In the words of Douglas Adams, “In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea.” It is the intention of this article to tell the entire history of the world in exactly 400 words. This paragraph does not count. Why write it? Because I can and it might be entertaining. Why 400 words? Since that is the minimum length of a Factoid. The following is exactly 400 words according to the Mac word processor Pages. As a disclaimer: to fit into 400 words, this history only looks at the Evolution version of history and is fairly Euro-centric. With sixty-five million years of history in 400 words, you will forgive some omissions.
Bang! The universe begins. It begins to expand. Things begin to clump together into planets and stars. One of the stars is our sun and one of the planets is the earth.
The earth begins to cool. Inorganic matter becomes single-celled organic matter. Cells clump together to become colonies. Colonies become organisms, organisms become creatures. Some become amphibious, later, land dwelling. Species diverge.
Dinosaurs show up and are killed by a meteor (possibly). Later, they become oil and wars are fought over them.
Ape-like creatures evolve and live in trees. They move to the ground. They start using tools. They create fire. Higher brain functions develop. Speech. Hunting and gathering is a fad briefly.
Domestication of plants and animals begins. Fledgling human society ceases being nomadic and becomes sedentary. This is the Agricultural Revolution.
Societies become larger. Sumeria, Egypt, Greece and Rome rise and fall, among other civilizations. Wars occur. A man named Jesus Christ is born. This is considered a big deal. His birth is set to year zero. Christianity becomes quite popular.
The Dark Ages happen. They may or may not have been that dark. Humans kill other humans in the name of that Jesus fellow and call it the Crusades. Ironically, Jesus taught about love and being nice to your neighbor, but people kept killing in his name.
A German guy figures out how to print books quickly and cheaply. A spaniard tries to go East by heading West, but finds a continent or two in his way. There are more wars.
England becomes an empire. Some folks don’t like this empire and form their own country, which they name the United States of America. There are more wars. Steam power is useful.
An archduke is assassinated and there is a particularly big war. The economy tanks. A German fellow thinks blonde hair and blue eyes are neat and starts killing people who he doesn’t like. There is another, even bigger war. Some scientists split the atom to make big bombs.
There is a Cold War, where two countries threaten to blow each other back to the start of this article. One side collapses, but their bombs remain. Yet even more wars. America is the Empire of the day. People are elected that aren’t very good at their jobs. The economy tanks again. Someone tries to write the history of the world in 400 words.
