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Historians witness history on the move.
What do a simple farmer, a bunch of historians and Napoleon have to do with each other? They probably didn’t all share an Uber. Find out what it’s all about by listening to this Odd News story. (Run time: 5 minutes)
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Transcript:
CLINTON
Since the dawn of civilization, people have defended their homes, their tribes and, eventually, the borders of their countries. Wars have been waged, harsh words spoken, and even the occasional finger has been wagged in a very impolite way. Manors people, manors. We’re not animals.
But, recently, one farmer overturned the applecart of history by single-handedly changing the internationally-recognized border between two nations. And they did it without firing a single shot, bribing a single official, or even having a clue that they were doing it.
While tending their fields, a Belgian farmer moved a 330-pound stone out of the path of their tractor. Presumably using the tractor to accomplish this task. I mean, unless there’s a superhero aspect to this story that I missed.
Anyway, the farmer moved the stone 7 and a half feet and when on about the business of tending their crops. What crops? I don’t know. Let’s say pretzels. And not the tiny ones. The big, honkin’ size-of-your-head pretzels. The key is salting them at just the right time, because if it rains, all your work gets washed away.
but let’s dog ear that for now.
What the farmer didn’t know was that a roaming band of historians were out and about in the area. Side note: if you ever run into a wild pack of historians, don’t run, they smell fear. Simply ask them to explain the transition between the middle ages and the renaissance. While they’re busy arguing the finer points of traditional beliefs that it stems from the rise of humanism versus the modern opinion that the term is a meaningless delineation, you can slip away.
On this particular day, the historians were studying stones that are used to mark the 620 kilometer border between Belgium and France. These massive markers were put in place under the 1820 Treaty of Kortrijk, after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815.
All was going well. Until they discovered, to their horror, that one of the stones had been moved 7 and a half feet into what was, or had been up until that moment, Bousignies-sur-roc, France.
That’s right. In the farmer’s desire to speed the process of tilling their pretzel fields, the Belgian had unwittingly moved a section of the Franco-Belgian border by 2.3 meters.
When Mayor David Lavaux, of Erquelinnes, Belgium was notified about the incident, he said “Belgium and our municipality are enlarged! The French don’t agree, obviously.”
We’re not sure how many troops were dispatched to the area, or how many calls he received from the United Nations, NATO and Rand McNally, but Lavaux added, “Gonna have to put things back in place.”
Lavaux said the farmer will not face any legal consequences if they returns the stone to its original position. However, the farmer may be considering another option. If enough of the border stones rest on their property, it might be possible to place the rocks in a circle, forming the new, independent nation of “Pretzel-vania!”
SOUND: CLAP OF THUNDER
CLINTON
(LAUGHING.) Ah, ha, ha. But for now, that’s it, we’re done, done, done, done, done. Bye bye.