SUNDAY FUNNIES: HAVING FUN WITH HISTORY

Digging history!

Hello Everybody! Autumn the Puppy here.
I'm always surfing the Internet, for one never knows what interesting new facts you might dig up.
For interest, while there are a lot of serious historical facts about things that happened before any of us here right now were ever born, do you know that there were also some fun moments amongst our ancestors?
Case in point:

Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States, was also famous as a man who talked very little. At a dinner party one night, the lady next to him thought she might startle him into saying something. "Mister President," she announced. "I've made a bet that I can get you to talk-- even if only to say three words."
"You Lose" replied Coolidge. 

Another time somebody asked Mr Coolidge, "Do people in New England say 'a hen lays' or 'a hen lies'?"
He replied, "In New England, they lift her up to see."

There are plenty of great stories about Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as author Mark Twain. Here's one:

Mark Twain

Once Mark Twain went to a neighbor's home to borrow a book. "I'll be glad to let you use it," said the neighbor, "but I have a rule that all my books must be right here in house."
Not long after that, the neighbor came to Mark Twain's house and asked if he could borrow the lawn mower.
"Of course." Mark Twain said. "But I have a rule that my lawn mower must be used right here."

A very rich but very stingy old man wanted a picture with which to decorate his staircase. He asked the famous English artist William Hogarth to paint it. They

Self portrait of the artist with his dog.

agreed on the subject of the picture--the destruction of Pharaoh 's army as it was pursuing the Israelites across the Red Sea. But they could not agree at first on the price of the picture. The old man wanted to pay only half what Hogarth thought the picture was worth.
Seeing that he couldn't get another penny from the old miser, Hogarth finally started work. After painting only two days, he announced the picture was done. He pulled the covering off it and showed a canvas covered with red paint.
"Zounds!" cried the Miser. "What have you here? I ordered a scene of the Red Sea."
"The Red Sea you have," replied Hogarth.
"But where are the Israelites?" asked the old man.
"They have all gone across."
"Where are the Egyptians?"
"They are all drowned," explained Hogarth.

And hey, any artist that paints a picture of himself with his dog can't be all bad.

Well, that's it for this week everybody. Next Sunday will be our annual Easter fest and then Waxy returns for the Sunday Funnies after that. Take care of yourselves and have a great week!-AtP.

All supporting images in this column courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, a free license media repository.