After partaking in a spot of genealogy this week, I discovered that my great-great-great-step uncle, thirteen times removed, is one Henrith Wilhelm-Smyth-Wilhelm Wilhelm; the inventor of the exclamation mark.
Apparently, he came upon the idea whilst reading the newspaper standing on his head, as was his wont. He noticed how the letter 'i' invoked strong feelings within him when he observed it in an inverted fashion.
His discovery took the world by storm, and is still popular today. In fact, top social networking site, Bebo, has reported that 97% of all the characters entered on its members pages are exclamation marks, the other three per cent being made up of lolz, fit and yeah?
Unfortunately, my uncle Henrith never got to bask in the glory of his discovery, as when he began to put it at the end of every sentence, even when attending funerals and 'black tie' cocktail parties, his family had him committed to a workhouse, where he died of chronic diarrhoea, a sock puppet his only companion.
It is an honour to come from such a noble lineage.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment