The Chinese called it the Year of the Snake. The United Nations dubbed 2013 the International Year of Water Cooperation. It was the year that Doctor Who and Beatlemania turned 50. The concept of mass production turned 100 years old. 2013 also marked the 100th anniversary of:
- Income tax (in USA)
- the Erector Set (now Meccano)
- Laura Secord, Canadian chocolatier, confectionery & ice cream company
- the highest temperature recorded in the world (Death Valley, California hits 134 °F / 56.7 °C)
- the 1st successful use of a parachute to bail out of a crashing plane.
- the 1st packaged cigarettes (The Camel cigarette brand).
- Evil Dr. Fu Manchu (a fictional arch villain);
- the mallomar cookie
- Al Capone’s expulsion from school (grade 6);
- Jimmy Hoffa’s birth
- the Irish music ballad Danny Boy.
- the “Bringing Up Father” and “Krazy Kat” comic strips
In honour of the Chinese Year of the Snake, politicians everywhere went into viper-drive to prove that many can still go lower than a snake’s belly in their ability to embezzle, embarrass and underwhelm their constituents. Meanwhile, the UN’s high hopes for water and cooperation were dashed by an uncooperative typhoon’s destruction in the Philippines and a Calgary Stampede that was very nearly cancelled (until organizers rounded up a herd of sea horses) in a year that was awash in an ocean of other leaks and illegal wiretaps.
Regardless we have clearly come a long way in the last hundred years… or have we? Think about all of the above-mentioned centennial milestones as you scroll through what the spin doctors of my mind can weave in def(er)ence of 2013 – e.g. “like Doctor Who, no matter how many Popes die, they are always replaced by another white guy” (someone else came up with that one hence the quotation marks).
Brace yourselves, I don’t even know what lies ahead (which should scare both of us given that I am writing about what I think I remember already happened last year).
