Jimmy crack corn and I don't care,” referring to the rush of lethargy given to anyone who smoked the crack corn. Despite his master's ordering James to bury the recipe, it was revived over a century later to process cocaine into crack cocaine. Sadly, with crack cocaine, the lethargy is replaced with hyperactivity, due to the differences between corn and cocaine.

Among James' other creations were creamed corn, corn starch, and corn flakes. He also created a short-lived battery made out of nothing but a cob of corn, but it needed to stay wet, and is therefore useless in almost all cases needing electricity. Strangely enough, James was not the only great pioneer of corn, but she'll have to wait for another article.

[Editor's note: This article is a satirical take on a very controversial subject. The author is of the opinion that if you aren't able to laugh in the face of even the worst circumstances, there is no point to living. This view is why he's going to be killed before he reaches middle age. So, if you are unable to laugh at dark humor, it would be best if you skipped this entry. You have been warned. Don't blame us if you get upset.]

John Keats was incorrect. The phrase “beauty is truth, truth beauty” is almost categorically wrong. The truth is ugly. History is almost always an agreed upon fiction to make those in power look better and the past less traumatic than it was. This is why so many people look at history books and wish they'd been born in another time. This is also true of more recent events, but to a lesser degree, due to it still being fresh in people's minds. This is usually referred to as “propaganda,” though some refer to it as “retcon,” based on the common fiction tool, most often used in comic books, where past events are changed to better suit the present. A recent example is when President Bush deftly swung from hunting Osama Bin Laden for the World Trade Center bombing to attacking Saddam Hussein for it. But often this tactic is done not to increase a person or ideal's public standing, but to sugar-coat the truth of some, making it more acceptable.

Such was the case of high school student Dylan Klebold. Chronically picked on by his fellow students, Klebold had just reached the age where he was going to fight back. He enrolled in a karate class, and before too long was able to best his bullies in violent confrontations. However, despite its intent, this tactic did not work as a deterrent for long. One day, when confidently walking home from school, Klebold saw some of his former tormentors using baseball bats on a punching bag. After staring in mixed wonder and horror for several minutes, one of them noticed him, gestured toward the punching bag with his bat, with a look that made it obvious this was practice to be used on Klebold in the near future, and hit the bag as hard as he could. Terrified, Klebold ran home as fast as he could, and feigned sickness for a week.

The next week, Klebold went back to school with a newfound confident attitude. That day, when it came lunch time, he took his food to an area of the grounds not typically observed by the teachers or security, knowing it would draw the bullies to him. When they arrived, brandishing their baseball bats, Klebold pulled out the reason for his newly acquired confidence: a butterfly knife. Flicking it open with one hand, he nonchalantly cut his food with it, feigning not having noticed the bullies gathering around him. Suddenly concerned with nothing but self preservation, the boys decided their baseball bats weren't enough to use against a boy armed with a knife he knew how to use. For a time, this seemed to be the end of it.

Months later, in late Winter, word got around the school that the gang of ruffians who had so terrorized Klebold had a new trick up their sleeves. They were all carrying switchblades, and some had practiced to be able to throw them with some measure of accuracy. Klebold, however, had prepared for this contingency, and within days it was well known among the students that Klebold was carrying a pair of foot-long daggers in his backpack. This was only slightly true, as Klebold had only brought them the first day, to avoid being expelled due to a teacher checking if the rumors were true. As planned, the bullies took it seriously, though.

In April, something happened that Klebold hadn't expected. The bullies who had been all but ignoring him in the past weeks surrounded him and revealed their latest ace: tasers. Klebold was sure he was going to die when, by pure chance, a teacher saw the group and came over to tell them to get to class. The teacher then saw the stun guns and took immediate action, confiscating the lot. However, this teacher was the forgiving sort, and let the tormentors off with the confiscation and several days of suspension. He then gave Klebold some words of assurance that the bullies would not threaten him again. Klebold wasn't so sure. He had been tormented all his life, and knew that a brief vacation from school wouldn't be enough punishment to get the bullies to leave him alone.

Over the next couple weeks, Klebold grew more and more concerned about the bullies' return. He was certain that as soon as they returned, they were going to come with greater arms than the tasers, and that he was going to die. The grief drove him mad. His society-hating friend Eric Harris' advice didn't help any. The day before the bullies' scheduled return, Klebold and Harris came up with a plan. During History class, they decided that the best way to keep the bullies from coming after Klebold was by launching a devastating first strike. And so, on April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed thirteen and injured twenty-four before committing suicide at Columbine High School.

Most people know of the short-term memory loss that can be caused by marijuana. Most also know that it can cause long-term memory loss, as well, though in smaller amounts. What isn't generally known is that almost everyone in the world suffered massive long-term memory loss due to marijuana just prior to March, 1965. I don't say February, 1965, because it wasn't. It was during the last of several forgotten years which took place between February and March 1965.

In late 1964, deep sea cartographers found small amounts of alien wreckage from Atlantis. Most of it was immediately taken by the CIA, but some was secretly kept by one of the cartographers and given to Frank Wilkins, an amateur inventor. By February 1965, Wilkins had used the versatile substance to invent a medicine that slowed aging to infinitesimal levels. Because Wilkins qualified as a mad genius, he used his various contacts to construct several generators of the medicine in inhaled gaseous form. He wasn't interested in getting FDA approval, and simply believed he knew what was best for people, so he set up these generators around the world, until the medicine had permeated the atmosphere.

One year after Wilkins had invented his miracle drug, the CIA realized it meant they couldn't keep the Atlantean technology secret, and released it to the general public. Once it was in the public's hands, one of the first creations, by a professor at MIT, was successful cold fusion. With the advent of clean, cheap power, other technological miracles started popping up. Ford Motor Company created the first wingless flying cars two years after the substance was made public. Genetic experiments also started in serious fashion, and a group at the University of Washington gave a group of gorillas greater mental and physical capabilities. Due to their newly heightened intelligence, the gorillas escaped, and became the Sasquatch of myth.

3 years after Wilkins made his life extending drug, it was an election year. Lyndon Johnson won over Richard Nixon with approximately 57% of the popular vote. The Vietnam War was still going, but wasn't as hot an issue as it would later become. In fact, a side effect of Wilkins' drug was that hostility was lessened, so the Vietnam War slowed to a crawl. This side effect is also why the USSR did not attack the USA for secretly having put some of the drug's generators inside their borders, even if it was private citizens who did that.

Unfortunately, the lessened aggression was not the only side effect of the drug. Another was noticed six years after it had been spread around the world, specifically that it brought fertility rates down to zero. Many groups the world over reacted with outrage when this was discovered, but Wilkins had already suffering from such dementia that he could no longer do anything about it. Worse still, he had left only minor notes, leaving most of his research in his own mind, so nobody was able to duplicate or alter his designs. Finally, one group decided to take matters into their own hands. Eight years after Wilkins' generators had been put into place, the group Humans Interested in Procreation created a biological weapon based on cannabis and the Atlantean material. This weapon was designed to destroy all of the Atlantean material it came into contact with, and thanks to technological advances in the past eight years, they were able to put it into a bomb that, when detonated, covered the whole planet with the weapon.

And so it did, on February 28th, eight years after aging had been made obsolete. However, as with so many other creations with the Atlantean material, this one had a side effect. Here, the side effect was massive long-term memory loss. Eight years of it, to be precise. The HIPies were affected the worst, being the closest to the blast. Some of them all but lost the ability to gain new memories, while others had complete personality shifts, and started buying condos and playing the stock market. However, the whole world was affected by the blast, and nobody remembered what had happened over the past eight years, but at the same time, due to the lack of aging, there wasn't much evidence that eight years had passed.

Ford's flying cars stopped flying without the Atlantean material, but still worked as regular cars, and became the classic Ford Mustang. Further, all cold fusion generators stopped working as anything more than paperweights. Physicists who were alive at the time have since had vague feelings that they've had cold fusion work before, which is why they keep trying at it. The only real records of the eight years are diaries and the like, almost all of which were collected by the CIA, KGB, MI5, and other intelligence agencies.

There is one invention created from the Atlantean material which works without the material, and still operates to this day. But that is a source of another article.

Most Historians will tell you that the longest time the United States has gone without a war is from 1918 to 1941, between the two World Wars. This is due to the largely successful attempts by the US government to destroy all records of the Vampire Wars, which raged over the Northeastern US from 1919 to 1932, and was one of the prime causes of the Great Depression.

Around 1850, Vampires were looking for a new place to congregate, as they had been chased out of their native Transylvania by irate villagers with pitchforks and torches. They migrated west, away from the sun, eventually ending up in England. There they laid low for years, getting a feel for the new area. However, like every oppressed minority, the Vampires wanted a bigger slice, and so grew hostile to their new, less pale neighbors. In 1988, they saw their chance to strike, with the Jack the Ripper murders, and started increasing their ranks and going on a feeding frenzy, by making them seem to be copycat murders.

It didn't take too long for British Intelligence to catch on to what was really happening, and so in 1890, sent covert troops undercover to root out the Vampires. The most successful of these troops was Major Abraham Stoker, who personally burned down the biggest Vampire den in Britain, causing the Vampires to flee farther west, to the United States. Stoker, however, was suspected of having been infected, and so was forced to retire, but due to his services, he was nonetheless given a pension capable of supporting him the rest of his life. In 1897, a year after having driven the Vampires out of England, Stoker published his fictionalized memiors under the title Dracula.

In late 1896, the Vampires arrived in the US, their numbers decidedly weakened by their troubles across the Atlantic. They decided to lay low and bring their numbers back up to their previous strength. They achieved this goal in 1913, and were planning to strike the next year, but then Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, provoking the first World War. Rather than get mixed up with that, the Vampire community decided to continue covertly increasing their numbers during the war. In 1918, when the war was over, the Vampires had nearly double the force they'd had when they tried to take over England. However, they'd learned from that attempt that it wasn't enough to randomly attack people in order to take over a country. They needed an actual plan of attack, so they plotted for months before finally making themselves known in March, 1919.

The Vampires' first act of war was a surgical strike which brought the city of Providence, Rhode Island completely under their control within a matter of hours. They quickly swept Northeast to Quincy, Massachusetts, and within a week had the easternmost extremity of the state in their hands. The US military had no chance to stop them, the Vampires moved so fast. So, they did the best they could under the circumstances, and set up barbed wire and machine gun nests along the newly created border. The Vampires told the United States that they simply wanted that small patch to call their own, and that they would trouble the US no longer, so long as the US did not try to take Massachusetts back. President Wilson agreed to the arrangement, but it was quickly clear that neither side was honest with the other in their intentions.

The Vampires decided to wait out the summer of 1919 and its lengthened days, so the US used the time to gather information on the Vampires. After a couple months of intense negotiations, Britain finally agreed to hand over the intelligence they'd gathered from their own Vampire attack, decades earlier. While most of the overall strategies to use were useless to the US, due to the completely different strategy employed by the Vampires this time, they did find two very useful pieces of information. First, what the Vampires weaknesses were. Sunlight, holy water, crosses, pitchforks, fire, destroying their hearts, beheading, etc. Secondly, they found how to lower the amount the Vampires' numbers increased by. Since drunks were such easy targets for the Vampires, the easiest way to slow their increase was to do away with alcohol. So Prohibition was signed into law, and the United States became a dry nation.

Once summer had passed, the Vampires were ready to go back on the offensive and sent a large force to Northern Maine and started conquering southward. Yes, their recruitment rate had been slowed, but their numbers were still great enough that they had all of Maine, and most of New Hampshire and Massachusetts in their grasp by the end of 1923. Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were evacuated, and the US military set up a line of defense on the New York border. From 1924 to 1928, neither side managed to get any headway against the other. They were locked in a stalemate, which, at the time, was just what the US wanted.

Both sides began to operate covertly during the stalemate. In 1924, the CIA launched several missions into Vampire country to capture specimens for research and training. Using these prisoners, the US managed to train the first Echo unit, formed to be the ultimate anti-Vampire fighting force. But, due to the rigorous training necessary, Echo would not be mobilized against the Vampires until 1928. In the meantime, the Vampires started attacking the New York Stock Exchange. Not physically, but through strategic buying and selling, set the Market up for the Great Crash of 1929, ushering the Great Depression. Shortly before the Crash, however, several Echo teams were sent into Vampire country to cause as much trouble as possible. Their efforts were successful, and the US managed to set up a new defensive line along the modern Interstate-91. In fact, much of I-91 was actually built on the ruins of this line.

But then in 1929, the Great Depression hit, and the US had to halt their offensive and deal with damage control back home. In a move that still baffles any who hear about it, the Vampires did not take military advantage of the sudden stop of the US forces. Instead, they simply sat back and basked in the devastation they'd brought the world economy. In 1931, the United States had gone through NYSE records enough to realize that the Crash had been orchestrated by the Vampires, and so renewed their offensive with even greater vigor. Such that by Summer of 1932, there were not more than a dozen Vampires still living in the New England area.

With the war over, Prohibition was repealed in 1933. The government then did its best to destroy any records of the Vampire War that had raged on for over a decade. However, they still kept a well-trained Echo team on hand, which turned out to be fortunate years later when there was a demon infestation in the Midwest. But that's a story for another time.

We've all heard some “crackpot” theory about the truth behind some historical tale. The idea that Atlantis had discovered nuclear fission, and destroyed themselves through an atomic mishap, for example. Or that the Pyramids in Egypt and Mexico were actually built by aliens. Or even that the ancient Gods were actually Superman-like aliens themselves. Historians tend to scoff at these ideas, however, claiming that “true” historians don't delve into the realm of science fiction. Well, the thing about these theories is that they're mostly true. Historians tend to suffer from Wikiality, in that enough of them scoffing an idea buries it it phlegm, so nobody will want to touch it due to the risk of getting covered in slime.

The Pyramids were not built by aliens, in the strictest sense. In actuality, they installed governments were there was one supreme ruler revered as a God, and about 90% of the population was little better than slaves. They then ordered the slave population to build 3 Pyramids in the general shape of Orion's Belt. Immediately after the Pyramids were built, the aliens left, letting mankind work out the purpose of the structures for ourselves. The actual reason for them was marking of territory; the alien equivalent to sticking a flag in the ground. If another alien race scans Earth, it will find a set of Pyramids set to Orion, and, depending on their temperment, either leave to find an unclaimed world, or paint faces on nearby planets as a challenge equal to slapping someone across the face with a glove.

Earth, however, was a special case, in that 3 separate alien races tried to claim it practically all at once. The first race landed in Egypt, and immediately set to work on changing the peaceful agrarian people into a slavish working race. Shortly after they'd arrived, another race scanned for Pyramids, but didn't find any. So, they landed in Mexico and started setting up their own work force. It didn't take long before the two noticed each other. From there it was a race to see which of them would finish their Pyramids first. The Egyptians succeeded, but that didn't stop the Mexicans from finishing later.

As luck would have it, just as the Mexican aliens had finished their Pyramids and were preparing for war with the Egyptian aliens, a third set arrived on the scene. They saw the two recently completed sets of Pyramids, and realized it was a unique opportunity. They created the famous Face on Mars, and then created a colony in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, taking their pick of those humans not in the vicinities of either Egypt or Mexico. Mostly the colony was populated by Asians. The Atlantic aliens told the Egyptians and Mexicans that they were not there as a threat, but were simply attempting a genetic experiment, and indeed the humans they had picked fit that description. When asked about the Face, they said it was simply there for tradition's sake, and was not really a declaration of war. The Mexicans and Egyptians bought it, and continued their war against each other, but kept a wary eye on their Atlantic neighbors.

The close eye was soon revealed to be justified, as the aliens soon noticed radiation emissions coming from Atlantis that were far above normal. They quickly surmised that the third set of aliens had given their colony fission, and put aside their differences temporarily to launch an attack from both sides upon the Atlanteans. In fact, the aliens had given Atlantis cold fusion, in a hastily conceived plan to get genetically-altered humans to fight the Egyptian and Mexican aliens for them. Unfortunately, human genetic data at the time was not sufficiently advanced to meet the power of any space faring race. Most aliens that have met with any sort of success in the Galactic scene have been warrior races, and so have evolved to the warrior ideal: incredibly strong, unbelievably fast, and all but impervious to unarmed combat. Humans, no matter how much their DNA had been toyed with, were just not up to the challenge. However, the modified humans did work well enough to force the Egyptian and Mexican aliens to bring their entire forces into the conflict, so when someone hit the metaphorical red button, all the aliens on Earth were within the blast radius. The flash was large and bright enough that people thousands of miles away saw it.

Normally, a nuclear blast of that size would mean that Earth would still be irradiated, but two important things stopped that from being the case. First, it was an explosion powered by cold fusion, which has much lower radiation levels than regular fusion, to the point that within a couple thousand years the radiation would have faded to unnoticible levels. Secondly, the spaceships that were destroyed by the blast were powered by microsingularities; black holes the size of an atom. When the ships were destroyed, these microsingularities immediately consumed all the radioactive particles in the area. They did not destroy the earth, however, because, being the size of an atom, they were not as all-consuming as natural black holes. Once they were full, they disappeared with a small hiss.

You may, humble reader, wonder how I could know of these events, if it all ended with an all-destroying explosion. I know this because there were Atlantean survivors. But that story will have to wait.

Recently, the BBC History Magazine held a poll, which named Jack the Ripper as the worst Briton in history, despite the fact that so little is generally known about him. For one thing, the name “Jack the Ripper” came from letters sent to the police around the time of the murders, the vast majority of which were hoaxes sent in by London citizens with too much free time on their hands. The kind of people who find it amusing to send letters to the police, claiming to be notorious serial killers. Due in large part to their efforts, as well as several copycat killers, finding factual information on Jack is next to impossible. But, here's the best I've been able to piece together in my research.

First off, his real name wasn't Jack. In actuality, it was Malcolm. His last name is still unknown to me. The entire point of his murderous spree was to “put his name down in history.” That was the sole consideration behind his choice of victims. Mary Nichols, Anne Chapman, Liz Stride, Catherine Eddows, and Mary Jane Kelly. Taking their first names in order, their initials spell “MALCM.” Malcolm had actually planned an Olivia followed by another Liz before killing his final target of Ms Kelly. To explain why he specifically wanted to kill Ms Kelly, we need to look at his life.

Malcolm was a student of history, and he noted time and time again how people who seemingly didn't deserve it were remembered for generations. He also noticed how there are only a few dozen people remembered by history each generation. Looking at his life, Malcolm realized that he wouldn't be one of those few dozen. He was also angry and envious over the fame that belonged to someone he knew, ironically named “Jack,” most likely a brother or other relative who was a marginally well known athlete at the time. Mary Jane Kelly was a prostitute Jack frequented. This is known because of the one letter actually sent by Malcolm to the police. It was sent to the London police after Mary Nichols' death had already been announced.

“I have seen who people dote on, gentlemen, and I don't like it. People are revered as gods simply for their running speed and skill with a child's toy. I have read history as well, and found that public opinion is similarly skewed in favor of those in who were simply in the right place at the right time. Well, gentlemen, I intend to change that. I am going to write my name in the pages of the obituaries. You already know of my first victim, but she will not be my last. I may be forgotten in a number of years, but I swear I will be remembered long past that thick-skulled moron Jack, but his whore Mary Kelly will be my M.”

I corrected several spelling and grammatical mistakes. Malcolm may have been a historical student, but his capture of English was sub-par at best. It's unknown why Malcolm killed Ms Kelly before his O or L, but the best guess is that he was spooked. He had killed both Liz Stride and Catherine Eddows on the same day, September 30th, 1888, and wasn't sure he was going to be able to find an O or another L before he got taken by the police. So, Malcolm did the next best thing. He took the fact that very few people actually pronounced the second syllable of his name, and effectively replaced the O and L with an apostrophe, and only phonetically spelling his name in the obituaries.

Malcolm would likely have started on his last name, whatever that may have been, but he was nabbed by Corporal Benjamin Pierce when trying to kill his next victim, Annie Farmer. However, he was released when authorities decided that Farmer's wounds were self inflicted, despite Pierce's claims that he'd seen Malcolm attack her in person. After that, no mention of either one can be found anywhere.

This wasn't the only time a notorious serial killer was popularly known by a false name he didn't choose. But that's not this story.

Those who paid even peripheral attention to the 2000 US Presidential election should remember the PR nightmare that was Al Gore's claim to have had a hand in the creation of the Internet (often misconstrued as having said he invented it). The reason this point was so obsessed over by George W. Bush's advertising campaign was because of a misconception regarding what Gore meant by this statement, beyond even the idea of having invented the Internet. In actuality, he had been referring to something different, called the “Infonet,” but the Bush campaign machine thought he had been talking about still another creation, call the “Interweb.”

In 1969, Gore was in the army, training to become a field reporter. Once he got to Vietnam in 1970, he found himself stationed in Saigon, due to his family connections, but still getting orders to take photos of things going on miles away. So, for the next year, he set up a series of hollow fiber-optic cables. Fiber-optic tubes, if you will. The reason for them to be hollow was to set up mirrors to direct the camera's gaze to wherever needed to be photographed. As other field reporters asked Gore to let them use his series of tubes, he added to it, until it was a vast net, crisscrossing most of South Vietnam. Eventually, in order to control all the mirrors, an entire office had to be converted into a control station, vaguely resembling telephone switchboards of old. In 1972, Gore felt he had completed what he was needed for in Vietnam, and requested an early discharge. Given his contribution to field reporting, it was granted as a reward. Sadly, when the North Vietnamese stormed Saigon, one of the first things they did upon reunification was tearing up the Infonet, finishing that even before renaming Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City. That's actually what Gore was referring to having created.

Bush's advertising campaign, on the other hand, thought that he was referring to something George H.W. Bush had made for Operation Desert Shield. What Bush designed for the army to construct was a vast array of super-magnets, spanning Iraq's border, keeping their tanks from leaving Iraqi soil. The theory being that if the tanks tried to exit Iraq, they would get stuck on the magnetic border, and be unable to move. While his design worked in theory, in practice, the “Interweb,” as Bush called it, wouldn't stay down, and would, instead, lift up to meet the tanks, snapping as it went, letting the tanks through, with only some minor extra mass. After being implemented in September, 1990, the Interweb was repaired and reconfigured 5 times before it was finally scrapped in January, 1991, and Operation Desert Storm began instead. The military collected all the pieces of the Interweb, and took them back to the US. Nobody knows for sure what was done with them, but it's rumored that they were turned into magnetic parts for a fleet of dumptrucks.

In 1999, when Al Gore famously claimed to have created the Internet, he was really referring to his Infonet in Vietnam, but online pundits immediately believed he was talking about their Internet, which was mainly used for nonsensical conversations on various Instant Messenger programs, and self centered whining on several web journal sites. Adding fuel to the fire was the Bush campaign's misconception that Gore was talking about the Interweb. After a month or two, both sides realized their mistakes, but were too stubborn to admit to them, and instead just kept up the attacks.

George W. Bush has, on occasion, referred to something called the “Internets,” but that is something entirely different. Specifically what may be gone into in the future.

Everyone has heard the myth of George Washington's wooden teeth. For that matter, everyone has heard the myth of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, but it's his teeth that are going to be talked about now. While everyone has heard that George Washington had wooden teeth, nobody has heard anything beyond that. Simply that he had wooden teeth. The end. This myth was generated in battle, when one of Washington's soldiers saw Washington's teeth splinter. No accounts, however, have been made toward Washington's teeth having an odd color, as they would if they were wood. In fact, Washington's teeth were made of ivory. White-ish in color and splinters like wood. How Washington lost his teeth, now that's a story in itself.

As with most youths of the time, Washington joined the military. His ambition led him to rank as highly as possible, so he joined the British organization MI2, a precursor to the current MI5. He was the first American-born member of the British Secret Service. Despite being a secret agent, he was often used as a public face. For example, in history books he's credited with helping to spark the French and Indian War. This is true, though, despite what the history books say, he did so without firing a shot. In 1753, Washington was sent into French Ohio on reconnaissance. The British had heard the French were building some sort of super weapon there, so Washington was sent in to ascertain the truth, and, if necessary, destroy the weapon. In fact, the French were following Leonardo Da Vinci's blueprints for the machine gun. At the time, such a weapon would have been absolutely devastating on the battlefield.

Washington's mission was almost complete when he was captured by the French in the middle of planting gunpowder all over the factory they were building the machine guns in. They employed several types of torture in their attempts to interrogate him, one of which was slowly pulling out each of his teeth. The French kept Washington there for a year, interrogating him as much as they could. Unfortunately for them, the British didn't inform their American agents nearly as well as they did their British agents. Apart from the few missions he had been sent on up to that point, Washington was unable to tell the French anything about British plans. It's not known why the French didn't kill him. The prominent theory is that they were planning to use him against the British. Perhaps, in the long run, they succeeded.

Over that year, Washington's will was almost completely broken. Finally, something happened. Nobody knows what. But something got Washington back onto his feet. He managed to escape from the guards, plant more gunpowder charges, and then used a secret, new French invention, which wouldn't be made public for over half a century, to blow up the factory: the match. In 1754, he finally made it back to Virginia, and rallied troops to build Fort Necessity to ward off the imminent attack by the French. The fort was unsuccessful. The French recaptured Washington as well as his troops, and forced Washington to sign a confession to having destroyed the Jumonville factory. This confession sparked the Seven Years War in Europe.

Within months, Washington was released by the French. This, too, has baffled historians, and only serves as further evidence that he was turned into a sleeper agent against the British, whose commands weren't activated until it was too late for the French to capitalize on it. In any case, after getting released, Washington retired from the Secret Service, as well as from the military in general. As a resignation gift, he was given his famous ivory teeth by fellow American MI2 agent Benjamin Franklin. Washington worked his plantation until he was eventually brought back into service to fight against the British in the American Revolution.

The cherry tree myth was also inspired by a covert operation of Washington's, but that story can wait for now.

It's been pointed out by conspiracy theorists for at least two hundred years that all of the men referred to as America's “Founding Fathers” were members of the enigmatic Masonic Order. Washington D.C. was designed around specific Masonic patterns and symbols. The White House, for instance, is at one point of a pentagram of streets. It's been suggested that the United States is nothing but a Masonic experiment, or a Masonic conspiracy, even. While this may have been true two hundred years ago, control of the United States government has switched hands to several other secret organizations over the years.

After the War of 1812, James Madison was replaced by James Monroe. Madison had been a Freemason, but Monroe was one of the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar, like the Freemasons, were established during the middle ages, specifically during the Crusades. The order was originally created to find and protect the Holy Grail. This was used as a large part of the plot of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. They had not found the Grail yet, so the Knights put one of their own into the top position in the nation that, in their minds, had proven itself against the most powerful Navy in the world at the time. The Freemasons had at that point moved on, presuming that their machinations of the United States would continue on as planned, even without their guidance. Instead, the Masonic Order moved west with Joseph Smith Jr., and founded the Church of Latter Day Saints, or Mormonism.

After only one term, the Knights Templar lost their seat in the White House. Not because James Monroe was voted out, but because he switched allegiances to the Knights of the Garter. The Knights of the Garter were and are more powerful in Europe than they have been in the Western Hemisphere. One could presume they pulled Monroe in in order to have a solid foothold in the western half of the world, after the States had proven itself against England a second time. The Knights of the Garter held onto the presidency for the next fifty-six years until 1877 with only two brief lapses. The first was William Henry Harrison, who was not affiliated with any conspiratorial body. His presidency ended when he died one month after getting elected. The second was Abraham Lincoln, whose only secret organization was his weekly Biritch Club meetings. Biritch, incidentally, would later evolve into the card game Bridge. After Lincoln was disposed of, the Knights of the Garter only kept hold on the White House for another twelve years.

In 1877, Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the first member of the Skull and Bones society to be elected president. The Knights of the Garter, oddly, never did anything with their foothold in the Western Hemisphere, so when they lost the presidency it was mostly over. The Skull and Bones society, however, was only forty-five years old when Hayes was elected; far too young to be powerful yet. In 1881, James Abram Garfield was elected as the last Knight Templar to be president. However, he didn't even last a year before getting assassinated, and replaced by Chester Alan Arthur, a Freemason. Having successfully established their religion in Utah, the Masonic Order was back and ready to control the country again. For the next six presidents, the Freemasons and the Skull and Bones society were in a veritable cockfight, practically swapping the White House back and forth every four years.

This ended with Woodrow Wilson, who was a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. After Wilson, the next five presidents were either members of the Skull and Bones, or they died in office. Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to be a member of no group other than the Bohemian Club, established in 1872. Next was John Kennedy, who hadn't learned the lesson of William Henry Harrison, and was not a member of any secret organization. In fact, he threatened to expose those he found out about. After he had been dealt with, Lyndon Johnson entered office. Johnson was only an apprentice Mason, so he did not have the contacts or knowhow to fight off the political attacks from the Bohemian Club and Skull and Bones society, and so had to resign in disgrace in 1969.

Next was Richard Nixon of the Bohemian Club. Following Nixon was Gerald Ford, also of the Bohemian Club, but the Freemasons, noticing the significant lack of successful Masonic presidents over the past several decades, gave Ford an honorary position in the Masons. They repeated this tactic for almost all of the following presidents. James Carter, however, was a member of no organization other than the Peanut Farmer's Association. The Bohemian Club used their contacts in Iran to create the hostage scandal that caused Carter to lose his reelection bid to their candidate, Ronald Reagan. The Skull and Bones society used their own contacts in Iran, as well as Nicaragua to fabricate the Iran Contra affair, but found that Reagan, as an actor, was too popular to be deposed that easily. So, they simply waited until Reagan was out of office, and installed George H.W. Bush, the first president to be a member of both the Skull and Bones and the Bohemian Club since Herbert Hoover.

The Masons, in their last gasp, managed to get Bill Clinton elected, but the now almost merged Bohemian Club and Skull and Bones societies quickly fired back, smearing Clinton with as many scandals as they could dig up or create. Despite the fact that they managed to get him impeached, the Skull and Bohemian Club never managed to get Clinton voted out. So once again, they waited, and once Clinton was out of office, they made his vice-president out to be completely lacking in personality, and through that reasoning managed to get George W. Bush elected.

During Bush's second year, his benefactors put into motion efforts to have Congress remove the two term limit they instilled on the presidency after Franklin Roosevelt's four term run, so Bush could be kept in office as long as possible. At the same time, the Bohemian Club has been working, seemingly without the Skull and Bones society's notice, to remove the requirement that the president must be a natural-born citizen of the United States. This is so they can put Arnold Schwarzenegger into the White House come 2009.

Who will end up winning? We'll just have to wait and see.

One problem with historical biographies is that they rarely give the motivations of the person being biographied. For example, how many people know that Adolf Hitler's real reason for trying to take over the world, as well as all those book and art burnings, was to make art historians the world over list him as the greatest artist of his time, and later, as his demensia increased toward the end of the war, the greatest artist ever. Art history books were the main target of Hitler's burning wrath, but few people remember that, due to the media sensationalizing the burning of bibles and the like. His supposed interest in the occult, as well, was just him searching out pieces of art from ages long gone by, but again the media sensationalized that which would make Hitler look worse in the eyes of the superstitious public. Stealing priceless artifacts was one thing. Every major player in World War II was doing that. But make him out to be some sort of warlock, and there would still be people calling for him to be burned at the stake.

Attila the Hun is another good example of history having the facts distorted due to not understanding his motivation. Most people think that Attila was trying to prove some point or other by stomping across Europe on his way to Rome. This is very much not the case. When Attila was growing up, his tribe typically raided near a particular lemon grove, and so Attila grew quite the fondness for the sour taste of lemons. But before too long, they had to move. Once Attila was big enough to go off on his own, it had been too long, and he couldn't find this grove again. Once Attila was ruler of the Huns, he sent them into battle against anyone likely to have a good lemon grove, but their fruit never tasted quite the same as that original grove's. Then one day in 452, Attila heard a rumor that Pope Leo I's lemons were the best in the world, and history was written.

That year and the next, Attila cut a swath through Europe on his way to this goal. On his way there, he grew fed up with “inferior” fruits like apples and figs, and even got so angry as to raze Aquileia to the ground. However, Pope Leo I had heard of the invasion, and the reason. He arranged to meet with Attila on the Po River, the northern border of the Western Roman Empire at that point. With him, the Pope brought a basket of his private lemons. Few people now know what Attila and the Pope talked about when they met. Leo told Attila that if he conquered through Italy, he would only suffer, because there were no lemons of decent quality north of the Vatican, and offered one of the ones he had brought with him. Attila tasted it, and still he was not satisfied; still he did not deem it as good as the lemons of his youth. He took the Pope at his word that it would be a wasted trip, and immediately turned his armies back to their home up north. The great king of the Huns rode away from the encounter with a single tear glistening on his cheek.

When he returned to his palace, he threw a celebration to the fact that he had cultivated over the years the best lemon grove in Europe. That night, he died in his sleep of a nosebleed, aggravated by early symptoms of scurvy, due to the lack of lemons he'd planned to eat on the way to Rome. It was an ironic end for one who had won a decisive battle by teaching his troops to yell in Latin, while charging onto the field of battle, swords raised, frothing at the mouth, “Don't hurt me, I'm a bleeder.” In this battle, Attila had won by causing the Roman troops to hesitate just long enough to be overwhelmed.

Attila was not the only warrior who conquered everything in his path in the name of a fruit. But that's a story for another time.

From about 1850 to 1875, it seemed that everyone in the inventor's community was trying to create the same thing: the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell was not the only one. There was also Charles Bourseul, Johann Philipp Reis, Elisha Gray, and even Thomas Edison. That Alexander Graham Bell is famous for the invention is simply a matter of luck, and it could just as easily have been someone else. The vast majority of them worked alone, or with assistants. However, two of them, Antonio Meucci and Innocenzo Manzetti, attempted to create something in this time that would surpass even the telephone.

After Manzetti created the “speaking telegraph” in 1864, Meucci wrote him in the newspaper, asking for a collaboration. While the suggestion was not publicly responded to, they started work together in secret. They had several ideas that they scrapped. A large box with only one opening, which people could enter to use a telephone, which they called the “cell phone.” Next was the “automated secretary;” a device that would record incoming calls on a wax cylander if one was unable to answer the phone. Their greatest invention, however, was finalized in March, 1876. It was a system that used telegraph wires to send signals between two sets of typewriters. Each person would have a set of two typewriters. He would type on the primary of the two, and the message would be sent across the telegraph wires to the secondary typewriter on the recipient's machine, typing out exactly what had been sent. The first message was sent on March 15, 1876, from Meucci to Manzetti. The message read “Manzetti, my friend. We have done it.” In a fit of peak upon receiving the message, Manzetti slapped his typewriter, so the second message was “omgasl.”

For the next week, the two inventors wracked their brains trying to think of a name for their creation. Nothing seemed to fit. “Telegraph” was already taken. “Teletype” seemed too silly. Manzetti jokingly suggested “automated typing machine” or “ATM” for short. That started them on a series of joke names that didn't end until Meucci thought of not trying to make a name that makes sense for the device, and instead only make a name that would be popularly remembered. Eventually, they settled on using a combination of their initials. Since they both had the same last initial, they combined that into one, and put their initials in alphabetical order. The result was the name that stuck: “A.I.M.” alternately meaning “Antonio and Innocenzo's Messager.”

They got a patent for the device on March 22, 1876, and tried to stir up public attention. Unfortunately for the inventors, news of their creation was drowned out by public celebration of Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone. Try as they might, they couldn't get anyone excited over A.I.M. Their marketing attempts didn't help their cause much, with silly catchphrases like “So easy to use, no wonder it'll be number one!” The worst thing about A.I.M. was the price. The machine cost hundreds of dollars, and required putting in wiring connecting all the houses that had one in them. So the best place for them would be large, public areas, where anyone could use them. But then again arose a problem, in that you'd never know who was available to talk to if you went to the machine. Eventually, Meucci and Manzetti admitted defeat, and reconfigured A.I.M. to be smaller, and once send select information. In this way, it became a hit with the rich as the “stock ticker.”

This was not the only important device created by Meucci and Manzetti's collaboration. Perhaps we'll learn of more, later.

It's a well documented fact that in the Philippines, a weapon similar to the yo-yo was used as a hunting weapon, though the toy we all know and love was developed independently in Greece. You see, the weapon was developed by some unnamed Filipino, who saw people throwing rocks at their prey, and thought "That's a good idea, but it's really a shame when you find or make a good rock and you just throw it away. If only there was some method of retrieval." And so, the weapon form of the yo-yo was born. The toy, on the other hand, was developed by someone in Greece playing with a ball by throwing it at the ground and expecting it to come back up. The super ball, however, would not be invented for almost another 2500 years. Indeed, the rubber necessary for the super ball wouldn't be discovered by westerners for almost two millennia. So, the inconvenienced youth did the next best thing; he tied a string to his ball. He originally called his contraption the "Ha! Gotcha now, bitch!" but the term "yo-yo" would come to achieve greater acceptance.

The pogo stick had a similar, but different history. While the yo-yo's weapon version was first cataloged by western observers over 2000 years after the Greeks had developed the toy, the pogo stick was developed as a hunting weapon almost 1500 years before the toy was invented by George "Pogo" Hansburg in 1820. Archaeologists have found low-tech pogo sticks dating back as far as AD 400 in French Polynesia. They resemble very strong bows, with poles, sometimes spears, attached. The point was more or less for the rider to use a tree or wall to suddenly propel himself toward his intended target. The earliest versions are nothing more than over-sized bows meant for launching a single hunter. However, these were modified, because they took two to four hunters in addition to the one being launched, and did not have a good deal of accuracy. So, they made them a single-person tool. They weren't any more accurate, but with 3 to 5 times as many people being launched, there was a higher expectancy to get a successful hit. The versions with attached spears were with the idea that the pogo stick might strike the target, but it was found that more often than not the hunter would impale himself, rather than the animal he was hunting. So a safer, blunt stick was chosen instead of the spear.

Pogo sticks as a weapon died off at some point in the 700s. Not only were they highly inaccurate and prone to causing injury to the rider, but the usefulness of each one was at most 3 or 4 bounces before they lost their spring. But what was really the final nail in the pogo stick's coffin was that someone thought to shoot the stick, rather than the person. It was more accurate, could be used more times, and caused less personal injury. For over a millennium, the pogo stick was a forgotten relic, until George Hansburg brought back the device, and had it marketed toward children.

Ironically, George Hansburg's nickname, "Pogo" was not in relation to creating the pogo stick. But that's a story for another time.