Happy Birthday HistoryLink!
HistoryLink.org turned a spritely 10 years old yesterday. In Internet Time that must be like turning 100 years old: an impressive accomplishment in any case. Happiest Birthday to you!
It's no secret that many of us in the Seattlest blogroom love HistoryLink. In fact, Seattlest HQ has three direct phone lines, all terminating in red phones kept under glass bell jars. While all of our other traffic, telephonic and internetronic, is efficiently routed by our amazing switchboard operator, Myrtle, all of our breaking news and thoroughly researched information comes over the three direct lines. Those lines lead straight to Heaven, Hell, and HistoryLink.
With all of the great background information we've gotten from them over the last few years, we hate to repay them with lies. But there are chapters of their story that they do avoid. Thus, in the interest of Truth and a more complete historical record, we can't let this lie. After all, you can't count on an organization to accurately and objectively re-tell its own history (that's why Seattlest has outsourced our institutional autobiography to Fox News Channel). As a result, we have painstakingly re-printed the following excerpt from the Encyklopaedia Seattlestica, "Chapter 3: A Fraudulent and Entertaining History of Washington Territory, Which Later Became Washington State":
HistoryLink.org started out from humble beginnings as the History Department of the Leavenworth College of Calligraphic and Typographic Arts. After some underhanded academic politics left the Department forced out of the College, HistoryLink reinvented itself as the Historical Broom and Flynet Company. In this capacity it manufactured goods for the war effort--that's the Spanish-American War for you young whipper-snappers. Seeking to diversify and enhanced its alliterative endeavors, HistoryLink also branched out into the hotel industry in what proved to be a fateful move.
When Pres. Teddy Roosevelt visited Seattle in 1903, the company naturally figured that he would stay at its lodge to repay the company for its invaluable wartime service. However, Roosevelt stayed at the rival Denny Hotel, causing it to flourish. When corporate oligarchs heard of this, they spitefully called for their rival's eradication: "wash it away...right down to the sea!" Naturally, their cronies in municipal government carried the plan out faithfully.
Realizing their tremendous impact on history, they returned to their historical roots. The company parlayed the fortunes made in brooms, flynets, and hotels and went underground. Although it kept its old name, which now seemed inaccurate and therefore sinister, it devoted itself to the gentle manipulation of history itself. Over the next few decades, it would--like God did with dinosaur bones--bury its old rivals (like Leavenworth College) as well as historic elements, banking on the knowledge that when these artifacts were later uncovered by unwitting dupes, their own historical research and public reporting would prove to be a lucrative niche venture in whatever medium prevailed in that day.
And so, on May 1st, 1998, they lubricated the bearings with a few drops of the rich blood of the privileged class, threw a few knife switches, and the dynamos powering the servers came roaring to life. HistoryLink.org was born!
Whenever we write our self-amusing dreck, we count on HistoryLink to legitimize our half-baked understanding of the historical record. We're sorry that we repaid the favors by airing your secret and dirty laundry. At the very least, we hope we bring some good traffic to your exquisite site. Cheers!
