Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Theodore Geisel is 100 now,
To celebrate I wrote a poem, hey wow!
A bit of a hist'ry you'll find here in store
Looking back fondly from 2004!

In 1804, Clark and Lewis went west,
When Jefferson asked for the route that was best.
Hamilton died after dueling with Burr,
And Beethoven wrote out his quite famous third.
Napoleon claimed he was emp'ror of France
And dead in pure reason: Immanuel Kant.
But enough about people already dead,
A sesquicentennial, that's where we'll head.

An eventful year, 1854,
When Nightingale worked in the Crimean War.
Th' Republican Party came into being,
The Know-Nothing Party also hit the scene.
Simplfy! Simply! That's what is good,
Wrote Thoreau in Walden, or Life in the Woods.
Old Stephen Douglas thought slavery's for jerks
And Boole wrote the logic that makes Google work!

A hundred years back, in 1904
Comic strips started to take on book form.
Sons-in-law everywhere sighed in relief,
Since someone invented the answ'ring machine.
Old Teddy R. started digging canals,
Japanese and the Russians became best of pals.
NYC's subway first saw light of day,
And the ice cream cone came to the US of A.

When Geisel was just 25 short years old,
Infections were cured by Fleming with mold.
In '29 also the stock market crashed,
And first 'round the world was a zeppelin named Graf.
The Sound and the Fury created a stir
And then there's the Valentine's Day massacre.
Hubble saw galaxies moving away
And van Gogh was shown at the M-O-M-A.

We're closer to now--1954,
On the Waterfront won a whole lot of awards.
"That's All Right Mama" was sung by the King,
The "domino theory" was Ike's new big thing.
Hank Aaron played his first game for the Braves.
And Sun Myung Moon thought that group marriage saves.
"Separate but Equal" was called not okay,
But Army-McCarthy got underway.

Hostages taken in '79,
P-A was nuked with a a cloud from Three Mile.
Gas lines were common and Volcker raised rates,
Egypt and Israel made peace in the states.
Falwell had his Majority--Moral,
While "Dallas" was good for some sex or a quarrel.
Afghanistan fell to the Soviet tanks,
But the Walkman was new, and my ears say thanks.

So here we are now, 100 years past,
Already '04 has been quite a blast.
The screaming of Dean and the conquest of Kerry,
While Bush plots to stop gays from getting married.
A human was cloned, and Jesus is hot,
And Aristide's out--it could be our fault.
If Seuss were still here alive today,
I'm sure he'd have quite a few things to say!

This wouldn't have been possible without HistoryChannel.com and the WikiPedia.