► World War II kicks off with Germany's invasion of Poland.

Bobby Fischer defeated Boris Spassky of the USSR. He was the first American to compete in the tournament.

In 1979, Pioneer 2 flew past Saturn discovering an eleventh moon and two new rings.

The first U.S. school committed exclusively to training circus clowns is established in Venice, Florida in 1968.

You went to school? You had clothes? We went right from the womb to the uranium mines. 12-hour shifts. And, at the end of that 12-hour shift you'd move over to the diamond mine for a 12-hour shift. It might have been ok if we had been given tools, but those were for the rich kids. It didn't matter anyway, because there was only one hand for the whole block. And if you got the hand the day you didn't have the arm, well that was your tough luck. I still remember that one Christmas when the mine owners just hit us with lead pipes for 22 hours straight instead of making us dig. Man, that was sweet.

You had it easy. When I was younger, "grades" didn't exist. You either passed or failed, and if you failed they shot you. And it was at least a hundred miles to campus, and we hadn't even evolved legs yet so we just kind of rolled both ways. Uphill, of course. And snow? Wow, that would have been a blessing. Acid rain, baby. You'd put on several layers of clothes and just hope that you got there fast enough that it wasn't all melted away by then. And our attackers weren't just ice weasels, they were saber-toothed ice weasels. And I could only dream about rocks being added to the menu. Man, the next generation had it so good.

Pfft. Don't tell me about having it rough. I would have killed to go to school in an acid rain downpour. When I was in college, meteors the size of buildings would crash down upon us as we were on our way to class...on the next continent. We didn't have any skin protection back in those days, so we had to squirm up the hill completely naked while leaches attacked us. Class was a 6 straight hours of beatings with a stick by our professors, to which we were required to say, "Thank you" with each and every blow. And the professors were the saber toothed ice weasels with poisonous laser beams that shot out of their eyes.

You had schools? Lucky dogs. Back in my day we had to find a smart person and follow 'em around all day. If he or she didn't like what you said, you'd get smacked in the nose with a mace. And don't even talk to me about walking, that was a luxury where I came from. Most of use couldn't afford your fancy legs, we had to pull ourselves along with our fingers and the roads were made of broken glass.

You had smart people? Quit complainin'. In my day we were barely walking upright on that 12 mile hike to the uranium mines. And we'd have killed for some acid rain to cool down the lava fields we had to walk across, dragging our knuckles the whole way. And if we got there late or the foreman was in a bad mood, he'd make us roll around in his poisonous thorn bushes, then send us back home.

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