In the late 1800s, shortly after fuel, oil and petrol were invented and developed into commodities, oil companies were busy developing strategies for what they referred to as “the global dependance on oil”. One company’s initial idea for infiltration of the home was to name the company’s off-shoot cereal business mascots ‘Fuel, Oil and Petrol’. The idea chimed well with company executives and the board. The idea’s owner, Heinriech Friedman, was offered an instant promotion. The company was really pleased with itself: It was not only going to get Fuel, Oil and Petrol into people’s houses; It was going to get Fuel, Oil and Petrol onto the breakfast table!

Several thousand packets of rice-based crispiness were produced and sold in the first week alone. The good customers could not get enough of the product. People loved the bright packaging of the cereal. They also loved the snapping noises of the cereal when topped with milk.

The success, however, was short-lived. It seemed that people were combining the slogan on the box that read “Enjoy any way you like!” with the names of the mascots. People, mainly children, were being admitted to hospital with large amounts of ricey cereal and motor car engine oil in their stomachs.

The company was forced to pull the mascots from the box immediately. It was several months before the slightly more helpful, onomatopoeic mascot names of ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’ were added to the packets. They were named after the sounds the cereal made when milk was poured onto a bowl of the cereal.

As a company precaution, numerous tests, lasting several weeks, were carried out on the sounds the cereal made when topped with various grades of engine oil.

Zoo Keeper Bilky Dunn had placed an order with an online zoo animal store, based in Nigeria. Ogimono Janaku, the CEO of the company, proudly appeared on the site’s welcoming pages. Further browsing revealed a vast variety of animals available to order, with Janaku stating that all animals are “cort to orda” and that, on occasion, even he would “hav an involvment in capcha”.

To Bilky Dunn and his staff, the site looked like a good deal, with rarities such as Asiatic Lions going for only $500 US and a rare breed of Dodo costing just $1000.

The zoo handed over around $100′000 for the site’s special ‘Golden Ark’ package and sat back, feeling incredibly pleased with themselves.

With all the rare breeds and hard to come by animals in their zoo, the poor Idaho county town of San Martin would be able to transform the lives of its citizens, by pulling a tourism crowd over 5000% bigger than its present state. Morale in town grew.

The zoo waited for a month – the site stated a maximum delivery time of 28 days – nothing came.

After numerous emails from the company’s many Nigerian staff, the majority of which thanked them for their order and for “sending me munny”, a small packet finally arrived, no bigger than a small suitcase. Inside it were 100 sponge animals, roughly 8cm high, 3cm thick. All were yellow.

“SPONGE ANIMALS???????” said the zoo’s next email, to which the ‘3rd sectary to the 4th manger’ Djubey Bombano replied “YES!”

A later email from the company asked “WOT DID U XPECT 4 $100′000?”

The local media were as distraught as the zoo at their loss, but surrounding rival town’s locals, the wider US media and the world media found San Martin’s misfortune hilarious.

Headlines of “Zoo Washed Out by Sponge Animals” to “Nigerians Clean Up San Martin” to “Wiped Right Out” to “Taken to the Cleaners and Given a Sponge” swept across the globe. The media could not get enough.

Nigeria, encouraged by their score, opened thousands more similar businesses, all with the primary aim of ripping off dense Americans for as much money as they could. Known today as scammers, they mostly operate online, although some have been known to operate in person from time to time.

In 2003, the UK sent a £2.5million aid package to the derelict remains of San Martin and its people, after the US President ignored the County’s plight. Within the aid package were 1000 individually wrapped washing sponges, each in the shaped like an animal.

The Prime Minister later apologised for the tasteless contents of the package and for any offence that may have been caused by the gesture, stating that all aid packages contain “standard contents”.

Originally ‘crank daddys’ were all top cyclists, expert meat mincers, gramophone obsessives with strong winding abilities, ace fishermen, crank-start car enthusiasts, most railway workers and some sailors. People were happy with it this way.

Sometime in the late 1990s, a small faction petitioned for the inclusion of a number of other modern-day crank users in the definition. They argued that technology had moved on since the term’s coining and crank usage had evolved to include a larger proportion of the population, many of whom were really good at turning a crank.

Included in the argument were the owners of wind-up radios and torches, trailer users and desktop pencil sharpener fanatics.

Many old school ‘crank daddys’ heavily opposed the faction and, using the old ‘historical term’ argument, succeeded in having the case thrown out of court. Only the original skills may have the term applied.

Even in today’s mutually inclusive society, incorrect use of the term ‘crank daddys’ is punishable by a fine and may result in imprisonment.

It was the ancient Greeks that first wrote of water and its wetness, but it wasn’t scientifically confirmed until 1984.

Its confirmation was a simple one, with part-time artist, writer and village bum Peter Tenenbaum finding himself credited with its discovery. Whilst sat on a station bench reading an English dictionary one day, he noticed that the definition of ‘wet’ was something that could be directly applied, without argument, to the properties of water.

It was an important theory and, though a few scoffed at first, it is now almost universally accepted the world over, though a few small villages found at the poles still hold the claim that ‘water is cold’.

Aside from this geographic anomaly, there are occasions where water has been found in an un-wet state. In 1990, Geoff Briggings found water to be ‘hot’ when he placed his hand inside a switched on kettle. That same year, David Tarquin found a small patch of ’salty’ water whilst enjoying a swim in the sea.

These occurances are rare, however, and the current, overwhelming modern-day belief is that yes, until we can gather further evidence to prove otherwise, water is wet.

For six long years at the start of last century, an estimated hundred thousand school children were miserably dragged through their sorry paces as PE teachers around the globe attempted to popularise the sporting equivalent of a dead horse.

Headroom in the game, for a start, was nothing short of ridiculous. As small as some school freshman usually are (I once saw one able to fit inside his own rucksack!), no amount of compression was ever going to make them a good vent football player.

Then came the issue of access, which any former vent football player will tell you, is nothing like the movies!

Fresh air was usually in abundance, which did aid respiration throughout the game, but it was not enough for the health and safety officers who finally shut the door on the game when they discovered a match being played in their own offices – right above their very heads!

Nowadays, vent football has been swept so far under the carpets, even the most thoroughly researched and balanced history books make no mention of the sport. But it did exist…

So the concept…. An Offset Patio Umbrella is opened by way of a lever or button and then the inner workings of this marvelous machine use particle physics to displace the patio and move grass into place. Thus solving the problem of having a small garden space in crowded urban areas.

The conception of this wonderful device was by a man of little stature who lived in a Kenyan Tribe. After Umba Umba Umba (His stagename) was brought over to mainlain Spain in 1937, to perform in circus side shows, he learned Spanish and was able to put his concept into realization. His original concept used a putrid mix of blessed animal guts to conjure a displacement. A man standing on solid Earth could suddenly be hiding in thick grass. This was intended to aid hunting. Of course the idea was laughed off and mostly forgotten, until a US Army General (name cannot be sourced) was believed to have found it whilst researching his hobby of European folklore. Intrigued by the idea and recently fresh of reading Stephen Hawkin’s “A Brief History of Time” the general believed the project was simply conceived a few years ahead of its time. He took it to his Superior’s and weeks later the Offset Patio Umbrella (Code Name, Project Offset) began.

Project Offset was quickly changed and the Military wanted to use the technology to displace the ground from underneath enemy solidiers, replacing it with quicksand, or lava.

Project Offset was then publicly returned to it’s original idea and is believed to still be in development. It is said that it will be used to give soldiers in harsh climates the chance to relax on good wholesome American lawns. One side effect of the technology is that in order for an area to be filled with lush green grass, and area of lush green grass must be filled with the patio or solid ground. Many conspiracy theorists believe that their dry lawns are victims of Project Offset.

As with most military technology it is unlikely that a marketable version of this device will be around for at least 30 years. In the mean time a much simpler product bearing the same name “Offset Patio Umbrellas” have become available on the market, so it’s likely a new name will need to be found.

People were already hooked on chewing phlegm, a habit known to be disastrous for one’s health, so it was only a natural progression (given what happened with tobacco) that people took to smoking phlegm.

An act that carries absolutely no delirium, buzz or high, smoking phlegm is deemed acceptable for just one thing: driving. In fact, phlegm smoking numbers rose after people were told in a televised anti-drink driving advertisement that it was “OK for you to smoke phlegm and drive”.

It is believed that smoking phlegm was responsible for several hundred Mancunian fatalities throughout the 1980s, but it was receiving the blame for a shift in the local accent and dialects that finally pushed the majority to quit.

Nowadays only a few phlegm smokers exist amongst the city’s homeless community. They are said to feed their habit by scraping up the dried coughings and throat chunks of passing cigarette smokers. They are known as smoker’s phlegm smokers.

In 1947, school bus driver Derek Bridgeham made Varnum headlines when he successfully restored life to the seized engine of a school bus, using only a pot of Varnum. The PR machine went wild, catapulting the product into the markets of 17 other countries. Derek went on to host popular Saturday night show: “Saturday Night”.

Nowadays, Varnum survives mainly on the mother and baby market, though its plethora of anal-sex related gags helps drive extra sales through the stag-do market.

Believed to be a culmination of the Northern and Southern Lights, Varied Array occurs only on January 13th, February 29th, March 27th, April 1st and October 20th each year. Some believe it to resemble an image of American comedian Steve Martin.

Many early equatorial civilsations believed that Varied Array was just a portal into the heavens. In the 18th century, Varied Array was used for guidance on trans-atlantic shipping routes. This resulted in extremely heavy traffic on those five nights.

When the idea of mail order meat was first conceived, roughly one year after the conception of the Post Office itself, it was merely an idea before its time. For a start, many people didn’t have computers. Those that did, did not know how to use them properly and often over-ordered. These gigantic orders often crippled the country’s farming system, often for months at a time.

Another factor was the delivery time. Often the warehouse was located several miles further away than the customer’s local store, meaning, by the time the meat finally arrived, it was never as fresh as the local butcher’s produce. This caused a dip in the number of ‘returning customers’.

The service was finally suspended after the King denounced its existence. His aide had ordered a batch of steaks which were brought from a warehouse some 100 miles north of the Palace. Upon arrival, the stench and the maggots had won the battle for survival, a scene which made the sheltered man quite ill.

Modern refrigerants and refridgerated trucks have now alleviated this problem, making almost anything available via mail order. Even wives.