“You can’t change the past, but with Mass Historia, Chris Regan has done a very fine job of making fun of it”—Stephen Colbert

“For my money, Chris Regan is America’s funniest craftsman of funny sentences, sentences which start off interesting and amusing, coax laughs with pitch-perfect, snarky descriptors along the way, and then suddenly SLAM you with an unexpected, truly hilarious punch.”—Adam Felber, author of Schrodinger’s Ball and writer, “Real Time with Bill Maher”

“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it. And only a greatly funny man like Chris Regan can make it worth reading. Sorry Thucydides, but you can suck it.”—Mo Rocca, commentator, “CBS Sunday Morning” and NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me.”

“Informative and funny. It takes a sharp wit to turn ‘March 14th’ and ‘Einstein’s brain chunks’ into hilarity.”—Spike Feresten, host, “Talkshow with Spike Feresten” and writer, “Seinfeld”

“Mass Historia is one-eleventh the length of Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization with six times as many laughs. Maybe even seven times as many! There is no one I know who understands the weave and weft of the grand tapestry called history like Chris Regan does. That said, I’m really glad he wasted all that knowledge on this book, because it’s hilarious.”—Eric Drysdale, writer, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report

“Hilarious! Chris Regan is one of the smartest, funniest writers around, and Mass Historia is almost big enough to hold everything in that giant brain of his. Buy this book, read it, laugh your ass off, then take it back to your old high school and use it to smack your history teacher across the jaw.”—Bob Powers, author of You Are A Miserable Excuse for a Hero and Happy Cruelty Day.

Regan’s view of history is smart, pointed, frequently not PC but always entertaining. Think History Channel crossed with equal portions South Park and Robot Chicken and you get the general idea.—Sandy Amazeen, monstersandcritics.com

“Mass Historia (is) utterly ridiculous…a fun mix of history, humor.”—The Oklahoman Newspaper

“…an irreverent, highly entertaining book…”Mass Historia” is lively, laugh out loud funny and guaranteed to entertain.” The Tuscon Citizen

Also buy it at Barnes & Noble!

On this day, the man who invented the instrument you picked up for a few weeks in middle school because you liked the way Bruce Willis scatted with it in that wine cooler commercial, was born.  He was a Belgian named Adolph Sax, and he invented the saxophone.

Sax’s father was an instrument maker, and had 11 children, so it is obvious what the elder Sax’s favorite instrument was.  His oldest, Adolph, began working for his father at an early age, inventing a bass clarinet when he was 20 years old, or two years older than most people are when they stop playing the bass clarinet, vowing to leave their “nerdom” behind forever in high school.

Sax seems to have been a sort of antagonistic, tortured fellow (as opposed to noted Saxman Kenny G, who antagonizes others to the point of torture) and lived a life of poverty in Paris while working on his saxophone, which he eventually patented in 1846.  It combined the single reed of the clarinet with the bore and fingering patterns of the oboe, producing a sound all its own, but with a name that lends itself to sex puns and therefore seems somewhat cooler.  (See sexy saxophonist Candy Dulfer’s 1990 album “Saxuality.”  It’s probably sitting in a 99 cent bin somewhere.)

Also Born On This Date:

November 6th, 1948: Eagle and rocker Glen Frey born, whose 1984 song, “The Heat is On,” is enough to make you hate Adolph Sax and his stupid invention forever.

The American radio listening public, people who had been previously duped into believing that Edgar Bergen was actually doing “ventriloquism” while on the “radio,” were fooled on this date in 1938 into believing that Martians were attacking New Jersey and New York.

DJ Spooky

Nearly a million and a half people went into a panic over Orson Welles and the Mercury Radio Theater’s documentary-style production of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds.  And by a “million and a half people,” we mean “folks in the vicinity of New York and New Jersey.”  Like on September 11th, the rest of the country at the time just planted a flag on their front lawn while secretly believing the attack was God’s payback for all the homo stuff.

Welles and company told the story as a series of fake news reports interrupting a supposed live musical broadcast from New York City.  (Nowadays, “fake news” is an effective comedic tool, although newspaper columnists can really take the fun out of it with their endless “Where Young People Get Their News” articles.)

Listeners tuning in heard that aliens had landed in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.  The creatures then realized the small township was too close to Trenton, so they decided to head to the safer environs of Manhattan, where they unleashed a poison gas attack, much like the one Welles unleashed on Los Angeles in the 1970s after a late-night binge visit to Pink’s hot dog stand.

Midget Racing Away

A month earlier, Napoleon and an army of 700,000 had reached Moscow, hoping to stock up on supplies, but the entire city was deserted.  (They were, however, able to pick up a bunch of those little nesting dolls to give to their family and friends back home, along with the explanation that “those big fuzzy hats were too expensive.”  Their friends and family would try and hide their disappointment.  They would fail.)

Instead of engaging Napoleon’s forces, the Russian army kept retreating yet not surrendering.  (Note: If you ever date a 19th Century Russian Army, you will be the one who has to initiate the break up.)  Napoleon never got his surrender, but with the harsh Russian winter approaching, and his troops starving (in the French army, starving = forgoing the cheese course), Napoleon began his retreat.

The Russian army then began to mercilessly attack the French from the rear (Nope—we ran out of clever with “Nyet Shorty”), and by the time the Emperor made it back to France two months later, he was down 400,000 soldiers.  Thankfully, the gravity of this tragedy could not be fully pondered because the French had not manufactured their first Existentialist.

The mansion was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban, which explained the original’s Stout and Spirits Chamber, which vanished once outgoing President and dipsomaniac Franklin Pierce sealed himself up inside of it. In 1800, President John Adams and his wife Abigail were its first residents, but they lived there less than a year before Thomas Jefferson moved in.  And as a widower, he promptly set about leaving his clothes all over the floor and piling up Racing Forms.

Here are other White House Fun facts:
•    During the War of 1812, British troops set fire to the White House in an attempt to do something that would make people remember the War of 1812.  It didn’t work.
•    Grover Cleveland stopped the tradition of opening the house on inauguration day, and it wasn’t until 1993 that the Clintons invited in 2,000 citizens who had been chosen by lottery.  A lottery of girls ages 16-21.
•    Woodrow Wilson kept a flock of sheep on the White House grounds as a way to support the war effort.  The animals saved manpower by keeping the lawn short and raised over 50 thousand dollars for the Red Cross when their wool was auctioned off.  This was similar to President Bush’s symbolic war effort gesture, when he kept a yellow Support Our Troops humvee idling in the driveway while a Lee Greenwood cassette played nearby on a coal-powered boombox.

[NOTE: While this website usually features brand new original material, this entry is taken from Mass Historia: 365 Days of Historical Facts and (Mostly) Fictions. Go out and buy it now!]

The purpose of the office was to “coordinate the executive branch’s efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States,” which is all fancy talk for “actually read the memos that warn ‘Bin Laden poised to strike within the U.S.’ before going on extended Crawford brush-clearing vacation.”

Orange You Glad These Guys Are Now Powerless?

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge was appointed to the position as director of Homeland Security, provided he stop hiding dead mice in his overalls and quite asking the President to tell the story about how they were both “going to raise rabbits and live off the fat of the land.” (NOTE: He is a big, slow-talking lummox.)

The first thing the Office did was institute the Homeland Security Color-Coded Advisory System, which has been frozen at “Orange,” except in instances when there was a high level of “chatter”…about an upcoming election against a Democrat who seemed weak on national security.

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]]> http://www.masshistoria.net/?feed=rss2&p=348 http://www.masshistoria.net/?p=345 http://www.masshistoria.net/?p=345#comments Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:27:00 +0000 admin http://www.masshistoria.net/?p=345 On this day in history, 62-year-old President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke and is completely incapacitated. Oh—and he was a full decade younger than current Presidential candidate John McCain is now. Just sayin’.

Since Alaska had not yet been invented and was unable to produce any over-qualified Vice Presidential candidates, Wilson’s wife Edith stepped in and took control of the situation.

The President and Her Husband

Wilson, a Democrat, had been aggressively promoting the League of Nations and Edith felt the vehement Republican opposition had led to his health problems. (NOTE: This famous opposition is why UN hater John Bolton still wears a “1919 tribute mustache.”) She refused to let anyone see him and personally screened, and sometimes signed, all of his paperwork.

This behavior, combined with her philanthropic efforts to the “Just Say ‘No Thank You’ to The Chinaman’s Opiates” program, made her the Nancy Reagan of her day.

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Crapper did not invent the toilet, but was a savvy businessman who helped increase the device’s popularity. And no, the phrase “take a crap” does not come from his last name. Today, Mass Historia shatters more toilet fantasies than an undercover Minneapolis policeman!

In the 1880s, Crapper was hired by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, to install 30 lavatories at his country home in Norfolk. (This was back in the days when the British Royal Family believed that some aspects of their personal lives should remain private). This commission made Crapper a very wealthy man, although this business transaction was not the genesis for the term, “Royal Flush.”

Crapper: De-Throned As Toilet Inventor

CONGRATS to long-time Mass Historia fan Cooper for our caption. Another contest next week!

Four unidentified bodies had been transported to the town from cemeteries near the battlegrounds of Aisne-Marne, Somme, Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel, where over 77 thousand Americans experienced the kind of treatment that American tourists would one day experience if they didn’t at least first try to order off the menu in French.

The bodies lay in state at the town’s Hotel de Ville, proof that decent convention business for hotels in the region had still not rebounded after the war. Each casket was draped with an American flag, and a Sergeant Edward Younger was given the task of making the selection. Locals for years afterwards assumed that “Eeenie Meenie Miney Mo” was a traditional American prayer.

Bearing the inscription “An Unknown American who gave his life in the World War,” the casket was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C., which for the past eight years has been ruled by a man listed as “Unknown Soldier” in the 1972-1973 Texas Air National Guard Attendance Records.

I’m Outta Here!

Americans were shocked that Washington was stepping down from his position. In those days it was rare a national leader would ever relinquish a title, although in 1795, a Governor from the Florida Territories resigned after messaging smutty scrolls to underage Capitol pageboys.

Many in America thought Washington would serve for life, but he had been beaten down and jaded by political in-fighting, was old, and in declining health. (This was back in the days before the word “Maverick” was used to make people ignore such things.)

In the address, Washington pointed out that his position was temporary (as indicated by the fact that his office space had no pictures or “flair” of any kind, and that he never attended the company Christmas party), and that it was his duty to uphold the Constitution and pass the torch on to someone else, as long as it wasn’t “that douche nozzle John Adams.”

Needless to say, he eventually regretted his decision.

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