We do know that in 1769, the very first self-propelled road vehicle was a military tractor invented by French engineer and mechanic Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. He used a steam engine to power his contraption. It was used by the French army to haul artillery at a whopping speed of 2.5 mph. I’m guessing, it being the French army, this was in reverse.
The following year Cugnot built a steam-powered tricycle that carried four passengers. There are few details about whether this was the first ever road trip with the Cugmeister and his entourage going cruising for ladies. Arguing like all men do about who has to sit in the back and who gets the all-important role as wingman up front.
A year later Cugnot drove one of his road vehicles into a stone wall, making him the first person to get into a motor vehicle accident. Were there the high-visibility jacket-wearing wombles putting lane closures all around him? I haven’t read his insurance claim but what’s the guessing he was distracted by something, say a woman. According to a recent survey, men are more likely than women to get distracted while driving. No shit Sherlock. It even said killing insects was a hazardous distraction for men. It’s true. We do get very upset about midges on the windscreen. The windscreen is one of the few surfaces a man will try to keep meticulously clean. Work surfaces in the kitchen not so much.
So Frenchie invented the automobile. Or did he? Petrolheads will get very worked up and tell you it was the Germans who were there first. As always in life, the perennial towel on the sun loungers of history. Saying that, Karl Benz did create the first gas-powered vehicles, which are closer to the cars we know today. I’m going to leave it there as I’m beginning to get bored by all the men bickering about cars.
ANOTHER FIRST IN MAN HISTORY
On to some more interesting happenings in our history. Napoleon Bonaparte, the scourge of Europe, invading Italy, Spain, Holland and even Russia. As I said earlier, just being a great figure in history isn’t enough to be included in this book – you have to have contributed to man history. Sure, Napoleon ended feudalism in Europe, laid the basis for modern French law and was probably the greatest battlefield commander that ever lived, but what did he do for men?
Napoleon, by simply uttering three little words, challenged one of the great injustices that is suffered by men every single day. He was the first person brave enough to say ‘Not tonight Josephine’ to his wife. It’s fine for a woman to decline sex with her husband, and rightly so, but if a man decides he’s not in the mood, a big can of worms is opened.
The woman automatically assumes that they no longer find them attractive and that they’re probably having an affair. They also think: I’m better looking than this jerk, he’s lucky I’m even giving him a chance. It blows a woman’s mind when a man says he just wants a cuddle and does just want a cuddle. Without the usual stab in the belly. They don’t understand it.
You’re a red-blooded man with a penis and you’re saying you don’t want sex? The man maths just doesn’t add up. ‘Have penis must use it’ is how they think we are. They deduce all that even though it’s probably because we’ve just had a big meal and feel a bit bloated. Suffering from a PMT for men. Post Meal Tiredness. Napoleon was the first man to draw a line in the sand and for that we should get down on our knees and kiss his feet, even though he was French and apparently wore over a litre of cologne a day. Probably to try and hide his smell of Frenchness.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
By the turn of the twentieth century, we had become the Chelsea of the day. No one liked us and everybody wanted to beat us at home.
The terrible wars defined these times, but I need to draw attention to something without which we wouldn’t be who we are today. Something came along that is possibly the greatest gift man history ever got. No, not fishnet tights.
The television was invented. As the sage Homer Simpson says: ‘TV, teacher, mother, secret lover.’
Thanks to John Logie Baird, we now had an excuse not to talk in the house. On 2 October 1925, Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture. It was the head of a ventriloquist’s dummy nicknamed ‘Stooky Bill’. Shame he had to ruin the moment with a ventriloquist act but he was Scottish and we should be grateful he didn’t put the thing in a deep-fat fryer and batter it. He needed another man to help him achieve this remarkable feat and Baird went downstairs and fetched an office worker, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton, to see what a human face would look like.
Taynton became the first person to be televised. I would imagine that when Baird showed this moving image and face, another first was born: ‘Is this all that’s on?’ was said for the first time.
So here’s to John Logie Baird, giving men another long-lasting relationship in their lives. Maybe the biggest since being introduced to fire or to the wheel. Neither of those two could give us Going for Gold or Wacky Races though.
You could sum up the Second World War as a pub car park fight. Just when you thought it was finished, everyone had taken a beating and the bouncers had broken it up, someone makes a snide remark and it all kicks off again.
Luckily for men all over the world, Hitler and the Third Reich were resoundingly kicked into submission. Obviously if he had won it would have been bad for the simple reason that he was a horrible dictator hell bent on world domination and also wanted to wipe out quite a few races on the way. Hitler was also a teetotal vegetarian.
With war off the menu for a bit, men had time to breathe a sigh of relief and push new boundaries and do something other than kill each other. Like get back to the important man business of trying to have sex. One of the big changes after the war was the wide-scale availability of the contraceptive pill. The very idea of consequence-free sex is the holy grail for men. The rhythm method was never perfect for a man: as its name suggests, it’s reliant on the very thing men don’t have. Rhythm. Men cannot dance.
During the fifties one of the most essential things for life was developed: rock and roll. Sure, rock copied from the blues and so began a lifetime of thievery in rock and roll. One thing’s for sure, if Elvis Presley hadn’t been invented the world would have been a poorer place. We would never have known about the joys of fried peanut butter sandwiches. Somewhere along the way Kenny Loggins sat down and penned ‘Footloose’. History thanks all of rock’s Kennys: Loggins and Rogers.
Men now had another way to try and get laid. By forming bands. Singers may bang on about alienation and being disaffected but, come on, no one starts a band so spotty kids can like them. If you couldn’t impress the girls at school by getting in the football team the alternative was being in a band. And maybe it’s best those two never mix. Music and football are never a pretty combination. Apart from John Barnes’s rap on ‘World In Motion’.
On 10 April 1951 Steven Seagal was born. Born so that men channel-hopping at one in the morning could find something classy to watch. In most of his great works a simple formula is observed. Steven is a retired US Navy Seal/secret agent/assassin now working as a chef/handyman/IT tech support. Then some bad stuff happens and Steven goes and gets an old bag under his bed that has all of his old killing stuff in and goes back to what he knows best. This book recognises Steven Seagal and will have more on this incredible man later.
By the time Neil Armstrong had stepped down from the lunar landing module on 20 July 1969, America had spent $28 billion and employed just under half a million people in the Apollo programme. Yet they still didn’t know if space pirates existed up there, which is what I was looking for through my binoculars every night as a kid. That and really believing about mice drilling for cheese on the moon. The only useful thing to come out of the Apollo space programme was the invention of Teflon, which means men don’t stick their eggs to frying pans any more (well, that much anyway). But it proves that given the chance, men will waste money in