Kaiser Wilhelm II (he of the silly moustache and pickelhaube) gave orders to his generals today in 1914 - 'It is my royal and imperial command that you ... exterminate first the treacherous English and ... walk over General French's contemptible little army.'
He was obviously a tad confused. General French was an Englishman, despite his contrary surname and the German generals clearly weren't listening carefully enough. They didn't exterminate the British because the 'contemptibles' stopped them at Mons. I know I don't have to remind you of the score: Britain 1, Germany 0.
In other news ...
Louis Leakey died today in 1972. He was the brilliant, self-taught anthropologist who discovered 'Lucy', a partial skeleton in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. His findings put him at odds with almost every other anthropologist over the issue of who was descended from whom. You and I, for example, dear reader, are descended from homo sapiens by way of homo habilis and all points south. Year Ten at Leighford High School are descended from homo deeply-stupidicus and, according to his mother at least, the testicles of Henry Guttersnipe (not his real name) haven't descended at all. Although why that should excuse the late delivery of his most recent essay, I am at a loss to explain.
