On THIS DATE IN TWISTED-HISTORY! in 1845 Scientific American published its first issue and the lead story was “Improving Rail-Road Cars”. It quickly became a well respected magazine in the scientific community due to printing articles about space research, botany and evolution, but because of that it was subsequently lamblasted by Luddites and the Religious Right. Yes, even in the 1840s and 50s there were religious fanatics who wanted science to be repressed. In 1878, Richard “Let-God-Smite-Them-Sinners” Ham of Petersburg, Kentucky, started his own magazine called, “Unscientific American and Proud of IT!” and the lead story in the first issue was, “Ain’t No Monkeys In My Family Tree!”. To be fair to the magazine, it did print a rebuttal opinion piece written by Chim-Chim the Chimpanzee, which was titled, “Ain’t No Humans In My Family Tree!” Biologists that read both articles determined that not only did Chim-Chim’s article present a well thought out argument and contained scientifically proved facts, it also had better spelling and fewer grammatical mistakes than Mr. Ham’s article. Mr. Ham thereafter refused to accept any more articles written by Chim-Chim and vehemently denied that the uppity, elitist primate was his nephew.
It should also be noted that Richard Ham’s descendant, Ken Ham built the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky that opened its doors in May 2007. The museum takes a literal view of Genesis and claims the world is only around 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs roamed the Earth with Adam and Eve and that black people are the descendants of Ham, son of Noah and are cursed by God to be the servants of white people. All people are encouraged to visit the Museum, as it is the closes a person can get to taking an acid trip without actually doing LSD.
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